WHO WE ARE
Our core team consists of Clinical Psychologists, a former teacher now Psychotherapist, and a child group specialist.
We're also lucky to have support from our wider team for the general management of the company.
We have extensive experience of working in schools and delivering mental health interventions to vulnerable children and their families.
Juliet Holder
Founder, Director & Clinician
Dr Juliet Holder is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist who has worked over a 25 year period with children and adults with mental and physical disabilities. She has worked within the NHS in both London and Bristol. Juliet’s clinical work has specialised in child disability, involving assessment, treatment and consultation to children and families affected by complex emotional, behavioural and mental health issues relating to disability. All her work involves at its heart the impact of trauma on families and professionals, and is a multi-disciplinary and agency collaboration. More recently, Juliet has migrated from the NHS to education, and has worked as a consultant in a special education trust in the Bristol region for two schools for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Her work there has been systemic, working to support staff with their own wellbeing as well as the mental health needs of the pupils. In addition to clinical work, Juliet has been an external examiner on the University College London doctoral clinical psychology training course. She also has taught on the Royal Holloway doctoral training course, and the University College London Masters course in Developmental Psychoanalytic Theory. Having completed a research doctorate at University College London/Anna Freud Centre with Professor Peter Fonagy and Howard and Miriam Steele on intergenerational patterns of attachment and theory of mind, she is experienced in the use of qualitative research methodologies, and is trained in a number of specialist attachment research and clinical tools for both children and adults. She has presented her research at national and international conferences and has supervised students. Juliet has maintained close ties with the Anna Freud Centre, and currently collaborates with Neil Dawson and Brenda McHugh from the Pears Family School/Anna Freud Centre, through the introduction of Multi Family Groups to Bristol, and related projects.
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Leanne McEvoy
Director & Clinician
Leanne is a Senior Clinical Psychologist with a particular interest in working with groups. Initially training at the University of East London, systemic and social constructionist ideas form the wallpaper to her work. Recently back home in Bristol after an 8 year stint living and working in Melbourne Australia. Leanne was the senior clinician co-ordinating and facilitating the group programmes at The Melbourne Clinic Day Programmes. Leanne is also a certified Mindful Self Compassion teacher and you will often find her facilitating this wonderful group programme in the community. As well as in her private practice where she specialises in the consequences of complex trauma and adult mental health. She has a strong focus on strengths, values and preferred stories of life and identity to promote recovery, healing and growth and provides a nurturing, creative space which offers warmth, humour and safety. When not at work you can find Leanne hanging out with her husband and two children enjoying friends, food, camping and nights by the fire.
James Town
Director & Clinician
James is a psychoanalyst, and has a private psychotherapy practice where he works with adults and young people. He has also worked therapeutically with younger children in placements in primary schools. Before this, he has many years of experience of the education system from teaching in a range of schools across Bristol. Working with Bristol Family School is an exciting opportunity to bring together different strands of this experience to support children and their families in a school setting.
Emily Doe
Multi Family Group Specialist
Freya Allport
Website Developer and Videographer
Emily Doe is an Author and Artist with a background in therapeutic movement education and facilitating groups including multi family groups in a SEND setting. Emily joins the Bristol Family School as a Multi Family Group Facilitator. Having lived experience with her own daughters at school, Emily is passionate about community support for children and their parents who may be struggling in the classroom and at home.
Freya is a filmmaker, and a website and social media designer. She supports organisations to tell their story, and to expand and develop. She's also a dancer, and she facilitates nature-based and socio-environmental projects with youth groups in their community. She has a background as a Teaching Assistant for children with special educational needs (SEND).
Kate Swainson Price
Executive Director of Special Projects
Kate was one of the original Directors that set up the Bristol Family School CIC (BFS) in 2019. Drawn to the project through experience as a former teacher, a parent, and of school governance (begun in 2015 and ongoing, including former Chair of Primary School, Governor rep on Steering Board of schools partnership network, currently a Member of a Primary School and Ambassador at Secondary School), Kate supported Founder Dr Juliet Holder, with the initial Community Interest Company administrative set up in 2019. She went on to work as Company Secretary alongside her role as Director. Passionate about the work BFS are doing to support children and their families in schools; and with an eclectic professional background in education, fundraising, communications, and singing for wellbeing, Kate now works on special projects to promote and support the development of BFS' innovative vision, in addition to her full time role working in administration at a Bristol Secondary school.
