Co-Director

Dramatherapist and Environmental Arts Therapist

It is always my intention to offer work that empowers and supports an individual to find connection and expression, in a way that is personal to them. Believing that empowering a person to find their own answers and choices with in the therapy process supports greater well-being and the potential for change.

I have 19 years of experience working as a Dramatherapist. In the early years, I worked extensively with adults with physical and learning disability whose needs ranged from mild to profound. Working with story, where all sounds and movements made were welcomed and included enabled individuals who were often overlooked and misunderstood the opportunity to express themselves and be witnessed. It was an honour to offer weekly 1 to 1 therapeutic music sessions to profoundly physically disabled young people which generated joy and greater communication.

For the last 15 years, I have worked as a Dramatherapist based in schools supporting vulnerable children, their families and the professionals around the child. I have also worked as a member of a Multi-Agency support Team, in conjunction with other professionals providing timely intervention and support to children and their families. I was a facilitator on the CPD training programme within the multi-agency team, delivering training to both school staff and colleagues.

I currently work as a therapist with in a fostering agency, supporting young people and their carers’ and working closely with other professionals involved in supporting the child. Areas that I have experience of working in are around; bereavement and loss, supporting children and adults affected by attachment disorders and abuse, systemic trauma, and the building of resilience and trust.
I am also an Environmental Art therapist and facilitate work in nature with nature's cycles and metaphors to support the therapy process. I believe that spending time in, and deepening connection to nature, is everyone’s birth right. This work can promote self-regulation, connection to oneself and to nature and support the building of resources. I have experience of working 1 to 1 with adults and children and have co facilitated day group workshops.

Music and singing are important resources for me in my life and I have found them to be invaluable in my work, promoting expression and play. It was a privilege for me to co-facilitate a series of music performances in elderly people's residential homes and an honour to hear the stories and powerful memories evoked in response from the residents.

Mindfulness, visualisation and movement techniques are also invaluable personal resources and when appropriate, are offered in my work.

Contact Caz

Co-Director

Dramatherapist and IFS (Internal Family Systems) Therapist
 

Having reaped many therapeutic benefits through my own passion for drama and performance, I became curious about the healing power therein and went to study Dramatherapy at the South West School of Dramatherapy where I graduated in 2011. Since then, my passion has been for facilitating others to release their potential through creative and embodied means.

I took my training further and went on to train in Developmental Transformations (DvT) – a playful and improvisational dramatherapy method which places emphasis on Embodiment, Encounter (with the therapist as self or any character) and Transformation (the flow of ever-changing narrative).

Since most of our struggles and/or trauma are created within our personal relationships, I believe that it is the relational aspect of therapy wherein lies the most healing power. Drama and the creative process allows many ways for the client and therapist to be in relationship together and thus allows new perspectives on relationships to be explored.

I have also trained in Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), which blends well with Dramatherapy. In IFS, clients are supported to meet and engage with their many internal 'characters' (or 'parts' in IFS language). When met with compassion and understanding, these parts relax their grip on our lives allowing us more space to be who we want to be. IFS is more traditionally a ‘talk based’ therapy yet still involves the body through visualisation and breath. My IFS training has been very useful during the recent pandemic Lockdowns for it is readily accessible through video link platforms such as Zoom.

I have had the privilege to work in many different client settings. Most recently I have been working in schools with children affected by attachment disorders, anxiety, developmental trauma, abuse, neglect and those entering the care system. I also work in the community with adults with learning disabilities and with the elderly. Other previous dramatherapy experience includes working with dementia patients, young offenders and adopted children.

Sharing my knowledge and experience has also become an important part of my working life. I train and support volunteers who come to work with the creative arts community projects I am involved in, and I am also invited each year to be a placement mentor for students on the Applied Drama degree course at the University of Exeter.

My creative skill set has also found me enthusiastically involved in projects that raise awareness to social issues. I have co-devised and run interactive workshops for taking into schools that have covered topics such as disability, bullying and young carers.

How do I resource myself? I still very much enjoy performing; and also embodied dance practices such as Five Rhythms, the natural environment and long walks.

Contact Tracey

Co-Director

Play and Creative Arts Therapist

Parent- Child Attachment Play Practitioner

I have been providing support for children and young people with social, emotional and mental health difficulties since 2012, becoming a fully qualified Play Therapist in 2016.

