About me
Hello,
My name is Angeline Wallis. As a qualified and accredited child and adolescent psychotherapist (4360 ACP), I have had the privilege to work with many children and their parents from varied cultural background in different multidisciplinary teams within the National Health Service, school settings, and in private practice. Through my professional and personal experience as a parent, I came to appreciate that there is more to gain in enabling parents find their unique ways of supporting and parenting their child. Parents are best placed to help their child through happy and difficult times. While my professional knowledge is useful and allows me to provide some guidance, parents are in it with their child for the long haul.
My approach to working with parents is foremost respectful, compassionate and collaborative. I am passionate about engaging parents in using their inherent resources to adapt to and manage the problem confronting them with their child. I listen non judgementally but attentively to parents’ worries whilst learning about their strengths. I use my psychodynamic understanding of child development to understand parents’ concerns and the child’s troubled behaviour. Sometimes it is straightforward to establish what might be the trigger of the child’s troubled behaviour and parents can recognise the trigger. In such a case, parents may need some coaching to help their child. It maybe that parents need some help to talk to their child about a situation or a significant change affecting the whole family such as a terminal illness, family break up, etc… in this case, I help parents think about how to approach a difficult conversation with their child. I also formulate with the parents strategies that activate their therapeutic parenting skills to help their child at home.
However, sometime a neuro-scientific model may be required to assess whether the child’s troubled and troubling behaviour may point to a complex mental health condition. In this case, I recommend a next step forward to parent that includes guidance to accessing assessment for their child from statutory child and adolescent mental health services and also therapeutic strategies to manage their child behaviour in the meantime.
With over ten year experience in child and adolescent mental health services, using my clinical experience and training I am devoted to empowering parents and supporting children most at risk and vulnerable.
As a full member of the Association of Child Psychotherapists (ACP), a professional register accredited by the Professional Standards Authority, I adhere to its ethical framework for good practice. I am committed to my professional development. I regularly attend relevant training courses and seminars in order to keep up to date and further my knowledge. I am also a researcher in health and social care at the Open University and have lectured on the infant observation module on the Doctor of Clinical Practice Research, University of Exeter.