An independent Creative Therapies Practice based in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England.

Specializing in Therapeutic Life Story Work   

Certified TLSW Practitioner & Qualified TLSW Supervisor

Covering the South East of England.

Lucia Hassaine BSc (Hons) DipTLSW   Cert TLSWi Supervision

Extensive experience of working with Local Authority, Fostering and Adoption Agency children and young people.

Working with Children and Young People of all abilities

From 4 years of age upwards

Therapeutic Life Story Work

Certified Therapeutic Life Story Practitioner

Member of TLSWi

12 week programme - weekly sessions for up to 1 hour.

Plus 3 evaluation meetings - Initial, mid-way and final sessions with parent and child/young person

Evidence Based

Trauma Informed

Therapeutic Life Story Work provides Social Care experienced,  Adopted, and children and young people living in the care of a known person under a Special Guardianship Order with a sequential narrative of their life and enables healing from the trauma of neglect, abuse and abandonment, and other life changing experiences.  The work also aims to promote and strengthen attachment between the child/young person and their primary carer.

Although the Rose model of TLSW forms the basis of this work, the TOPAZ model also incorporates innovative therapeutic and creative interventions from a variety of sources.  

The sessions cover work on the child's:

Present-Past-Present-Future.

Present Life - Identity, family, friends, hobbies and interests and school. religion, beliefs, culture, heritage, present home.

Past Life - information about their birth parents and birth family, family tree, time-line, eco-maps, foster families, schools, friends and special occasions, and specific events and the reasons why the child was removed from the birth parents care, or the details of the life changing event.

Present Life - As events may have changed since the work began, the story is bought back to the child/young person's present life, as it is now.  Achievements are recorded and celebrated in the book.

Future Life- plans and ambitions for the immediate and long-term future.

Parent-Child Attachment Play (Playful Parents) can be incorporated into the Therapeutic Life Story Work Sessions.  Therapeutic Parenting strategies and techniques are encouraged and supported throughout the TLSW process.

SandStory Work, ARTiculate and LEGO® Build2Express therapeutic interventions  are incorporated into the Therapeutic Life Story Sessions, as well as many other therapeutic interventions.

ARTiculate

Advanced ARTiculate Practitioner 

ARTiculate (4 week programme)

ARTiculate is a therapeutic art and craft based intervention designed and endorsed by BAAT. The practitioner works alongside the child/yp for the 1 hour session. ARTiculate is suitable for individual child/yp or groups of 6 children.

This fun and relaxed workshop provides children and young people with an opportunity to communicate and express their feelings and emotions through the medium of art and craft. This intervention is particularly beneficial for children and yp who are looked-after, adopted, have experienced a life trauma or struggle with communication skills.

Each of the four sessions has a specific focus;

Week 1 Designing and decorating a box to represent the child/yp's identity

Week 2 Collage work - Choosing from a wide selection of art and craft resources to produce a collage to depict how the child/yp feels about a specific event in their lives in the past, present or future.

Week 3 Beads, boxes and bags - Creating a 3D model that represents strength and resilience to the child/yp

Week 4 Free work - the child/yp is free to build/ draw/ paint/ collage a piece of work of their choice.

LEGO® Practitioner.

Power-up Play with Lego® 6 week programme

Using LEGO® as a Therapeutic Intervention was pioneered by Dr Dan LeGoff, a Clinical Neuro-psychologist in Philadelphia, USA. The idea came to him during his work with autistic children who were otherwise uninterested and distant. He observed that children really came to life and started socialising with each other when playing with LEGO® . After this discovery, LeGoff turned the collaborative building central approach into LEGO®-therapy and published research on its effectiveness.

Topaz Creative Therapies has built upon LeGoff's observations and other Lego® therapies and developed this adult-led but child-centred programme called Power-up Play with Lego®.

Aims:

• Develop expression, communication and social skills,
• Improve the ability to follow rules and instructions and problem-solving skills.
• Create a sense of belonging and connection
• Reduce stress and generate greater calm and relaxation
• Encourage empathy
• Strengthen trust in others
• Increase resilience and enhance self esteem
• Support a more confident and optimistic outlook on life
• Bring about greater self-awareness
• Develop self-reliance and personal responsibility

How it works:

• Children/yp work in groups of two.
• Each child takes the role of the Engineer or Builder. The children swap roles during the session developing their skills to discuss, persuade, work cooperatively, and respectfully.
• A new project is built each week. The build is photographed and then dissembled.
• Particularly beneficial for children and yp who are looked-after, adopted, have experienced a life trauma or struggle with communication or social skills.

Power-up Play with LEGO® is available for groups of a maximum of 6 children/young people and is suitable for ages 8+.

The duration of each weekly session is 1.5 hours. 

LEGO® Build2Express Practitioner.

LEGO® Build2Express encourages children and young people to express their thoughts and ideas symbolically in a playful, creative and hands-on method, using a Lego® set specifically designed for this therapeutic intervention.

LEGO® Build2Express engages children and young people of all abilities and ensures a secure and non-judgemental process for solving problems and expressing personal feelings and emotions.

The child/yp parent or carer may attend the session if they choose to, as LEGO® Build2Express can also promote and strengthen attachment between the child/young person and their primary carer.

