Kerry Elden

Child & Adolescent Psychotherapeutic Counsellor

Kerry is a qualified child and adolescent psychotherapeutic counsellor and has provided one to one therapeutic support to many children, young people and their families over the course of twenty plus years.

She has a particular interest in working directly with parents and their children where there has been trauma and children’s services involvement. Helping families understand the patterns of behaviours they have found themselves using to manage very stressful situations, but that are often no longer useful and instead disruptive in their lives, Kerry finds it incredibly rewarding to see families communicating and supporting each other by the time they have completed their work together.

Kerry also has attended training in Dyadic developmental psychotherapy, Theraplay and mentalization, which has given her a good understanding of how to work with children and their parents and brings together attachment theory, what we understand about developmental trauma, the neurobiology of trauma, attachment and caregiving, intersubjectivity theory and child development.

Kerry’s postgraduate diploma and master’s degree training in child and adolescent psychotherapeutic counselling specialised in the aims, processes and skills of working therapeutically with children and young people through an emphasis on working through play and with the arts. Other significant strands included child and adolescent development, clinical skills, professional issues, ethics and child safe-guarding, child mental health, developing children’s emotional well-being, including developmental trauma, working with children’s contexts, networks and families, multi-agency work, working in a school setting, fostering, adoption and working with groups.  The core theoretical model is integrative, relational, developmental, and eco-systemic, which means working in a way that brings together elements from different theories to make a coherent whole. Kerry has found this to be invaluable in enabling her to work with people in a more individualised way which matches to each child, young person and family’s needs rather than adhere to one particular theory or model.

Kerry has a passion for keeping families together wherever possible and helping children and young people feel heard and safe in order to process difficult experiences. She has provided training and skills sessions and consultations to professionals such as social workers, teachers, health care, as well as parents, in all aspects of trauma informed work, including domestic abuse, bereavement and loss, developmental trauma, attachment and psycho education.