Professional Experience | Reflective Practice | Gestalt Relational Supervision

My background

Over the course of my career, I have had the opportunity to work across a wide range of settings, including youth and community work, social care, homelessness, refugee support, domestic abuse, mental health and community development. My experience has included both frontline and senior management roles. I have worked directly alongside individuals and communities, supervised and developed staff and volunteers, led services, facilitated groups and worked collaboratively with teams and organisations. Working across these different areas has given me a broad and varied understanding of people, relationships, organisations and the often complex environments in which professionals work. It has also given me an appreciation of the different pressures that can come with our work — whether that is supporting people through difficult circumstances, managing competing demands, working within systems or carrying responsibility for others. I believe this breadth of experience is particularly valuable in cross-professional supervision. While different professions have their own knowledge, language and ways of working, there are often common experiences underneath them. The need for space to step back, think things through, reflect on our practice and sometimes simply talk things through with someone who understands. Alongside this experience, I bring a relational Gestalt approach to supervision. This offers a particular focus on what is happening in the relationship — between supervisor and supervisee, between colleagues, with the people we work with and within the wider systems around us. It invites us to slow down and become curious about what is happening in the here and now, including our thoughts, feelings, responses and patterns of interaction. I find this can open up a different kind of conversation. Rather than simply looking at what happened or what needs to be done, we can become curious about how we are experiencing a situation, what might be happening between people, and what this might be telling us about our work and ourselves as practitioners. I bring my experience from many different settings into this way of working, while recognising that you are the expert in your own role and professional context. My aim is to create a supportive, thoughtful and honest space where individuals and teams can reflect, explore challenges, develop their practice and gain a fresh perspective on their work. For me, good supervision is about creating the space to pause, reflect and make sense of what we do — so that we can continue to do our work with greater clarity, confidence and care.

I established Reflective Space Consultancy to bring this breadth of professional experience together, providing reflective and developmental spaces that support individuals, practitioners, teams and organisations in their work.

My practice also incorporates an embodied and creative perspective. My extensive experience facilitating creative arts, movement and wellbeing groups, together with my training in yoga, meditation, embodied dance and somatic approaches, informs my understanding of the relationship between body, emotions, awareness and professional practice. I am a registered social care worker with CORU, a member of Psychology Today, Tairseach and an associate member of the Supervisors Association of Ireland (SAI). I am also registered with the Yoga Alliance and am fully insured to carry out the services listed.

I currently work part-time as a Service Coordinator with Aware's Solace Café (an out-of-hours, non-clinical peer mental health support service), alongside my private practice and consultancy work.