DREAM together

22/01/2026

Reflecting on Therapeutic Letter Writing and Trauma-Informed Practice 🌿

As an associate of Trauma Informed Consultancy Services, it was a privilege to facilitate a creative classroom with Blue Cabin and Creative Life Story Work on the 'Healing Power of Therapeutic Letter Writing'

Alongside social workers, frontline practitioners and therapists, we explored letters that hold and heal. Letters that support trauma-informed practice with children and young people and build professional confidence, care, curiosity and creativity in writing.

We explored how therapeutic letter writing could hold, heal and regulate, embodying the core trauma-informed values of safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, empowerment and cultural humility. Using metaphor, character, storytelling, and applied practice, everyone had the chance to write a short therapeutic letter and reflect on how this might support relationship building, transitions, repair after rupture and relational endings.

We discussed the power of writing letters to practitioners themselves. When we feel we are not doing a good enough job, letters to the self can be deeply compassionate and grounding.

For children and young people, letters can act as a safe container. A way to be seen and held in mind. A nervous system regulator. Particularly important where early relational wounds mean these experiences may not have been consistently available.

Reflections from the day 🌿

"The importance of the environment in which a letter is written has been a powerful reminder"

" I will take away with me how this helps practitioners feel more human, steady and connected.

"I love the use of magic and metaphor to support safety and regulation".

"This work has the potential to create profound change for systems and for public perception of social workers"

This session was thoughtful, creative and deeply moving. A real call to action to make time for therapeutic letter writing within our systems. This work has the potential to create profound relational healing and change.



TICS (Trauma Informed Consultancy Services Ltd.)

Creative Life Story Work

Blue Cabin

05/01/2026

A Gentle Start to the New Year ✨️

Why Transitions Matter 🌿

For children and young people who have experienced developmental and relational trauma, the move from the festive season into January can feel unsettling.

For many, change and endings are closely linked. Early experiences may have taught them that when something changes, something or someone is lost.

A return to school or routine can feel like the end of safety or connection, not simply a new start.
Transitions touch deep questions of safety. Will you still be here? What happens next? Am I on my own?

This is why January calls for us to slow the pace.
For adopters and kinship carers, naming the transition matters. Saying "Christmas is finishing and we are moving back into school routines" helps the change feel predictable.

Keeping mornings and bedtimes steady is important, but small creative rituals can also support regulation.

These might include:

🌿 A short morning or evening check in where the child names a feeling (having a range of feeling picture cards may help)

🌿 Letting the child choose a small object to take to school for comfort, something that reminds them of you perhaps

🌿 Slowly packing away decorations with soft music to mark the ending of holidays

🌿 Choosing gentle anchor words such as steady, safe, brave, or together, I am here with you

🌿Slowly perparing school bag, lunch box, clothes offering options and choice

🌿 Planning what you will do together after the school day ends

🌿 Adding some movement in the evening or morning, like dancing, jumping, yoga poses (power pose)

🌿 Celebrating small achievements after the first day back, such as a favourite snack or story

When a child is worried about returning to school, the PACE (Dan Hughs) approach helps them feel seen and held:

Playful: "It feels like school is really loud in your head today, doesn’t it?"

Accepting: "It makes sense to feel worried. The change can feel hard."

Curious: "I wonder which part of going back feels hardest for you?"

Empathic: "I am here with you'

For professionals, expect more anxiety and dysregulation around endings and returns.

Reduce pressure where possible and prioritise relationship over outcome.

In DDP, (Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy) healing happens at the speed of safety, not the calendar.

The New Year does not need a fast start.

It needs a kind relational one. 🫂

23/12/2025

As the year comes to a close, I want to say a heartfelt thank you. 🙏

Thank you to the practitioners, organisations, children, young people, and families I have supported or collaborated with over the past year. Every connection has mattered.

I hold one clear purpose in my work: to support others with a 'creative approach to life's serious stuff', applying evidence based therapeutic and trauma-informed care, guided by curiosity and compassion.

This year has reminded me again and again that how we show up truly matters.

I have seen so many people bring care, curiosity, and courage to their work, helping others feel seen, safe, and understood.

I have walked alongside young people, caregivers, and professionals who are willing to reflect on their inner worlds to better themselves and those they care for. That work is not easy, but it is deeply meaningful.

This year has reinforced that life is precious and that we are all trying to find our way, even the smallest acts of curiosity and compassion matter.

