Deborah Kerr Family & Systemic Psychotherapist

I am a dual qualified Family & Systemic Psychotherapist and Social Worker with over 18 years’ experience in direct work with children, young people and adults. I have a wide range of professional experience from practice in settings including Children’s Social Care, Schools, and in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) within the NHS.  

My strengths include clinical assessment and therapeutic practice with adults, individuals, couples and families, and children and young people. This work has included a wide range of issues including emotional, behavioural, and relationship difficulties. 

 Please see this link for more information about the evidence base for family & systemic psychotherapy as an effective therapeutic treatment for a range of difficulties experienced by children, adolescents, and adults-https://www.aft.org.uk/page/evidencebase

 In life individuals, couples, and families can face many stresses, concerns, and changes that can be hard to manage. When difficulties do not resolve naturally or when it feels like close relationships are suffering, systemic psychotherapy can help. 

In my practice, I work with individuals including adults, children, and adolescents as well as couples and families. 

As an experienced therapist, I tailor my input to meet the needs of my clients, whilst ensuring therapy sessions are accessible when engaging with children and young people.

My therapeutic experience includes:

• Mental Health
• Couples issues
• Divorce and separation
• Family relationships
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Trauma
• Bereavement and grief
• Adoptions, Foster Care and 'Looked After' children
• Parenting issues
• Child and adolescent behaviour
• Step families
• Cultural Issues

Helpful and supportive clinical supervision is crucial for our practice as qualified therapists. Whether you are working in private practice, or as part of an organisation, I can offer you my experience as an AFT qualified systemic supervisor. 

My supervisory approach includes a focus on multiple levels of context within the clinical work.  This can include the self of the therapist ie: personal and professional aspects of the therapist, as well as aspects of social difference that the client brings, and how both of these might interact in the therapy. 

Overall, I aim to offer supervisees additional perspectives/ideas to use in their work, potential for new understandings of the client/the therapy, and support of a supervisees clinical 'reflexivity' at multiple levels.

In my private practice, I offer clinical supervision to both qualified family therapists and clinicians with some systemic training or an interest in systemic approaches.

With clients, I explore important family and cultural beliefs and patterns of communication and interaction that influence the problem. We identify areas for change and work towards developing new ways of understanding and living, enabling the client to create a revised and more preferred story about themselves, their lives and relationships.

I often work with a number of people in the family or the client’s network who are affected.  Sometimes I meet with a family altogether to explore the issues but in other cases I meet with different configurations of the family such as just parents/couple, child/young person on their own, a parent and child/young person together, or the client and extended family etc.  Working together with clients and their loved ones can help resolve issues affecting their relationships and develop a deeper sense of connection to one another. 

Family & systemic psychotherapy differs from other forms of therapy in that I do not usually offer weekly appointments.  Instead, depending on the client or issues brought, I offer fortnightly or three weekly appointments.  This is to give the individual/couple/family the opportunity to think about or try out different ways of being and notice and build on changes that develop between sessions.   

In the initial consultation I aim to create a safe space to explore client's strengths, the issues of concern, and other contextual factors that also influence the problem and its resolution. 

I encourage individuals, couples, and families to set goals that they would like to achieve in our work together.  The focus on client goals helps towards tracking progress, planning different focuses of the work, and planning for the end of therapy. 

The number of sessions needed will depend on the individual/couple/family but I typically offer

short-term (4-6 sessions) or long-term (10-12+ sessions) therapy.   

 As a registered Family & Systemic Psychotherapist I am bound by the Code of Ethics of both the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy and the Association of Family Therapy https://www.aft.org.uk/page/informationpolicydocs

 Generally speaking, my work with clients remains confidential however, circumstances may arise when there are legal exceptions and it is a matter of public or professional duty to break confidentiality. Situations involving client safety, such as self-harm or actual or potential risk of harm to family members or others, would constitute such circumstances. If possible, I aim to gain the consent of a client before breaking confidentiality.

In terms of written information, I do make some written notes during sessions but I do not record client names or personal details anywhere that it can be recognised – I use a client code.  Clients are free to view their session notes as and when they wish.  Any email correspondence between a client and myself is deleted after reading.