Youth Rights & Participation Consultancy

Creating spaces where young people are heard, respected, and safe.

As a freelance consultant, I specialise in children and young people’s participation – supporting organisations to design and embed effective, inclusive structures that ensure young people are genuinely listened to, and that their voices influence the decisions that affect them.

Participation as a Therapeutic Process

Over recent years, building on my art therapy practice, I’ve been exploring how youth participation itself can be a therapeutic experience – when held well.

How do we make sure that participation doesn’t just extract insight from young people, but gives something back? How do we recognise the vulnerability that comes with sharing lived experience, and avoid retraumatisation by grounding the process in safety, trust, and care?

At the heart of my approach is this question:
Can participation be healing?

My work supports organisations to:

• Co-create spaces with young people that are emotionally safe and inclusive
• Share power through honest, transparent structures
• Encourage nervous system regulation and emotional awareness
• Centre autonomy, consent, and voice
• Support the building of confidence, resilience, and a meaningful sense of self

Experience

I’ve worked with a range of national and community organisations, including:

• Youth Voice Group – Rockinghorse Children’s Charity – supporting young people to actively participate in educating health professionals about how best to care for their wellbeing
• Trust for Developing Communities – Serious Violence Duty, Youth Participation Project
• Hangleton and Knoll Project
• Brighton & Hove Youth Service
• UNICEF UK
• Citizenship Foundation
• IPPR (Institute for Public Policy Research)
• Camelot Foundation
• Trust for the Study of Adolescence
• National Children’s Bureau
• Islington Pupil Parliament

Across these projects, my role has been to help integrate young people’s views meaningfully into policy, service design, and evaluation.

Publications

I’ve authored several toolkits and handbooks to support participation practice, including:

• Sharing the Journey – Trust for the Study of Adolescence / Camelot Foundation
• Youth Act! Training Manual – Citizenship Foundation
• Making it Real: Involving Young People in Decision-Making – LGIU
• Citizenship Teaching in Schools – Local Government Information Unit

My Consultancy Approach

My work is grounded in a Good Practice Framework, which includes:

• Respect for the experiences of all children, young people, and adults
• Transparent communication about aims and expectations
• Commitment to confidentiality and data protection (unless safeguarding concerns arise)
• Attention to health, safety, and emotional wellbeing
• Trauma-informed and anti-discriminatory practice
• Recognition that participation should be developmentally appropriate, culturally relevant, and emotionally safe

Background & Skills

I bring over 15 years’ experience as an independent consultant and practitioner. My background spans:

• Art psychotherapy and trauma-informed practice
• Youth participation policy and strategy
• Training, facilitation, and capacity-building
• Creative methods for evaluation, planning, and research

I have worked with children and young people from diverse backgrounds, designing and delivering projects that use participative, arts-based approaches to foster voice, agency, and belonging.

Whether I’m supporting a council to co-design a youth panel, running a reflective workshop for professionals, or sitting beside a young person making sense of their story through image-making – my focus is on building relationships of trust, care, and transformation.

Current Work

I currently work within the NHS at the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital in Brighton, running Art Therapy Groups, one-to-one Art Therapy, and Therapeutic Yoga for young people with ongoing health conditions. Art Therapy provide a unique space for young people to explore emotional distress and fears related to illness and their bodies, fostering respectful and trusting relationships.

Art Therapy offers young people the opportunity to reclaim their bodies by finding their voice and telling their own story. Through art-making, using materials with a visceral quality, young people can integrate their sense of self – interweaving both mind and body.

The young people referred to me face a range of chronic and complex health conditions, such as chronic pain, anxiety, depression, hypermobile joints, fatigue, sleep difficulties, panic attacks, scoliosis, dyspraxia, sensory processing difficulties, tics, low confidence, eating disorders, and self-harm.

Previous Experience

Previously, I established and delivered a new Art Therapy Service at Brighton Health and Wellbeing Centre, a local GP practice in Hove. I have also offered individual and group Art Therapy in hospital settings for adults with mental health challenges and secondary schools in East Sussex.