Specialist Mental Health Practitioner based in the west of Ireland. Theraplay® Practitioner, Trainer and Supervisor. Quietly passionate advocate for children and young people in care.
Sarah's professional background is in Psychiatric Nursing, with extensive experience of working with children and young people, in both inpatient and community settings. For many years, she has specialised in working with children and young people in care, and with the foster carers, adoptive parents, kinship carers and professional networks who hold them.
Committed to ongoing professional development, Sarah combines this strong clinical foundation with continuous specialist training. The result is a practitioner who is both rigorous and warm—someone who takes the work seriously without ever losing sight of the child at the centre of it.
Sarah's way of working is informed by a wide range of related professional development. Rather than adhering to a single model, she draws thoughtfully from several evidence-informed frameworks, choosing what will most serve the child, family or system in front of her.
Her integrated approach weaves together learning from:
This is held within a clear understanding of developmental trauma, attachment theory and sensory regulation — the science of how early experience shapes the developing brain, body and relationships, and how recovery is possible at any age.
Sarah offers trauma and attachment informed individual and dyadic therapeutic input, training and support to the system around the child.
Alongside direct therapeutic work, Sarah delivers training and offers reflective consultation to foster carers, adoptive parents, social work teams, schools and fellow practitioners. She believes that helping the adults around a child to understand what they are seeing — and to respond with curiosity rather than control — is often where the most meaningful change happens.
An initial conversation — by phone or video call — is a no-pressure way to explore whether the work might be helpful.
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