Why We Started

At Green Sparks we believe anyone can experience poor mental health when their social or emotional needs are not met. We all had an opportunity to witness this during the pandemic, when feelings of anxiety, depression and loneliness became a new normal for many of us. These emotional experiences were sensible, sane and proportionate to the situation we found ourselves in. For the majority of us, the answer to these difficulties was not found in a diagnosis or a prescription, but in reaching out for human connection, getting out in nature and getting involved in meaningful activities. At Green Sparks we want to bring this formula for recovery to children and young people in need and offer them skilled help to make it part of their everyday lives.

How We Work

We offer activity based emotional support. This will look like an hour or two hour long session where a practitioner works one to one with a child completing an activity or activities together that involved their shared attention and focus. The activity or activities will be tailored to the specific interests and sensory needs of the child. Sessions start with a check in to understand where the child is emotionally on that particular day, and end with a check out to recognise and acknowledge the impact the session has had and anything the child might need moving forward.

Underneath the surface we are drawing on different areas of knowledge to help us make sense of what children are experiencing and communicating, both verbally and non-verbally. We apply the principles of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy in our practice. We complete training with Sensory Integration Education which supports us to recognise, understand and respond to children’s sensory processing needs. We have training and professional experience in working with children who have experienced trauma and loss and who have difficulties in forming secure attachment relationships. We complete training with the National Autistic Society and have professional experience in working with children and adults who are neurodiverse. We use the PACE framework to help us manage behaviour during sessions.

The services we offer are tailored because all of the children and young people we work with are unique. Generally we find they are facing at least one or a mixture of these challenges;

Some are neurodivergent – the way their brains work and the way they process information is different from the majority of children, so there is a mismatch between what they need and what mainstream services provide.

Some are experiencing social, emotional and mental health problems – something is happening in their inner world that is causing them distress and anxiety, and living with those difficult emotions is exhausting them and leading to all sorts of challenging behaviour as they try to find ways to cope and communicate.

Some of the children we work with have experienced trauma that they need help to make sense of and recover from. This can be big, obvious trauma like the death of a loved one . It can also be something harder to see and put into words, like the creeping sense of fear and uncertainty many children (and adults) experienced during the pandemic

Some children are having difficulty managing to form and hold on to relationships, also known as attachment difficulties. This may mean there was a challenge for them when they first formed their relationship with the person who cared for them as a baby. Parents can feel judged, blamed and shamed when children are having attachment difficulties but the reality is all sorts of unavoidable events in early childhood – for example being born unwell and having to remain in hospital – can impact a child’s first relationship and lead to needing extra help later on

Services We Offer

We operate in Dorset and travel to children at school or at home, rather than asking them to come to us. We work in school or domestic gardens or community green spaces. At present we are offering the following services;

• Home and school based support with transport where required for children whose additional needs are making it hard for them to attend school (also known as Emotionally Based School Avoidance or EBSA)
• Inclusion support in school for children who have social, emotional or learning needs that are making it hard for them to manage in class
• One to one sessions for children at home or at school who need support to improve their levels of emotional resilience, social skills and/or emotional literacy
• In development: small group work for teaching emotional literacy skills to children in school

We also provide services via the Dorset Family’s Matter programme and Dorset Council’s Supporting Progress and Inclusion Framework.

Who We Are

Co-Director and Lead Practitioner Naomi Bush is a qualified and registered social worker with fourteen years of professional experience in child protection and safeguarding, seven of which have been while based in West Dorset. She started Green Sparks in 2022 and has since completed level one training in DDP and training in Social and Therapeutic Horticulture with Thrive UK.

Co-Director James McLynn has a BA in Psychology, an MA in Sports Psychology and nine years of professional experience in providing activity-based interventions to children displaying challenging behaviour, primarily those already attending Pupil Referral Units. He is also an expert by experience which he uses to inform service design and intervention.

Practitioner Julianne Notley is a qualified and registered social worker and former youth worker with fifteen years of professional experience in working with children and their families to try and achieve change. She is also an expert by experience which she uses to inform her work with children and their families.