For the last 4 years Laara has provided regular consultancy, reflective supervision and training to a number of independent children’s homes. She provides assessment and intervention for complex and traumatised adolescents who are experiencing high levels of emotional distress. She has a lot of experience assessing self-injury, suicidality and other serious mental health presentations; and a long standing interest in using participatory approaches to engaging and working with young girls at risk of sexual exploitation and hard to reach young people.
Laara is committed to working in collaboration with families and young people. She values learning from the families and young people she meets and shares psychological theory and ways of working with them so that they can think together about how they would like to work towards change and understanding. Laara draws upon developmental theory, family therapy, narrative therapy, community psychology, cognitive behavioural therapy and psychodynamic and solution focused approaches depending on what is most useful to a person in times of distress.