We are often just one part of someone’s journey, yet every moment of attunement can create change. My work is both personal and professional, and the two are closely connected.

I have been reminded that tears are healthy, that the body holds our stories, and that slowly allowing them to be released creates capacity for more life.

I have seen the strength of the parent/child relationship and the impact of inner work on relationships inside and outside the therapy room.

As the festive season approaches, I want to remind parents and professionals that self care is not indulgent. Pausing, showing yourself curiosity and compassion, and offering yourself kindness really matters.

As I move into the new year, my heart feels full. I remain committed to supporting children, families, and professionals, with a growing focus on adoption support, trauma-informed care, and consultancy.

Thank you for walking alongside me this year.

Care, Curiosity and Compassion make all the difference.

Keep an eye out in 2026 for our New Year offerings. 🌿

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Fruitful New Year. ✨️

08/12/2025

Weaving Stories & Strength in Islington 🌿

A beautiful morning alongside BookTrust, Kinship, and Islington Local Authority. As an associate of Trauma Informed Consultancy Services, I was honoured to be part of a collaboration grounded in compassion, connection, and community.

Storytelling continues to be one of our most powerful tools, helping us weave understanding, strengthen relationships, and honour the journeys that shape us.

This morning we spent time in Islington with Book Trust and the Kinship team in the Local Authority, holding a workshop on the power of reading to support children with their emotions, identity and sense of self.

We were with kinship carers who have stepped up for family, opening their homes and hearts to children when their own parents are unable to care for them. It felt important to honour that, the quiet bravery, the love, the patience, and the complexity that sits beneath kinship care.

The cafe setting was perfect. It kept everything warm and real, a place where people could settle in and speak openly.

There were nourishing, wholesome conversations and there were hard ones too, full of emotion, honesty and courage.

We started the morning as strangers around a table and ended it with hugs, gratitude and a feeling that everyone had been seen and heard.

People left with practical ideas and gentle guidance on how reading can support relational healing and help children make sense of their world. ☺️



BookTrust

Kinship

TICS (Trauma Informed Consultancy Services Ltd.)

07/12/2025

DREAM TOGETHER: OUR POSITION ON ADOPTION REFORM 💡

Adoption is often shown as a storybook ending. But the reality is more complex.

Children who have experienced trauma need relational healing, consistent support, and understanding.

Families need guidance, therapeutic support, and connection to help children thrive.

Without this, even with love and permanence, families can struggle.

UK reviews show ongoing gaps. Support often stops once the adoption order is finalised. Therapeutic services are inconsistent. Accessing post-adoption funds can be delayed. Support varies between local authorities and RAAs. Children and families rarely shape services based on lived experience.

Demand for post adoption support exceeds available resources. Long waits, inconsistent services, and regional differences can intensify stress, especially for children with complex trauma.

Dream together is here for families 🌿

🧩 We will continue providing creative psychotherapy, psychoeducation, and therapeutic parenting support for our families.

🧩 We’re piloting a contribution based offer to bridge gaps, including thinking spaces, psychoeducation sessions, and connection spaces shaped by families’ feedback.

🧩 We are evaluating an 18 month trauma-informed programme with a local adoption team. The evaluation will be documented in a paper (Mar 26) co-authored with researcher Dr. Debbie Amas.

🧩 Findings will guide future programmes and be shared at the BADTH Dramatherapy Conference (Jan 26).

Piloting first lets us learn, and refine so wider rollouts are meaningful.

Our position is clear; post adoption support makes a real difference. Every child and family deserves consistent, trauma-informed care.

06/12/2025

RICE KRISPIES, COCO POPS, AND TRAUMA INFORMED CARE 🥄

A call to practitioners and carers who support children and young people!!!

Healing your inner child is not indulgent. It is essential, especially if you support children or young people.

Last night, after two hours of dancing with Teacher Tim Barnes and over 65 dancers, my body went somewhere unexpected. I spent much of the dance on the floor rolling, stomping, kicking, surrounded by anger, sadness, and tears. Then my feet found the floor, trusting my body to spin, let go, release.

This morning, something shifted. My inner child whispered comfort, home, nostalgia. And there it was, a multipack of Kellogg’s cereals: Rice Krispies, Coco Pops, Cornflakes. A doorway back to childhood mornings when the biggest worry was which sachet to open first. I didn’t judge myself but allowed that inner child to enjoy the moment.

