Mary Elliott

I am a UKCP registered Child Psychotherapist with extensive experience in private practice and a wide variety of other settings including the NSPCC, schools, CAMHS and fostering agencies. At the Sunflower Centre, I offer individual psychotherapy to primary school age children and parent support work. 

ABOUT CHILD PSYCHOTHERAPY

Through psychotherapy I help children with many different emotional difficulties. By thinking about and talking about feelings in therapy sessions children can process difficult experiences and associated feelings and reduce levels of distress. Over time, children transfer what has been taken in from therapy to relationships with others, helping them seek and receive emotional support more easily.

Children can find it hard to put feelings into words. Play, art and creativity within psychotherapy helps children and young people to express themselves fully, including their most difficult feelings. I help to make sense of what a child or young person shows me through their play and creativity and through their relationship with me.

My approach is empathic, attuned, playful and sensitive. I use my experience and knowledge to support children, young people and their families in a process of exploration, change and growth, reducing distress and difficult to manage feelings and behaviour.

I draw on psychoanalytic, attachment, humanistic and systemic psychotherapeutic theory to inform my practice. 

Where there is a client interest, I might draw on yoga training and experience to collaborate with children on yoga and mindfulness practices to increase awareness, bring the nervous system into balance and bring an embodied dimension to the regulation and integration of feelings and experiences.

HOW I WORK:

1. Initial consultation
Email me to arrange a free 15-minute phone call for you to talk about your concerns and ask initial questions. We can both decide whether to go forward and arrange further appointments.

2. Therapeutic assessment
Initial meetings with you, and your child, are chance for you to decide whether the way I work is a good match for you and whether to continue with an assessment process. Through the assessment process I aim to get to know your child really well, so I can form a therapy plan to meet particular needs. I will explore the current concerns in more depth and ask about your child’s development, family history and family life. The assessment process will likely include a mutually agreed combination of 1 or 2 parent/carer meetings, 1-3 child sessions and a family session. 

3.Therapy plan
We may agree a therapy plan for short term or long-term work depending on individual assessed needs. 

4. Reviews
We will review progress together regularly and amend plans accordingly.

Email me melliott109@googlemail.com to schedule a phone call if you’d like to find out more.

Please also have a look at my website https://londonchildtherapy.org/ , my Counselling Directory and UKCP pages for more information, including training and qualifications.

Mary Elliott MSW, MA
UKCP reg Integrative Child Psychotherapist