About The Sunflower Network

The Sunflower Network was created in 2018 by Lou Mason, a child and young person counsellor and former TV producer. Her intention was to bring together an inclusive, diverse and extensive multi-disciplinary community of individuals and organisations supporting children, young people and families. We also offer specialist CPD and training events for professionals, as well as our new and steadily evolving service The Sunflower Directory, connecting up child mental health & wellbeing support across the whole of the UK & Ireland.

Our Team

Lou Mason

FOUNDER & CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Lou Mason

Lou is the founder & creative director of all things Sunflower, starting the organisation from scratch in 2018 getting us to where we are now and beyond. She is passionate about connection and collaboration. Lou also runs our Setting Up in Private Practice trainings.

OPERATIONS MANAGER

Lorna

Lorna joined Lou in January 2020 as the operations manager overseeing Sunflower admin, supporting the team, and keeping in touch with our Sunflower friends.

Lucy

Event Producer & RP Facilitator

Lucy

Lucy supports our CPD events production, officially joining us in Sept 2021. With 5 years post qualification experience as a child & adolescent psychotherapeutic counsellor, Lucy also has a love for animals, dance & bringing people together.

Accounts

Elizabeth

Elizabeth has been in finance for over 15 years and has a great depth of experience when it comes to timely and accurate financial reporting. She has been working with Sunflower since July 2021.

Accounts

Tessa

Tessa is a chartered accountant providing accountancy, tax services and general advice to Sunflower.

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Lillian

Legals

Lillian

Lillian is a highly skilled data protection, privacy and legal consultant. She has been working with Sunflower since 2020 helping us to develop The Sunflower Directory, the new website and overseeing all our legal issues.

Daniel Meade from Speccy Media

Tech team

Daniel Meade

Dan is the Creative Director at Speccy Media and the developer of the new The Sunflower Network website and the Hub directory. Dan has overseen The Sunflower Directory project from conception to prototype testing, through to design and development. Sitting on Dan's lap is Pixel.

Our Trainers

Dr Karen Treisman MBE

Dr Karen Treisman MBE

Dr Karen Treisman MBE is a clinical psychologist, trainer & author specialising in trauma informed work. Karen's trainings for Sunflower are one day or two day, covering a wide range of subject areas. A longer training module in trauma informed practice is planned for 2023.

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Graham Music

Graham Music

Graham Music is a psychotherapist, author, speaker & expert on trauma, neuroscience and developmental psychology. Graham runs a range of half day trainings for Sunflower on a wide variety of topics.

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Nerissa McDonald

Nerissa McDonald

Nerissa is a Black Integrative Child and Adolescent psychotherapist. She is a registered member of BACP and a UKCP accredited Child and Adolescent psychotherapist. Nerissa specialises in Anti-racism and works as a trainer and consultant.

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Cath Knibbs

Cath Knibbs

Cath is a specialist in Technology and Development and offers trainings and talks for Sunflower in Online Harms, Cybertrauma, Biofeedback and Data Protection/Cybersecurity (GDPR).

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Neil Young

Neil Young

Neil is an integrative arts psychotherapist, author, facilitator and consultant working with the Sunflower Network to offer specialist training focused on gender, sexual identities and intersectionality. Neil also teaches at the Institute for Arts and Therapy in Education (IATE)

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Naomi Moore

Naomi is a play and creative arts therapist and a parent child therapist, works as a mental health lead in schools and runs the weekend play provision at GOSH. Naomi offers a wide range of trainings for Sunflower covering a number of specialist areas.

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Dan Hughes

Dan Hughes

Dan is an inspiring and engaging trainer as well as the founder of DDP, the creator of the PACE guidelines and the author & co-author of a wide range of key books and texts on attachment and working with child trauma.

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Paula Price

Paula Price

Paula specialises in Life Story Therapy/Therapeutic Life Story Work, and is also a Play Therapist working with children, young people & families. Paula offers an Introductory Day to Life Story Work for Sunflower and is developing other trainings with us in the same field.

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Jessica Spenceley

As a Trust-Based Relational Intervention® Practitioner and therapeutic social worker, Jessica provides services to families who have experienced adversity and trauma, specialising within the adoption community. Her Sunflower trainings focus on safeguarding and child protection.

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Why We’re Here

The Sunflower Network has been created to provide support, connection and collaboration in the field of child mental health and emotional wellbeing. We aim to help those in search of the support and also those who provide it. We do this in a number of ways – through our specialist CPD events and trainings, through our bespoke services arranging trainings & reflective practice for schools, charities and organisations, through our professional network across the UK & Ireland connected via The Sunflower Hub, and our other areas of development.

Professional Membership

We offer a selection of different membership options for individual professionals and practitioners working with children, young people and families as well as organisations, charities, CICs, support groups and other specialist services. Memberships include a variety of benefits such as access to our private professional online community as well as an optional  profile page on The Sunflower Hub’s directory.

CPD & Events

We offer a varied and eclectic selection of specialist CPD & training focused mainly on children, young people and families. We work with a wide range of acclaimed international trainers and speakers, and current formats range from evening talks to half days, full days and two day trainings. Discounts are available for multiple bookings and group bookings and it is also possible to arrange payments in instalments – please visit our events page for details and our latest programme.

Bespoke Services

We can arrange bespoke training & CPD events for schools, charities, organisations, groups of practitioners & businesses. We offer an independent reflective practice / supervisory provision for teams & staff. We can assist with sourcing staff and specialist consultation. Please contact us on [email protected] to discuss your needs.

In Development

We have a wide variety of new ideas, trainings, projects and services in development currently. If you would like to discuss any possible collaboration or have ideas for development with us, then please contact us on [email protected]

Common Questions

Am I eligible to join?

We accept applications from individual practitioners and professionals based in the UK and Ireland, who are either specially trained to work with children, young people and families, or can demonstrate that they meet the core competencies for working with children and young people as set out by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) guidelines or equivalent for other professions.

We have a range of criteria that needs to be met in order to join The Sunflower Directory as a member. This is above all and unequivocally a safeguarding measure, but also enables quality assurance that all members are appropriately qualified for their scope of practice, insured, DBS checked, up to date with safeguarding and child protection training, have significant and relevant experience, and come with a professional recommendation.

What information do I need to provide?

There is an extensive application process which requires the submission of some documentation. This includes your qualification certificates, your DBS certificate, proof of insurance and relevant CPD certificates (minimum of three) as well as evidence of recent safeguarding and child protection training.

The full list of the information we request from you can be found at the start of the application process. You may want to gather it all together before you start so you have it all to hand, but you will also be able to pause the process at any point and return to where you left off.

We also ask for contact details for your supervisor and a professional referee so we can contact them for confirmation of some of the information you have given us.

Can I join as part of an organisation?

Yes – we have memberships available for organisations.

How do you ensure safeguarding?

We have a rigorous and extensive application procedure and criteria for all individual practitioners listed on The Sunflower Hub's directory as well as all individual members.

They will have been checked and verified and our criteria includes confirming that they are appropriately qualified for their scope of practice from an accredited training organisation, DBS checked, insured, up to date with their child protection and safeguarding training, in regular supervision or reflective practice, have membership of a registered professional body with ethical guidelines that they adhere to, and that they come with a professional recommendation.

Any organisation, charity, group or specialist service listed on The Sunflower Hub's directory takes its own responsibility for its safeguarding procedures so you would need to ask them for their policy directly.