Between us we have over 40 years experience working with children, parents & schools in varied environments.
Gerald Jones
Volunteer Data Manager
Gerald is an educationalist who has worked in lifelong learning for over 30 years, helping adults, families and their communities to flourish. He has been a senior manager and principal at colleges and in local authorities across London, building regional partnerships beyond the education sector, employers and councils for greater impact. Sector leader of the national adult education network (LEAFEA), he draws on methods and metrics from the social sciences to demonstrate the value and outcomes of adult education and family learning to the DfE and other funders. He also loves philosophy, and is the co-author of sixteen books, including the best-selling Philosophy in Focus series for Hodder.
WHAT WE DO
Multi Family Groups
Multi Family Groups (MFGs) are a school-based educational intervention aimed at vulnerable children who are having difficulties with learning and are at risk of being excluded from school due to their emotional/behavioural challenges, or excluding themselves through EBSA.
It is an evidence-based model (see here), provided to schools free of charge, funding permitting.
The main aim of the group is to reduce blocks to learning and improve the emotional well-being of children both at home and at school.
The intervention involves a group of 5-8 children and a parent/carer, who meet weekly in school for around 2.5 hours.
Groups are facilitated by a mental health professional and a school based professional.
They create a safe and playful environment and community in which to promote conversations about shared difficulties and work towards individual school-based targets.
Families are encouraged to work together to:
- engage and support each other,
- share difficulties,
- encourage change and offer hope,
- observe and challenge patterns,
- share strategies,
- explore new behaviours.
​Each week there are fun activities to support these explorations, as well as discussion and refreshments!
Throughout the course children work on targets set in collaboration with their parents and teachers. These targets are reviewed weekly and new targets set when appropriate.
For Children
For Parents
For Schools
Children are better able to...
~ Manage anxiety
~ Seek help
~ Trust and build relationships
~ Learn
~ Understand the boundaries
Helps parents to...
~ Feel safe
~ Feel heard
~ Form trusting relationships
~ Grow in confidence
~ Learn new skills
~ Understand their children's needs/ anxieties
~ Manage rather than react to challenges
Helps schools to...
~ Build communities
~ Improve relationships with families
~ Access expert mental health advice and training
~ Better understand how to help families in difficult circumstances
~ Discover additional methods of helping pupils with SEMH challenges
~ Encourage teamwork
Our Core Concepts
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De‑stigmatisation:
removing the negative labels and associations that people may feel with being identified as a child or family that needs additional mental health or behavioural support.
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​De‑isolation:
bringing families together to encourage positivity and belief in change, to benefit from giving and receiving advice from others, and to provide a supportive sense of oneness that comes from ‘being in the same boat’.
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Living proof:
seeing one’s own experiences and feelings reflected in those of other people, making it easier to visualise and realise change. Showing that change is possible through sharing the positive experiences of others.
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Learning:
learning new behaviours and skills that can be transferred to home and school life – and learning how to learn.
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Mentalisation/Reflective functioning:
improving an individual’s capacity to perceive and interpret human behaviour, often considered as the ability to see oneself from the outside and others from the inside.
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Change:
focusing on the possibility of change and how to make change happen. Bringing families together provides a supportive and energising space in which new behaviours and feelings can be tested and reflected on, creating a path to change.
"I am happier and it makes people around me happier."
Children's Feedback
"I like
coming here and
I love the
activities."
" It makes you feel more calm in class when you go back."
"Mostly it's to improve your targets and get better at what you can't really do without stressing."
Learning Skills
"I think the groups are going really good because you can then focus in class… you're going to be calm and fine and you get to just feel happy when you go back (in class)"
"The groups are cool with a K."
Fun
Impact on class/mood
"It was just nice. Well it sort of helped me improve my mood.
(The groups have made) quite a big difference.
It's made me have a better day.
And I think Multi Family Group could carry on in other places."
"I hope you sometimes do it in a secondary school."
Fun
"I get a break from having to hear people getting called names. Everybody's nice to each other."
Escape
May Park Primary
"He has had more focus in class.
He is able to manage his interactions with adults now and can talk calmly, explaining what has happened without walking off or getting cross.
He has also formed more friendships over the past few months (with adult support)."
May Park Primary
"She is beginning to talk more confidently in class and will have a go before seeking help. There is a noticeable difference in her being able to seek help and getting upset when she can’t do something."