We care deeply about your child and you.

We place your child at the heart of our assessment process, always seeing them in their wholeness and never through a deficit based lens. We see your child and you as the wisdom-holders of your child’s experiences. We care deeply about being neuro-affirmative in our work with your family.

We recognise that expression and communication can happen in many ways: your child may be non-speaking, and yet they are communicating in so many rich and wonderful ways. We are committed to listening to your child’s experiences in a holistic way, and attuning to your way of communicating so that you feel ‘seen and heard’.

We hold evidence-based approaches as fundamental to our clinical practice. We are very grateful for the extensive research that has been carried out by our colleagues of standardising clinical assessments and how this shapes, guides and ensures that every person we meet experiences an assessment process that feels transparent, safe and grounded in a strong evidence-base.

Our adherence to the ethical standards of our professional membership bodies is paramount to us, so you and your child feel that you are being held within a framework that holds integrity, professionalism and clinical accountability as essential values.

We strive to work with you and your child so that you feel a part of the assessment process at all times, knowing what we are doing and why. We aim to support you and your child to feel central to the assessment process and that the assessment is not being done to you but with you and your child. That you and your child feel that we are exploring the way their brain is wired and their rich and unique ways of being in the world together.

We are committed to listening to the voices in the Autistic and otherwise Neuro-divergent community who are the essence of the neuro-affirming way of being for all. It is their voices, their direct experience, their suggestions for improvements, their teachings, their feedback, their wisdom, their lobbying that we are humbled by, and committed to attuning to. We acknowledge that this is a learning process for us, and that we might sometimes get it wrong, but that we always seek to repair, and grow.

We always aim to promote the acceptance of Autism, ADHD and other neuro-types and appreciate them for what they are: wonderful and essential to our human diversity. We aim to advance awareness of, and appreciate the diverse Autistic and ADHD culture that exists and is constantly growing. We deeply value and care about these ways of experiencing, connecting, thinking, sensing, perceiving, learning and communicating. We affirm all of our human community who identify as LGBTQIA+.

We aim to support those who experience challenges and obstacles in living in a world that has been primarily designed to accommodate just one neuro-type, rather than all of the richness of human diversity. We recognise that there is an huge hole in research into the neuro-divergent way of being and that the research community and funding bodies need to recognise this gap and authentically collaborate with Autistic or otherwise neuro-divergent researchers and listen to their calls for research into strengths, neuro-divergent culture and ways of supporting the community so they can thrive.

Ph.D., DClin.Psych., C.Psychol., Ps.S.I (M9894C) Clinical Director and Chartered Principal Clinical Psychologist

I draw from many years of clinical experience and from a breath of evidence-based approaches to support those I work with to embrace their essence and realise their potential to thrive exactly as they are.

I attained my B.A. in Psychology from Trinity College Dublin in 1999 (1st Class. Hons) and after three years in the USA working in childcare and travelling, I returned to Trinity College, completing a PhD in Cognitive Development in 2006. Following this, I spent a year in a special education role in two primary schools in Dublin, before taking a role as an Assistant Psychologist in Acquired Brain Injury Ireland. I then returned to Trinity College for my doctoral training in Clinical Psychology (DClinPsych) which I completed in 2010. I am a Chartered Clinical Psychologist with the Psychological Society of Ireland and am looking forward to when Psychologists are called to the Irish Regulatory Body for allied health professionals, CORU to register.

I spent 8 years in the Louth HSE Primary Care services as a Clinical Psychologist supporting children, young people and their families through assessment and individual and group therapeutic input. Since 2018 I have worked with children, young people and their parents exploring autism through assessment in my private practice, with two of those years working concurrently with the HSE Sligo/Leitrim Children’s Disability Service on a contractual basis as a Senior Clinical Psychologist. In 2022 I began working as a Senior Clinical Psychologist on a contractual basis with The Adult Autism Practice which offers Neuro-affirmative Autism assessments for adults.

I have been really inspired and humbled by the neuro-affirmative movement which has motivated me to change my practice to become more conscious of the strengths and needs of all of those I work with, especially those in Autistic and otherwise-neurodivergent community. This has spurred me to found The Butterfly Practice - a Practice of like-hearted clinicians committed to providing best practice, neuro-affirmative assessments here in Ireland.

I am passionate about so many things psychological, including Neuro-divergence, psychological growth through adversity, High Sensitivity (I am a Highly Sensitive Neurotypical), neurodivergence and trauma, Interpersonal Neurobiology (completing a comprehensive course in IPBN with Dr. Dan Siegel in 2020) and how we can deepen our connection with the most important people in our lives – ourselves.

My greatest learnings come to me not through books or training, but through the immensely rich experience of working with clients and their families and by seeing my entire life as a teacher. My two children are, of course, my 'very greatest' teachers 😊 and my Portuguese water dog called Manni, who shows me how to come back into connection over and over again.

BSc, MSc (Language Sciences), CORU SL041153. Senior Speech & Language Therapist with Sligo Speech Therapy

I graduated from the University of Ulster, Jordanstown, in 2007 with a BSc in Speech and Language Therapy. I also have a post-graduate Masters in Language Sciences, with specialisation in language development, from University College London and hold a post-graduate certificate in Aural Rehabilitation from the University of Wisconsin.

I have lived and worked across three different countries, Ireland, the UK (London) and Canada (Toronto) and have over 12 years of diverse clinical experience administering assessment and providing evidence-based intervention in a variety of settings including community clinics, mainstream and special schools.

I have mostly worked with the Paediatric population in early intervention and primary schools, including children with attention differences, speech and language differences and play and social interaction differences.

I have specialised in the field of Autism and have spent many years working as part of an Autism team within the NHS in London, assessing and diagnosing Autism and providing specialist training for parents and education staff about Autism.

I’m a member of the Irish Association of Speech and Language Therapists (IASLT), the Independent Speech Therapists of Ireland (ISTI), the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT). I’m also a registered therapist with CORU and the HCPC (UK).

When I’m not working, I mostly like to be outdoors in nature, running, hiking and sea swimming/dipping with friends! I I believe that these extra curricular outlets provide me with the energy needed to be a better clinician for all the wonderful families that I work with.