ABOUT ZARA
I'm Zara — psychotherapist, founder, and the person behind everything you'll find here.
I'm the founder of The Children's Psychology Hub — the person on the other side of every resource, post and session you'll find here. I built this space because the clinical understanding behind what children actually need wasn't reaching the parents, teachers, practitioners, and organisations holding them steady.
Three Important Influences
I came to children's mental health through a long path of clinical training — but the work I do, the gaps I notice, and the children I find myself most drawn to supporting have been shaped by more than that. Three things, in particular, sit underneath everything I do.
01 · A PHILOSOPHY
Seeing the whole child.
These three words run underneath everything I share, every resource I design, every session I lead. They're not a slogan — they're an order that matters. Understanding a child's whole world, including the parts that don't fit neatly into a textbook, comes before the support. The support meets each child where they actually are, with steady relationship and the right tools. And flourishing — properly, on a child's own terms — is the destination. The chance to flourish shouldn't depend on a child's health, ability or circumstances. It should be the floor, not the ceiling.
02 · A CLINICAL FOUNDATION
Grounded in relationship.
My training began with a Diploma in Person-Centred, Experiential Counselling, before I then achieved a BSc in Counselling Psychology and then continued on to undertake a clinical Doctorate in Counselling Psychology — a further three years of clinical practice, academia and research, integrated.
What that means in practice is that I bring evidence-based methods to the work, but I lead with the relationship. The most rigorous clinical model in the world won't help a child who doesn't feel safe in the room. My job is to make sure they feel safe first, then bring the right approach for them, second.
Informs, but never replaces, the clinical work.
I'm a parent, and one of my children lives with medical and SEN needs. That experience informs how I work — particularly the specialism strand of the Hub. It shapes what I notice, the questions I think to ask, and the gaps in support I can't ignore.
But lived experience and clinical work are different things. In sessions, I'm always led by the child or family in front of me. We may share some ground, but every family's story is their own — and no two children, even with the same diagnosis or label, are walking the same road. One size doesn't fit anyone, really. What lived experience gives me is informed humility — a starting point of recognition, not a script.
HOW I WORK
Broad and specialist at once.
I work across the whole landscape of children's mental wellbeing — anxiety, low mood, grief, anger, friendships, family change, school worries, self-esteem, the big feelings that look like behaviour on the outside. And I work across the whole range of spaces where children's mental health actually happens — not just therapy rooms, but classrooms, community halls, activity centres, forest schools, bereavement charities, and days-out venues.
Within that breadth, I have a particular heart for the children whose mental health support is rarely built with them in mind — those living with chronic illness, disability, additional needs, or difference. That work is the specialism strand of the Hub, and the part of what I do that lived experience, clinical training, and stubbornness have all pointed me towards.
The principle running through all of it is the same: support that fits the child, and resources or training that fit the setting. Never the other way round.
BACKGROUND & EXPERIENCE
The path that brought me here
City, University of London · Completing 2026
Doctorate in Counselling Psychology
A psychology degree grounded specifically in counselling psychology — not a general psychology degree later converted into therapy training.
My academic path has been in this field from the beginning.
BSc Counselling Psychology
A psychology degree grounded specifically in counselling psychology — not a general psychology degree later converted into therapy training.
My academic path has been in this field from the beginning.
Diploma in Person-Centred, Experiential Counselling
The foundational therapeutic training that underpins how I work in sessions — relationship-led, child-paced, deeply respectful of the child's own meaning-making. This is where the warmth in my clinical work comes from, alongside the science.
Clinical Associate, low-cost children's mental health charity
Triage assessment and direct therapeutic work with children aged 6–16 — many of whom were siblings of children with SEN or medical needs, or had diagnoses themselves. Frontline experience of exactly the population the Hub now serves.
Children in Need bereavement project
Working closely with bereaved children and the adults supporting them — grief, loss, and what helps a child carry what no child should have to.
Schools & workshops
Delivering wellbeing workshops in schools — what children's mental health looks like in the classroom, and how teachers and staff can hold it well.
Creative mindfulness workshops
Designed and ran creative mindfulness workshops in primary schools for children struggling with emotion regulation — making clinical skills genuinely accessible to children at the age they need them most.
Parent counselling
One-to-one support for the adults raising children through difficulty — because parents in distress can't easily hold children in theirs.
The Children's Psychology Hub Founder
The space that holds everything — therapy, groups, resources, training — designed to make clinician-grade support accessible to the families and professionals who need it.
Flourish News
Every month I share free resources, honest thoughts , reflective questions, and content that makes you feel less alone in this work and parenting world!
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