Services
Although all the services listed below can be self-funded by individual families, we can also support you in applying for funding, particularly if the child/young person referred to us is either Looked-After, Adopted, under a Special Guardianship Order (SGO) or has an Education and Health Care Plan (EHCP).
Schools can also fund or part-fund therapy for either individual children or groups of children across an academic year. Please do contact us for more information.
One-To-One
With a child, a young person or a parent. These can take place either in our therapy room or in school, if this is felt to be more appropriate. This will be a case-by-decision.
One-to-one sessions are 50 minutes long and take place every week.
Families
These take place in our therapy room.
Family sessions are 1 hour and 30 minutes long.
They typically take place once a fortnight.
Professional Lead
Families can request us to set-up and chair Early Help Assessment meetings (also known as Team Around the Family) and to act as their professional lead throughout the full process.
EHA is a non-statutory process aiming to build a support network around a child/family and to ensure effective communication between services.
Joint Parent-Child
(Including perinatal and parent-infants/toddlers sessions)
These can take place either in our therapy room or in school, if this is felt to be more appropriate. This will be a case-by-case decision.
Parent-child sessions are 1 hour and 15 minutes long.
Perinatal and postnatal sessions can be used in many ways, from processing a difficult pregnancy (both physically and psychologically), a traumatic birth (or simply one different to what you may have wished for), any ongoing obstacles being experienced in bonding or attachment or simply to talk through what being a new parent feels like, with its highs and lows.
Assessment
This involves three consecutive sessions with a child or young person, in order to provide a clinical formulation of their presentations, needs and identify the most appropriate support/intervention.
Please note, assessments can sometimes require either one or two additional sessions. This will be discussed at the earliest possible stage directly with the referrer.
Therapeutic Life Story Work
Life Story Work is a reflective and therapeutic process that helps individuals explore, organise, and make sense of their life experiences through constructive a coherent and contained narrative.
Life Story Work is increasingly recognised as a valuable intervention for anyone struggling with emotional regulation and difficulties linked to unresolved and/or misunderstood past experiences.
Life Story Work offers an opportunity to understand the roots of these emotions, integrate fragmented experiences, and develop a more coherent and positive sense of self.
This intervention takes place with the child/young person and their main carer present.
We talk through main events from birth onwards, naming every significant person along the way, and exploring feelings and emotions that have arose from various situations.
All Life Story Work ends with a book, which collates all the discussions had throughout as well as photographs and drawings.
This book goes home with the family at the end of the intervention.
I found Florence to be extremely professional and competent in all aspects of therapeutic life story work.
It has helped my child greatly and he was extremely relaxed with Florence.
Supervision For Professionals
We know, from experience, that supporting the staff involved with families is just as important as finding the right help for young people and their parents/carers.
We are passionate about offering all staff a safe space to escape the stressors inherent to their work, reflect on the impact it has on numerous aspects of their lives, and think about the dynamics that may be at play.
This space can be used in a variety of ways, and can either be purchased by a workplace or privately funded by individual staff members (this can be either regular or ad-hoc).
All sessions can take place either in the workplace or in one of our therapy rooms.
Individual clinical supervision for pastoral/ nurture /mentoring /support staff
These sessions are to discuss direct nurture (social, emotional and mental health) work with children. They are 1 hour long, with frequency discussed and agreed together during our initial meeting.
All cases discussed fall under our confidentiality policy. Any safeguarding action will be the responsibility of the workplace’s Designated Safeguarding Lead. The clinical supervisor will be responsible for supporting supervisees in identifying safeguarding risk and taking the relevant steps.
During clinical discussion, the supervisor will offer clinical advice on specific cases as well as scaffold staff’s own ability to become curious about possible unconscious dynamics. Although we work primarily from a psychotherapeutic perspective, a supervisee’s own therapeutic framework will always remain at the core of our thinking.
Individual reflective supervision for all staff, including leadership and management teams
These sessions reflect on ways in which personal and professional well-being are often intertwined.
Often, staff working directly with children, young people and families are on the receiving end of strong projections as children try to get their experiences heard, understood or to rid themselves of particularly uncomfortable feelings. This can lead to high levels of stress in staff, strained relationships and intense feelings in all parties involved. We aim to create a space where those dynamics can be acknowledged and where staff can feel valued, heard and nurtured, regardless of the nature of their struggle.
We hope that attendance at reflective supervision will help improve and/or maintain staff emotional well-being, consequently allowing for them to reach their full potential as members of a team. Settled and emotionally contained staff will have a direct positive impact on both the children’s learning and well-being. By having their own safe space to down-regulate, reflect and have their own emotional needs met, staff will become emotionally more available to families and colleagues.
Individuals will get an opportunity to explore the underlying meaning of behaviour as well as the dynamics which may develop between them and their clients. In schools for example, we can reflect on what goes on within the classroom, with a particular child or with other members of staff, all within a safe space, away from the heat of the classroom.
We will think about how a child’s behaviour can indicate how they are feeling. We will explore what our own reactions and feelings towards a child may be telling us about their perception of themselves or how they may be experienced by their parents/carers.
Reflective supervision will not be a space where we develop set behavioural strategies. Rather than looking at how to manage the practicalities of a situation, we will aim to think about what goes on under the surface, or unconsciously, in order to understand why the situation may be developing in the first place. The intense feelings staff may experience while in the presence of a child can be acknowledged, named and understood. Although this may not bring immediate solutions, it will help contain a situation and allow for staff to gradually feel more empowered. By better understanding the roots of a behaviour, staff will become more attuned to unconscious, less visible aspects of a child’s experience. Behaviour strategies will develop naturally as a result of improved relationships, lower stress levels and a general feeling, for both staff and children, that one is being heard, understood and supported.
We have found over the years that this space also becomes an opportunity for staff to reflect on their own families, and often seek advice about their own children. This helps staff to feel supported and contained with those personal difficulties, which increases their ability to focus while at work and reduces stress levels.
These sessions are 1hr long. The frequency of sessions will be decided between us during the first sessions. Ad-hoc sessions are available.
Group reflective supervision for all staff
We typically offer two separate groups, one for case-holding/teaching staff and another for leadership and management.
Each group has a maximum of 6 to 8 staff members.
These sessions follow the same principles as individual reflective supervision.
Attendance is voluntary but we recommend that members of a group try to attend for at least a term (for weekly sessions) or two (for fortnightly sessions). This allows for the group to build some sense of cohesion, safety and trust.
Participation in the discussions is also voluntary. We understand that some staff members may prefer to quietly take in what is being shared. Some may not necessarily feel confident or have the need to either share their own struggles or contribute to the discussion. Everyone works and develops differently, and the group will aim to be inclusive of all needs.
A group is more effective when its members experience a sense of ownership and belonging. Your allocated therapist will therefore act as a facilitator rather than a group ‘leader’. They will use comments and open questions to guide the discussion and get the group to think and be curious together, without claiming to have the answers. Group members will be choosing topics or cases for discussions.
SLT will be able to access their own reflective supervision group. It will be the same format of groups with a maximum of 6 members. We can look at aspects of the work which are more relevant to an SLT’s day-to-day work. In school for example, it is extremely common for dynamics from pupils’ homes to enter the classroom, where it is re-enacted between pupils and staff before reaching the SLT where it may be re-enacted between senior staff and teaching/support staff. This is the case in any workplace, where dynamics between managers and case-holding staff can hold key insights into what may be going on for clients/service users.
There will be an option for members to request individual supervision if they wish to explore specific issues in more depth, in the safety and comfort of a more confidential space.
