Clinical Practice

Lucy has extensive experience of working with children, adults and families in a wide range of settings within the NHS and privately over the past 20 years. Along with working with a broad spectrum of psychological difficulties and neurodiversity Lucy has specialised in working with adults and children who have experienced extensive trauma and related difficulties with in a variety of roles. These have included adult mental health services, child and adolescent mental health services, paediatric settings, social work and child trauma services.

Part of Lucy’s current NHS role is developing and delivering a care experienced children and young peoples’ service. This involves working directly with children and young people and consulting with the carers, professionals and systems that provide their care whilst keeping the needs of the children and young people at the core.

Therapeutic approach

Lucy has extensive experience of in depth assessment of psychological, relational and neurodevelopmental difficulties. Her approach is rooted in compassion and empathy, striving to develop a deep shared understanding of the experience of her clients. This may involve working with the client and others in their lives. She has a detailed knowledge of the evidence base and tailors intervention by drawing on a variety of approaches to best meet the specific needs of the client.

Lucy is trained in various evidence based therapeutic modalities. Those focusing on relational care and understanding of children and young people include Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) and mentalisation based approaches (MBT for foster carers, AMBIT). Other psychological therapies Lucy uses with both children and adults include Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Trauma Focused CBT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, (ACT), compassion based approaches, mindfulness based approaches and Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy.

Consultation/training/research activity

In addition to direct therapeutic work Lucy is passionate about improving access to appropriate therapeutic services for all and ethical practice. Specific examples of this include sitting on a Scottish NHS Research Ethics Committee and working with NHS Education for Scotland on developing and delivering a training programme for psychological practitioners. She has been involved in service development, training, professional consultation and clinically based research throughout her career, most recently in the area of mentalisation. Lucy supports the development of trainee Clinical Psychologists (clinical and research supervision) at the University of Edinburgh and offers specialist clinical supervision to qualified colleagues.