As a specialist in thinking and learning differences and an education expert, I support parents and educators around the world to to better understand their children's needs at home and school.

With understanding, compassion and great care, I holistically untangle the trickiest issues which impact young people in life and learning.

I specialise in social communication differences, autism (especially girls and young women), anxiety in a school context, attentional issues, and specific learning differences such as dyslexia. Complex cases and those involving boarding school settings are particular areas of interest and experience.

 

After gaining my first degree in Education and English Literature at Homerton College, Cambridge in 1994, I started my career as a primary teacher. A few years later, I returned to Cambridge to complete a Masters degree and then a PhD in Education at Clare College. My doctoral research was focused on understanding the parental experience of working with education professionals when a child is struggling in school, and to develop better frameworks for establishing authentic parent-professional partnerships.

 

Over the past thirty years, I have worked in a range of educational settings and almost always with a lead inclusion-focused role. For the last eight years, I was at Harrow School and for much of this time led their provision for boys who have additional needs.

 

Very often, families are referred to me when they have reached an impasse, and do not know how to help their young person move forward. Although I work with youngsters of all ages including those at university, I most commonly work alongside adolescents, young adults and their families.

About My Mission

More than a decade ago when my own children were tiny, I recall staying up the entire night and writing a mission statement and a business plan on scraps of paper. Of course, back then I had no clue how to even get started. And the next day, my ideas were dismissed to a drawer. And for two years there they sat. But the concept kept calling me. I knew first hand from my own schooling, my doctoral research, and from my work in schools, how important it was for the views and experiences of parents and their young people to be truly heard and understood. I knew too that so much beautiful talent was often missed or squashed within the systems that existed.

I could also see that we need a world in which our children need to be holistically understood, and where their worth is not defined by a narrow version of success.

So slowly, with many late nights and very early get-ups, piece by piece, my mission has been clarified and the private practice has been built. Although it has been up and running for nearly ten years, in many ways, I am just getting started.

Whichever way you look at it, life is a short trip. Filling it with love, meaning, and purpose and creating a legacy of true understanding, is what it is all about.