Dr Isla Clark, DPsych, MSc, PGCE, BA Hons

Therapeutic Consultant

Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

My Experience

I have over 20 years of experience supporting children, young people, families, carers and professional networks across education, health, social care, and residential settings. For the past 15 years, I have worked as a child and adolescent psychotherapist within specialist CAMHS services, including adoption, children-in-care, eating disorder, community mental health teams and a primary school. Alongside this, I have supported families in my private practice offering therapeutic parenting and Theraplay via the Adoption Support Fund as well as child and adolescent therapy sessions.

Earlier in my career, I supported children and young people with complex needs in residential children's homes and as a primary school teacher. These experiences provided me with valuable insight into the realities of caring for, educating, and supporting children across a range of settings. As a result, my work is grounded in both psychological theory and also practical experience.

Therapeutic Consultancy

Alongside my work as a child psychotherapist in the Children in Care Mental Health Service, CAMHS, in East Sussex (formerly LACMHS), I have developed extensive experience in delivering consultation, assessment and formulation, training, reflective practice, therapeutic parenting, supervision, psychological assessment and crisis support to professionals and organisations supporting children and young people in care and their supportive adults in schools, residential children's homes, fostering agencies, local authority services, and therapeutic organisations.

My specialist training in child and adolescent psychodynamic psychotherapy and I draw on the approaches of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), PACE, Theraplay, Non-Violent Resistance (NVR) and Therapeutic Life Story Work underpins my approach as a therapeutic consultant. Through this work, I help organisations, teams and supportive adults, parents and carers to use trauma-informed neurodiversity-affirming principles into everyday practice, creating environments where children and young people can feel safe, understood, and supported to thrive.

My work focuses on helping organisations move towards fully integrated therapeutic models of care. I support leadership teams and practitioners to embed trauma-informed and relationship-based approaches at every level of service delivery, ensuring that therapeutic principles become part of the culture, decision-making, and everyday practice of the organisation creating sustainable therapeutic cultures that improve outcomes for children, young people, families, and the professionals who care for them.

Every organisation, team, and child is unique, which is why I offer a range of services that can be tailored to meet your specific needs. By working in partnership, my aim is to help build a shared understanding of trauma-informed and relationship-based care, creating a culture where therapeutic principles are embedded into everyday practice.

Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist

It can feel really hard and challenging if you child is struggling and experiencing emotional, developmental or behavioural difficulties and finding the right therapist who understands your concerns is important.  I am happy to offer a 15 minute free phone call for you to gain a bit of a better understanding of who I am and how I work.

I try to get a good understanding from parents and carers about the difficulties your child may be facing and how they arose so to begin with, I may ask lots of questions and ask you (or your child) to fill out some questionnaires.  Depending on what is discussed, we will come up with a plan together going forward.  Sometimes I may suggest to meet just with parents or carers.  Other times, it may feel more appropriate for me to meet with just a child and I also can meet with parents/carers together with their child. 

Feeling comfortable and safe to express yourself in the therapy room is paramount and I create an environment to facilitate this.  Some young people choose to just talk in the therapy room. Other children are drawn to use figures, toys, a dolls house and other play materials to help facilitate their play which is the way that children express their inner worlds.  I also have a sand tray, figurines, puppets, art materials, clay stationary and instruments available which I use with children to help us communicate together.

You may be feeling stuck with how to support your child. Your child may not seem themselves, you might feel not as connected as you used to be or they may be more withdrawn or angry. Your child may get regularly dysregulated and it might feel hard to know how to support them. Depending on what your child is struggling with, it may take only a few tailored sessions for your family to feel back on track.