Leaf Story | Creative Arts Therapy & Counselling in Letchworth, Hertfordshire

Creative Arts Therapy & Counselling for Children & Young People

Letchworth, near Hitchin, Hertfordshire

I currently have an after school session available as well as daytime availability.

Please message me if you're interested.

Welcome to Leaf Story

A creative, colourful, fun space in Letchworth, near Hitchin, Hertfordshire where children and young people/teenagers can access the creative arts to enable and empower them to communicate and explore their feelings on a more accessible and profound level than through words alone.

Difficult and intense feelings can be confusing, disturbing or painful and if they are not thought about and worked through can spoil our relationships, interfere with our being able to function properly and bring too much unhappiness.

Children and young people/teenagers do not have sophisticated coping strategies for dealing with their intense or too difficult feelings or the inner resources for thinking through and regulating their levels of emotional arousal.

This can lead to painful consequences including bullying, aggressive behaviour, learning difficulties, bed-wetting, soiling, separation anxiety, problems with concentrating, uncontrollable behaviour, hyper-activity, obsessions, phobias, sleeping problems, nightmares, eating disorders, a regular state of fear, anxiety or unhappiness.

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Creative Arts Media

The natural language of feeling for children and young people is that of image and metaphor, which is why an arts based creative approach to counselling is fundamental to the way I work at Leaf Story. Creative arts media may include:

Early intervention has been proven to prevent issues escalating into more complex mental health illness later in life.

1:1 Child or Young Person Sessions

I offer 50 minute creative arts therapy and counselling sessions for children and young people/teenagers aged 3-18 years. I have a creative space at my home in Letchworth in which I carry out private work. I have experience working with children and teenagers with a range of mental health difficulties including:

Anxiety
Depression
Low self-esteem and self-confidence
Anger
Making and sustaining friendships
Grief and loss – e.g. due to separation, divorce or bereavement
Changes in behaviour
Dealing with big life events – e.g. changing schools, moving home, exam pressures, stress, changes in the family set up
School refusing
Eating disorders
Self- harming
Other day-to-day challenges children and young people deal with

I also have experience working with children who have an ASD/ADHD diagnosis and who have an EHCP.

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1:1 Parent Sessions

I also offer a 1:1 service working with parents who are seeking support to improve, strengthen and heal relationships with their children. This work can help to:

Be able to talk to each other about things that matter
Work through painful life events that may arise
Improve the quality of parent child interactions on a daily basis
Enable parents to be more attuned and empathic to their child’s life experiences
Enable parents to feel more fulfilled in their parental role
These sessions can take place in person or online.

Parent and Child Sessions: Sometimes it may be appropriate to work with both a parent and child together. These sessions would usually follow on from working individually with both a parent and a child.

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About Me

Hi, my name is Katy. I am a qualified Child and Adolescent Psychotherapeutic Counsellor in Letchworth, close to Hitchin in Hertfordshire. I trained for four years, graduating in 2020, at the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education, whose work is recognised by the BACP and the UKCP and is the sister organisation of the internationally acclaimed Centre for Child Mental Health.

I follow an integrative approach, whereby developmental theories and neuroscience underpin my relational and child led approach to working. If appropriate, I also incorporate breathwork and meditation into my sessions as well as my dog Ralph!

Alongside working with private clients from my therapy space at home, I am currently working therapeutically in a Primary school setting and also at an outdoor Alternative Provision where most of my clients are teenagers.

I am a registered BACP member and have regular clinical counselling supervision. I am fully insured, first aid trained and registered with the DBS update service.

CATT - Children’s Accelerated Trauma Training. An approach to working with and treating symptoms of C-PTSD (complex post- traumatic stress disorder)
Advanced Practitioner Certificate in Parent Child Therapy
Safeguarding and Child Protection in Private Practice

I previously worked for ten years as a primary school teacher, a career which in the outset I pursued because of my love for working with children. My time in this role gave me insight into the affect that social and emotional turbulence has on some children’s capacity to be able to learn which consequently leads to a daily struggle for many. My particular interest and passion for finding ways to support these children was influential in my decision to undertake therapeutic training.