🏡 When we tend to our younger selves we grow:

🌿 Emotional attunement, noticing children’s feelings and needs

🌿 Comfort over control, responding with connection rather than correction

🌿 Breaking generational patterns, interrupting cycles of shame and disconnection

🌿 Expanded window of tolerance, staying grounded even under pressure

🌿 Playfulness and curiosity, bringing joy and trust into relationships

🌿 Safe and conscious practice, tending to our younger parts prevents them from running the show, reduces projection, and allows us to be fully present for the children we support.

🤸‍♀️ Younger parts running the show; reacting with disproportionate anger to small activations, shutting down, avoiding feelings, or overcorrecting children.

🏡 Younger parts tended too; noticing activations, responding calmly, holding space, and staying fully present.

For practitioners and carers who support children and young people this inner work is super important and must be given the time and space.

What might this look like?

🌿 Holding a sensory object or pillow for comfort

🌿 Eating a familiar childhood snack

🌿 Pausing to notice what was activated

🌿 Playing a childhood game or dancing to a favorite song

🌿 Colouring in

🌿 Bringing it to therapy or supervision.

Reflecting on and tending too your own tender parts, patterns with your supervisor, therapist, social worker ensures your practice is safer, clearer, and more conscious.

05/12/2025

Book Review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Weaving a Web of Belonging: Developing a Trauma-Informed Culture for All Children by Dr Lisa Cherry

I listened to Weaving a Web of Belonging by Dr Lisa Cherry on audio, and it was the right choice for me as someone who is neurodivergent, while also using the physical book for the helpful summaries and images.

The book has an academic feel, full of history, context, and research. Yet it also offers grounding somatic practices throughout the chapters, giving me moments to pause, reflect, and really connect with the material. Some of the stories shared by young people were incredibly powerful and a stark reminder of how many children and young people struggle to feel they belong.

The reflections on faces, spaces, and places were especially meaningful, highlighting how the people around us and the environments we create play a crucial role in shaping a sense of belonging.

The book sparked many creative ideas and set my heart on fire. It also stirred up a sense of guilt from my early years working in residential and educational settings nearly two decades ago, when exhaustion and vicarious burnout sometimes made it hard to see and hear the children in front of me truly.

Now, I can reflect with more honesty on how much more I wish I could have given, and this book reminded me of my responsibility to help children and young people be seen, heard, and supported as they explore their identity and belonging.

It helped me reflect on my own positionality, too, especially growing up in a border town in Northern Ireland, where belonging often felt defined by sides, and it showed me how those experiences still shape the way I show up in my work today.

This book is a powerful reminder of the history, nuance, and entrenched barriers that many children face, especially those in the care system, who often internalise a sense of not belonging.

The storytelling, metaphor, and imagery in the book helped me reconnect with what children and young people might be feeling and sparked new creative ideas for supporting them to share their voices.

Overall, it left me feeling passionate, energised, reflective, and committed to continuing this work.

Thank you, Lisa, for offering both a stark reminder and a heartfelt call to action to keep advocating for young people and supporting them to become their own voices of change.

Purchase here 🫶

https://lnkd.in/e6Y-4fgP



Dr Lisa Cherry

04/12/2025

A little snippet from my chat with Dawn Williams on Blue Cabin’s Creative Life Story Work podcast. It’s always a joy to chat with Dawn. Ive been on the podcast a few times now, as an Associate with Trauma Informed Consultancy Services.

And In this episode, we explored therapeutic letter writing through a trauma-informed lens, how a thoughtful, intentional letter can offer a steady relational anchor for children and young people who’ve experienced relational rupture.

A letter gives them something consistent to return to: words that don’t change, a tone that stays safe, and a message that reinforces care, attunement, and connection. For many, that simple act can be grounding and deeply reparative.

Always lovely to connect with Dawn and share creative ways to support relational healing in practice. 💗



DREAM together

Trauma Informed consultancy services Ltd

Life Story Work

💌Where to start with therapeutic letter-writing. 💌 This month Ciara McClelland is our podcast guest, discussing how letters can help young people feel seen, heard and understood. Listen to the full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/efq5XuF3 Dawn Williams | TICS (Trauma Informed Consultancy Se...

