clinical & professional background

degrees, certificates and further studies

• Autism Navigator Coach Training, JumpStart to Coaching in Everyday Activities  (2026)
• Paediatric Autism Communication Therapy, PACT Certificate (2025) 
• Entwicklungspsychologische Beratung  (consultation in developmental psychology) Certificate of Advanced Studies, Maria-Meierhofer-Institut, Zürich (2014)
• Video Intervention Therapy, Basic and Advanced Certificate, Dr George Downing, Paris (2013)
• Clinical training and practice in Relational Play Therapy (FIAS approach), FIAS Therapy Centre, University Psychiatric Clinics Basel, Switzerland (2010 - 2012)
• MIFNE early autism intervention and Reciprocal Play Therapy, Dr Hanna Alonim, Israel (2010)
• Applied Systemic Theory, Tavistock Clinic, London (2008)
• MA Music Therapy and Psychotherapeutic Studies, Cambridge, UK (2004)
• BA Social Pedagogy and Special Education, University of Aberdeen, Scotland (2002)

I am engaged in ongoing learning about remote, video-based and parent-mediated early intervention techniques and theories.

professional experience 

For more than 30 years, I have worked with children, families and professionals across education, therapy, child and adolescent mental health, autism services and early intervention.

From 2006 onwards, I specialised increasingly in autism-specific early intervention, working with autistic children and their families in NHS and local authority services in the UK, including the Service for Autism in Oxfordshire. My work focused particularly on parent-child interaction, early communication, affect regulation, play and systemic family work.

Between 2010 and 2020, I was part of the team establishing and developing the FIAS Therapy Centre for Early Intervention in Autism at the University Psychiatric Clinics Basel, Switzerland. This work deepened my experience in intensive early intervention, parent-mediated practice, video-based interaction analysis, team development and clinical supervision.

In 2021, I founded per:spectrum, an independent specialist consultancy offering online consultation, supervision, training and family support in autism early intervention. Since then, my work has increasingly focused on adapting specialist autism services for online and blended delivery, including consultancy work supporting the integration of telemedicine, remote video-based intervention and live coaching into established early intervention services.

In the UK, I have also contributed to the development of autism early-years practice through senior clinical advisory and programme development work with Transforming Autism, focusing on family-centred practice, early intervention and accessible online delivery models.

More recently, my certified training in PACT (Paediatric Autism Communication Therapy) has further informed my interest in parent-mediated, video-feedback-based social communication approaches. This also shapes my current development of AMICA (Autism: Mediated Interaction & Communication Approach), which combines close attention to the child’s communication and shared attention with a strong focus on parents’ playful initiatives, confidence and growing sense of self-efficacy in parent-child interaction.

clinical stance

My clinical stance is relational, developmental, strength-based and deeply neuroaffirmative in its value base. It is informed by systemic and psychoanalytic thinking. I am interested in how communication, regulation and social engagement emerge within relationships, and how a child’s initiatives can be understood not as isolated behaviours, but as meaningful expressions within a wider emotional and interactional context.

I work from the understanding that young autistic children are active, self-motivated and intentional communicators, even when their communication is subtle, unconventional or easily misunderstood. My aim is to help families and professionals create conditions in which each child feels understood, connected and able to communicate in ways that are meaningful to them.

This requires careful observation, reflective thinking and a high degree of respect for the child’s autonomy. It also requires sensitivity towards parents and caregivers, who may be under considerable stress and pressure, and who can benefit greatly from support that strengthens their confidence, playfulness and trust in their relationship with their child.

Why video intervention?

Video work is central to my clinical practice because it allows interaction to be observed in detail. Short moments of play or everyday communication can be watched again, slowed down and reflected on from different perspectives.

In family work, video feedback can help parents recognise their child’s initiatives more clearly and notice their own strengths in responding. In supervision and training, video analysis supports professionals to develop a more precise understanding of timing, regulation, communication, reciprocity and emotional attunement.

Live Bug-in-Ear coaching and remote video intervention

Over the last five years, I have increasingly developed and refined a remote coaching format that combines live Bug-in-Ear guidance via direct video link with subsequent video-based reflection on the same recorded session. This allows families to receive carefully timed coaching within their own home environment, while later using video review to deepen understanding, consolidate learning and strengthen parental confidence.

Used sensitively, this combination of live coaching and reflective video work creates a direct bridge between specialist clinical guidance and everyday family life. Because the coaching takes place in the child’s own home, with familiar toys, routines and relationships, learning can be integrated immediately into daily interaction rather than needing to be transferred from a separate clinical setting, a principle that now sits at the heart of my current development of AMICA.