I strongly believe that we can prevent and heal mental health difficulties when we build supportive relationships within which people feel accepted for who they are and have the freedom to express themselves fully in a way that does not cause harm to others. Therefore, I like to work with the whole person and the systems around them to explore what barriers might be in place in their environment, relationships and/or within themselves that prevent them from being able to emotionally thrive. As such, I have written and delivered training for family practitioners and teachers in attachment and trauma-informed approaches to challenging behaviours and provided consultancy work in schools supporting in the construction of holistic behaviour support plans.

I also work closely with parents to strengthen their relationship with their child using the Parent-Child Attachment Play model, as well as drawing on elements of Theraplay and PACE. I am also passionate about working within communities, providing projects that draw people together, provide support and reduce isolation.

It is important to me that we all have a voice, no matter how young, and that there is opportunity for everyone to be heard, but some people cannot find the words to express the difficult feelings inside. Play and creativity form the basis of all the work I do because evidence supports the fact that we express our emotions and form relationships most effectively when we play or create. We may not be able to say how we feel but we may be able to paint it or a puppet might be able to say it on our behalf.

As someone with a degree in Creative Writing, I am particularly interested in stories and how we use narrative to organise our feelings and experiences. I construct therapeutic stories for children and parents and support them to write their own. I also created ‘Little Storytellers’, parent-child workshops drawing on the work of Dr Sue Jennings and Vivian Gussin-Paley to support children as young as 3 years old to create stories.

The therapeutic power of nature and the outdoors has always interested me and led me to work in an outdoor provision for children at risk of exclusion, which really affirmed for me how effective the natural world can be when utilised as a therapeutic tool.

How I resource myself is through water. I like to say the sea is my church. I also love to go for long walks, forage and be with nature.

Contact Maaike

Co-Director

Dramatherapist

Environmental Arts Therapist

Since graduating in dramatherapy in 2006, I have worked as a creative arts therapist with a wide range of populations and ages. In 2016 I joined a multi- agency support team (MAST) delivering targeted interventions to vulnerable Primary School children in both small groups and 1-2-1 therapy.

My passionate belief in creativity’s ability to empower individuals to find unique solutions to their life challenges stems from an arts and teaching background in non-mainstream education. However, my lightbulb moment that I wanted to be a creative arts therapist, to enable sustained transformational change in peoples’ lives, arrived when teaching drama at a residential home for children in care.

Creative arts therapies support both adults and children experiencing a range of difficulties, including transitions, experiences of loss and grief (simple and complicated) associated with entering the care system, bereavement, divorce, separation. Issues relating to children’s difficulties accessing the Curriculum learning, friendship, bullying and identity make Creative Arts Therapies the first choice for early interventions for Schools and parents.

Creative arts therapies efficacy lies in its use of metaphor, story, movement, puppetry, and creativity. I offer non- confrontational ways for all clients to effectively engage with, and explore feelings, behaviours as well as possibilities for emotional regulation and healthy self-expression, body awareness, communication, relationships, roles, and narratives, whether difficulties hark to a known event in the past or are emerging in the present. In private practice I offer Environmental Arts Therapy to young adults, working in woods and the Coast.

Specialist interests are Developmental Complex Trauma, specifically relating to Looked-After-Children, although relevant to children with mild to moderate learning disabilities, children with Autistic Spectrum Conditions, as well as adult clients. Integrating several theoretical orientations, my practice offers a person-centred, trauma–informed PACE approach side-by-side a dramatic developmental model of play, besides being informed by psychodynamic, relational and attachment focussed models for the requisite repair to disrupted primary attachment bonds.

As a member of the MAST team, I co-developed and co-delivered CPD training to school staff in Domestic Abuse, and ‘Supporting Children in School with Nature’.

My recent professional development includes delivering theory and experiential workshops for trainee therapists (Creative Arts Therapy Foundation Course, Hertford Education Child Development Degree Course. University of Plymouth). Sharing expertise through training young professionals is fun and very rewarding and stretches my own growing edge.

I am skilled in creating therapeutic alliances and a safe, playful space to support people with constancy, creativity, and my compassionate, non-judgemental presence. Prospective clients: I’ll invite you to collaborate, and start where you are, then the essential conditions you need to catalyse you own healing potential and to make change in the direction of your choice, and at your pace, are created, as well as celebrated.

Spending time in Nature, dancing, and taking all-weather family dog walks on beaches are some of my favourite ways of resourcing myself.

Contact Gin