Poplar House
How I Work
Appointment Options
I offer face-to-face appointments from my private office in Sale, South Manchester and online sessions. I offer appointments to individuals (adolescents and adults), families and couples. I may see you all together, in smaller groups, pairs or individually as part of this work and we will negotiate this together as therapy progresses.
My definition of families is broad and does not mean you must be biologically related. Therefore this includes other people with a significant relationship, individuals who support you and those you care for in various ways. Many people live within a "chosen" family for many reasons.
If you are interested in whether I could be the right therapist for you, book a free 30-minute telephone or Zoom consultation by clicking here. Once you have booked in, I will send you further information and confirm this appointment.
Therapeutic Focus
As a systemic psychotherapist, I am interested in understanding the impact of past events and relationships, including the relevance of wider contextual issues you are facing, to make sense together of your current challenges. This may include trauma on an individual, family, group or societal level but also the impact of discrimination and oppression such as racism, disablism, homophobia and transphobia.
Structure of Systemic Psychotherapy
Systemic Psychotherapy isn’t a long-term weekly model of psychotherapy. Depending on the issues you want to address, we usually meet for an initial 90-minute assessment and then decide on the frequency and duration of appointments. This may involve some appointments at regular intervals (initially weekly or fortnightly), and then sessions become more spaced apart. However, sometimes, my involvement is much briefer, as having space to make sense of your situation and consider potential solutions helps clients to move forward in addressing their issues earlier.
If you wish to attend as a couple or family, I usually see you together initially; and then we agree on whether it is helpful to continue or meet in different groupings or individually as part of the plan of therapy. Sometimes individuals attend and then decide to include their partner or other family members at a future point.
My systemic training emphasises that as therapists we are also part of the system we are joining into our therapeutic work. We therefore need to be aware of what we bring ourselves into our work and what may be useful to share of ourselves with those we work with. In this respect, I may utilise some potentially helpful lived experiences as a parent, a stepparent and someone living in a “blended” and “neurodiverse” family, with the complexities this can sometimes bring.
Professional Standards
I am committed to adhering to my professional body's standards in terms of clinical supervision and continued professional development. As a clinician involved in lecturing and teaching for many years, I am very passionate about ensuring that my practice is evidence-based and ethical. Sometimes Systemic Psychotherapy is not the right type of therapy for some clients. Maybe you would benefit more from an NHS service, a different therapy or a more specialised service.
Working within the NHS for many years, I have also had to learn the importance of self-compassion and self-care; spending adequate time with family, friends and in nature and with animals has become an integral part of my journey in this respect. You will see I work across flexible hours to meet the needs of my clients, but I am also conscious of ensuring I only work a limited number of hours a week within these times. This is to safeguard both the quality of my service to my clients, as well as my own professional and personal well-being.
What difficulties can I help with?
Research shows Systemic Psychotherapy is helpful for children, young people, adults and older adults experiencing a wide range of difficulties and interpersonal issues and circumstances, across all age ranges from infants to old age (AFT, 2025)
Couple relationship difficulties
Adult mental health issues
Child, adolescent and adult behaviour difficulties
Domestic violence and abuse
Parenting issues
Illness and disability in the family
Separation, divorce and stepfamily life
Anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders
Fostering, adoption and kinship care
Child and adolescent mental health issues
The needs of ‘looked after’ children
Self-harm
Drug and alcohol misuse
The effects of trauma
Physical illness
Death, dying and bereavement
Difficulties related to ageing
Life cycle changes
Stratton, 2016
Research has shown that systemic family and couple therapy is as effective—and in many cases more effective—than alternative interventions, often at a lower cost.
Systemic family therapy is effective for children's and adults' difficulties, both when they have a mental health diagnosis and when there is more general or complex distress.
Working therapeutically with individuals together with their families and/or significant others enables the use of individuals’ relationships as a resource and reduces stress and difficulties for all family members.
Family therapy has also been found to be particularly effective during severe and complex disorders requiring extensive treatment.
Systemic psychotherapy includes relational work with individuals.
Get in touch
Frequently asked questions
Psychotherapists undergo a four-year, postgraduate, in-depth and experiential training in how to work with a variety of people with a wide range of emotional distress, mental health issues and difficulties. Psychotherapists are trained in one or more psychotherapy approaches. (UKCP)
I am registered with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) and therefore bound by their guidelines as well as my professional bodies (UKCP & AFT). I have a separate privacy policy which I will need you to read and agree to at the start of therapy. The content of our sessions is confidential but there are limits of confidentiality to ensure clients safety and I will discuss these with you at our first meeting. If I work with family members/individuals separately and together I will not share information with you without gaining consent first. Parents need to appreciate that their child(ren) may need a confidential space where information is not shared, and this is similar for couples.
To ensure your safety, monitor my practice and in line with my professional registration, I receive regular clinical supervision but no identifying information about clients is shared with my supervisors.
I am a member of the UKCP (UK Council for Psychotherapy) and AFT (Association for Family Therapy & Systemic Practice). The high standards of the UKCP register are accredited by the Professional Standards Authority. I am bound by these professional bodies' codes of ethics and practice and subject to their complaint procedures. This includes adhering to their strict standards of clinical supervision of my practice and continued professional development.
The frequency and duration of the therapy will depend on the type of difficulty or problem you are facing and therefore is difficult to anticipate. Generally, I don't see people every week on a long-term basis as it is beneficial for you to have time in between appointments to practice being different with one another.
I may offer weekly or fortnightly sessions to start with to initiate some changes, then sessions may become less frequent. Some people prefer to work with an open contract, whereas others prefer to work with a fixed number of sessions, followed by a review, this is your choice.
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