About Us
The Question
We started with a question that wouldn’t go away
Why are so many children struggling with SEMH (Social, Emotional, and Mental Health)?
We kept seeing the same pattern.
Children labelled as disruptive, disengaged, aggressive, avoidant, hard to reach – whose behaviour made perfect sense once you understood what was happening underneath. But nobody had stopped to look there yet.
By the time anyone did, things had already escalated. CAMHs referrals made. EHCPs written. Emotionally-based School Avoidance taken hold. Relationships broken down. Opportunities closed.
We knew it didn’t have to happen that way.
Early identification
Neurodevelopmental Support
SEMH support
Reducing EHCP need
Preventing school avoidance
Early intervention
Our Mission
To change outcomes for children with social and emotional needs – by building understanding in the adults around them, early enough to make a difference.
The Child Therapy Service is a UK-based social enterprise – we exist to create impact, not profit, reinvesting into tools, training, and support that make early help more accessible.
What We Believe
We believe dysregulation is communication
When a child struggles to engage, connect, or stay regulated, they’re not being difficult. Their nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do under conditions that feel unsafe.
The problem isn’t the child. It’s that the adults around them haven’t yet had the support to understand what they’re seeing – and respond in a way that helps.
Teachers are managing more than ever. Parents are navigating systems that weren’t built to support them. Everyone is doing their best with what they have.
We exist to make that easier – bringing clarity to what’s happening, and confidence in what to do next.
How we work
The BOUNCE Approach®
When children struggle, there is usually something underneath needing support – regulation, trust, sensory processing, emotions, connection, or identity.
The BOUNCE Approach® helps you understand what may be driving the behaviour and what support may help.
🖤 Body-based regulation
🤝 Openness to trust
🎧 Understanding sensory differences
🌊 Navigating emotions
💬 Connection to self & others
🌟 Esteem, identity & self
The right support – at the right level – at the right time.
Welcome to The BOUNCE Approach®.
Created by the Child Therapy Service – a social enterprise supporting families, schools, and professionals.
Connection before correction
Sensory understood
Emotions supported
Communication enabled
Identity protected
Meet our Specialist Trainers and Supporters
Tracy, Founder + Lead Trainer
Tracy is a neurodivergent teacher, trainer, and somatic practitioner – and the founder of the Child Therapy Service.
She developed the BOUNCE Approach® and created Snapshots, the two-minute tool at the heart of our early intervention work. Both grew out of years of direct practice across mainstream schools, alternative provision, PRUs, and specialist SEMH settings.
Tracy built this service because she kept seeing the same children fall through the same gaps – and knew that the adults around them wanted to help, but needed clearer tools to do it.
Her work is driven by a commitment to equity. When systems don’t adapt to meet children’s needs, those children are too often excluded from education and from life. That doesn’t have to be the outcome.
Louise, Founding Member
Louise is a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist with over 20 years experience of working in a range of mental health settings within the NHS and also in various not-for-profit organisations. She completed her Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) training 12 years ago and currently works as a Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapist in the NHS.
Louise has worked with a range of people, including children and young people, families, older age adults, and those with new difficulties as well as those with more severe and enduring challenges.
She is passionate about adapting evidence based therapy to help each client achieve their individual goals, in a way that feels helpful to them at that point in time. Louise is aware that this can be a really challenging process and believes that a caring, understanding therapeutic relationship is essential to this.
Debbie, Founding Member
Debbie specialises in early years and neurodevelopment. Debbie has worked with children and their families for over 20 years. She began her career as an Early Years Professional, gaining a wealth of knowledge and skills in early development through working with children aged 0-5 years across a variety of early years settings. Debbie then moved into a family advisory role where she worked closely with the whole family (with children aged 0-19 years) helping parents to identify and overcome difficulties while empowering them to confidently make changes in order to successfully meet their child’s needs. During this time Debbie trained as a facilitator in various parenting programmes and has combined her learning to create her own approach to parenting which is tailored to the individual family and is based on developing positive relationships, communication and attunement with your child.
Currently, Debbie works for the NHS supporting families with children who are neurodivergent; she specialises in Autism and Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA). Debbie is a qualified nursery nurse (NNEB) and has a degree in childhood studies and psychology. Debbie has also completed qualifications in working with families, counselling skills and PDA.
Claire, Trainer
Claire began her career as a youth worker in East Sussex as she felt passionate about supporting young people to overcome barriers in their lives and to offer them a different experience. Claire built on this passion through the management of health services targeting disadvantaged young people within East Sussex.
With an interest in people and wanting to develop her skills and knowledge, Claire pursued training in Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy. She now has ten years’ experience working with young people in a psychotherapeutic capacity, supporting young people to work through a range of issues including addictions, self-harming, relationships, loss, bereavement, anxiety and depression.
Kim, Trainer
Hi! I’m Kim Griffin, occupational therapist and founder of GriffinOT.
I qualified as occupational therapist in Australia in 2003. Since then, I’ve had the privilege of working with many children and their families, as well as teachers. I have worked in Australia, Ireland and the UK. A core focus of my career has been helping children who have sensory processing differences and/or motor skill challenges. This includes extensive experience supporting children with developmental delays, dyspraxia/DCD, specific learning difficulties and autistic children. In addition, I have been lucky enough to complete training with many of the leaders in the field of sensory integration, such as Lucy Miller and Zoe Mailloux.
This background has provided me with the knowledge and motivation to set up the GriffinOT online supports. I believe that occupational therapists have unique skills which can help children who may have sensory difficulties, and /or poor coordination skills. My goal is to ensure that all families and school have immediate access to this occupational therapy expertise. I want them to know how they can help their children to succeed at the things that are important to them.
Kate, Trainer
Kate is passionate about an evidence based patient centred form of healthcare and incorporates lifestyle medicine into her practice.
This focuses on the key areas of diet, inflammation, stress, sleep, exercise, gut health and trauma giving you a 360 degree look at your health.
Kate works closely with GPs and Consultants where possible to ensure continuity of care.
Laura, Trainer
Laura is an Autistic and ADHD health educator, independent Nurse & Sleep Consultant, and Associate Editor of *Autistic Revolution* magazine, specializing in supporting neurodivergent and disabled community members.
Drawing from lived experience and public health service, Laura creates inclusive spaces, hosts community events, and co-authors books like Gabby’s Glimmers and Creating Safe Spaces for Autistic People.
Clare Truman, Trainer
Clare Truman is an education consultant, author, PhD student and big sister to an autistic young man. She specialises in supporting PDA children and young people to access education.
She is author of ‘The Teacher’s Guide to Pathological Demand Avoidance: Essential Strategies for the Classroom’ published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers in 2021 and is currently completing a PhD exploring the educational experiences of PDA children and young people.