04/12/2025

Therapeutic Letter Writing 💌

As an associate of Trauma Informed Consultancy Services, in collaboration with Blue Cabin Creative Life Story, Ive been exploring how therapeutic letters through a trauma informed lens help children and young people feel truly seen, heard, and held in mind.

I recently wrote a blog and appeared on a podcast about this work. On 21 January 2026, I’ll deliver a Live Classroom online training on how this small but powerful gesture can foster connection and relational healing.

🎧 Podcast: [link] https://lnkd.in/efq5XuF3

📖 Blog: [link] https://lnkd.in/eetEVJ5G

🌿 Workshop: https://lnkd.in/eetEVJ5G

Therapeutic letter writing invites practitioners to slow down and give children and young people something many never received: to be truly seen, heard, and held in mind.

If you’re curious about how letter writing can enrich trauma-informed practice, this is for you! 💌



TICS (Trauma Informed Consultancy Services Ltd.)

Creative Life Story Work

📷 Steven Creamer

03/12/2025

And so it begins… ✨️

The tree is up here in Cambridge as I settle in for a few more weeks before heading home to Ireland for a little while.

Christmas can be a tricky time of year for many. A season that invites us to lean into Joy.

This year has been an incredibly difficult one for me, for so many reasons.

And yet, as we move into the light and warmth of the festive season, I can feel something shifting. A weight beginning to lift.

A strength held within a softness I’ve worked so hard to find. A balance and a peace that took real investment to cultivate.

A joy and a lightness that feels good, even though part of me feels guilt for feeling it when I know there is still so much grief and pain in the world.

I’m learning that one of the bravest things we can do is allow ourselves to feel joy, even in the small moments. To be thankful for what we’ve come through and grateful for what is still growing.

We are all walking our own path, carrying our own stories. So I’m sending light, softness, strength and warmth to anyone who needs it.

In a world that can make us want to protect our hearts, may we keep them open and compassionate, towards ourselves and towards each other.

02/12/2025

Refilling My Cup, One Breath at a Time 🌿

Today was a mixed day, the kind that reminds me how essential it is to pause, breathe, and return to myself.

I began with a breathwork session from Lisa at Breathing Bliss, after a difficult night’s sleep, clearing the heaviness in my head and consciously refilling my cup. Breathwork helps me reconnect to my body, to come back home to myself.

This grounding is not only restorative but necessary for the work I do. Being in my body allows me to recognise my limits, stay present, and keep my heart open.

It’s one of the practices that supports me in preventing vicarious trauma and burnout, and in showing up with steadiness and compassion for those I hold space for.

A walk with the dog grounded me further, and some time connecting with friends reminded me how much connection matters. I also gifted breath sessions to friends and family, sharing what has supported me so deeply.

Then came the practical parts of the day: admin, invoices, the steady rhythm of responsibilities.

Later, personal therapy offered a space to reflect on the importance of tending to my own wellbeing. The patterns, the inner work, ongoing, essential, and central to showing up in a safer and more conscious way.

Soon after lunch, I danced for an hour, with music from 5 rhythms teacher Tim Barnes, letting go and leaning into both softness and edges and the wonder. Movement helps me expand, creating room for more joy, more life, more breath.

I also completed a clinical therapy report for a child I support.

Closing the day with a glass of wine and a feel good Christmas movie, I find myself in between phone calls, door knocks, deliveries, and dog barking but still feeling topped up, my cup refilled.

This may seem indulgent, but making time for these practices is essential. It supports me in staying grounded, preventing burnout and vicarious trauma, and showing up in a safer, more conscious way for those I hold space for.

27/11/2025

As DREAM together grows and we move deeper into planning our collective offerings, I can feel my face needing to be seen a little more.

And with that… a lot of feelings.

The children and families I support clinically see me face to face, but as we begin planning for the year ahead, offering support for our collective communties, it feels important for others to get to know me a little more too, so here I am.

It’s always been easier to hide behind the camera, the “to filter or not” dilemma and so on.

But in my line of work, being real matters. So as we step into the year ahead, watch this space for more of me, and less hiding.

Today has been a slow, nourishing self-care morning before a full day: 1pm client, 2:30pm multi-professional safeguarding meeting, 4pm client, 5:30 nail appointment and finishing with gym, sauna, and prep for tomorrow’s meetings.

A balanced day 😊

I love what I do.

Showing up as I am.

More real.

Less polished.

Brave.

Real and growing.

Excited for whats to come 🌿