Suitable for children/yp aged 5+.

Either child/yp only or child/yp and parent.

The length of each weekly session is 1 hour.

LEGO® Build2Express is particularly beneficial for children and yp who are looked-after, adopted, have experienced a life trauma or struggle with communication skills.  

Playful Parents 

Parent-Child Attachment Play for Parents is a 12 week programme for parents which aims to strengthen the parent-child relationship through the use of 30 minute attachment play sessions. This innovative and empowering attachment based programme can be implemented only by an accredited family practitioner who will work one to one with a parent.

Outline

• 12 weekly sessions with parent and practitioner of up to an hour
• Parents learn 3 key skills to support the parent-child relationship which are based on the latest attachment research
• Parents will learn to set up weekly 30 minute 'You and Me Time' sessions with their child
• For parents of at least one child aged between 3-15+
• Can benefit children who have received Play & Creative Arts Therapy

Aims

• To enhance parent's natural abilities and allow their confidence to flourish
• To support parents to embed key skills into their daily family life
• To strengthen the parent-child relationship through the use of play
• To complement and further enhance the benefits of therapeutic work done with the child

How it works

• The parent is encouraged to share any difficulties or worries alongside successes with the PCAP practitioner each week
• The parent will learn 3 key play skills, based on the latest attachment research;
• Child-led play
• Containment: exploring rules and agreed boundaries
• Head, heart and hands - attachment mechanism
• The practitioner will share the concept of 'You and Me Time'; 30 minute play sessions with their children each week and will support the parent in setting these up at home
• Learning is supported, playful and experiential, with demonstrations from the facilitator

Playful Parents Group Workshops

Outline

• A relaxed series of workshops for a group of 6 - 8 parents commissioned by schools, social care teams, children's centres or other organisations and help strengthen their relationship with their child
• An experienced Play & Creative Arts Therapist shares new skills, through playful activities, to empower parents and promote better mental health for both children and families
• For parents of at least one child between 4 and 12 years
• 8 sessions of 1.5 hours each per week, plus parent meetings at the start and end of the process
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Aims

• To enhance parent's natural abilities and allow their confidence to flourish
• To use experiential learning and feedback to promote positive parenting
• To empower parents by focusing on the existing strengths of their relationships whilst nurturing and improving their skills and strategies to understand and cope with all kinds of behaviours
• To provide opportunities for parents to notice their children, to understand their children's needs, their motivations and get to know them as individuals
• To teach parents to see play as a vital learning tool

How it works

• Parents are given the opportunity to share difficulties, worries and concerns; to encourage each other and share their successes in a safe and contained group setting each week
• Parents are introduced to the concept of 'You & Me Time'; a 30 minute play session with one of their children each week. Parents will learn basic concepts of therapeutic play and implement these practical skills in their sessions
• Parents learn through experiential activities, role play, live demonstrations from the facilitator and video footage
• New skills and strategies are introduced weekly, including containment, child-led play, giving choices, setting safe limits and Reflective Functioning. Facilitators share bite-sized easy to understand pieces of information with the parents to aid their understanding
• Parents become confident in their abilities as a parent and learn to recognise the positive impact of 'You & Me Time' on their relationship with their child
• During the programme, parents will be assisted in setting up their own play session to continue when they have completed the programme

What is SandStory Therapy®?

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• SandStory Therapy® is a gentle and safe way of working therapeutically with sand and symbols within a contained sandtray that offers clients the opportunity to tell their 'story in the sand'.

• SandStory Therapy® encourages a respectful and sensitive dialogue between the unconscious and the conscious so that the wisdom from within is heard, seen and experienced. In turn, this is taken into daily life and natural, very organic shifts occur.

• SandStory Therapy® has it's roots in the narrative tradition of Story-telling and Sandtray Therapy. This latter was developed by Margaret Lowenfeld in the early part of her work in the 1920's. Having trained in Sandplay Therapy and studied Sandtray Therapy as well as Story-telling, SandStory Therapy© has been developed in a way that complements other therapeutic approaches.

• SandStory Therapy® has at it's heart the therapist's ability to remain grounded in their own presence and be fully present each moment to their client. It allows them to attune to their client's needs and pace which enables empowerment and growth for the client.

Who can benefit from SandStory Therapy®?

SandStory Therapy© fits well with children from the age of 8 years onwards, teenagers/young adults and adults right through to senior adults. It can be used in multiple ways and for a spectrum of referral issues:

• Individual therapy/counselling

• Group work

• Family work

• Couples work

• Parent work

• Support groups such as bereavement or addiction groups

• Management/leadership teams

• Professionals such as Teachers, TAs, Educational Psychologists, SENCO's, CAMHS workers, Social Workers, Mental Health nurses etc

• Clinical Supervision

Small experiential workshops are available 

• Therapeutic Life Story Work
• Using LEGO® and ARTiculate in TLSW
• Using ICT in TLSW
• How to write a Life Story Book
• How to share the Life Story Book with children and young people
• TLSW with under 5's
• TLSW with adults and young adults
• TLSW with people with special needs
• TLSW with the elderly
• SandStory Therapy workshops