Lavina is an accredited psychotherapist with the Family Therapy Association of Ireland and the Irish Council for Psychotherapy.
Lavina holds a MSc. in Systemic Psychotherapy from Clanwilliam Institute and in her therapeutic practice with individuals, couples and families has worked in private therapy practices, in a college student counselling service, in a sexual abuse service and with families experiencing separation. Across these work contexts Lavina has worked with a varied range of contexts that led the client or family to therapy including trauma, conflict in relationships, depression, parent-teenager relationship difficulties, marital problems, bereavement, addictions, life transitions and more.
Lavina has extensive experience in her career working with children and adolescents either individually or with their parents. She has strong experience in helping parents talk to their children about things that are happening in their families and supporting relationships and attachment.
Lavina’s approach is collaborative based on the assumption that the client holds an expertise in their own life, that the role of the therapist is to help them gently untangle their lived experiences, beliefs, thoughts and examine patterns of thinking or responding in life that might be unhelpful to them so that space can be created for difference in moving forward. Systemic Psychotherapy considers ‘problems’ as not being located in a person themselves but rather in how they have experienced life and how they are in relationship with themselves, the world and other people. Clients often say that the therapy helped them think about themselves with less blame and shame and that there were ripple effects of improvement across their life.
Lavina has experience in working with neurodiversity and uses play and other creative tools if it supports the client in engaging with therapy.
Social Work & Consultation
Lavina is also a CORU registered Social Worker with 18 years of experience in the field of child protection and welfare social work in Tusla, previously HSE, in a variety of social work and management roles across the areas of assessment, safety planning, children in care and fostering.
When Tusla adopted Signs of Safety as its’ national approach to practice in 2017, Lavina stepped into the role of a practice lead for Signs of Safety. This role involved leading and supporting significant changes to the practice of assessment and safety planning in the agency. Over her 7 years in this post, Lavina provided consultative practice support on some of the most complex cases held by the teams she was supporting. Primarily this involved assessment, safety planning and reunification planning in the context of complex cumulative harm, child sexual abuse and domestic violence. In this role Lavina also led in the development and facilitation of training, practice based workshops and Signs of Safety briefings for frontline child protection teams, management groups, external stakeholders and third level students. Prior to working with Signs of Safety, Lavina facilitated attachment training for frontline social workers.
Lavina has experience in social work supervision having been a team manager for a number of years prior to taking on the practice lead role she most recently held and practices reflective, systemic supervision. In addition, Lavina is experienced in reflective practice, both 1-1 and in groups. This extends to the training room where Lavina has skills and experience in providing tailored training and workshops that privileges reflective and reflexive practice-based work in the room.
Lavina has worked with families, for 21 years, from a diverse variety of backgrounds, cultures, class, ethnicities and particularly enjoys working directly with children and teenagers. Having completed training in forensic child interviewing, attachment training and holding a considered developmental and attachment lens in her work Lavina has consistently received positive feedback from children and families over the years about her direct work with young people.
Through her work in Signs of Safety Lavina has a unique experience and a deep interest in helping parents and caregivers find ways of helping their children understand problems and experiences that adults often struggle to find language for that makes sense for the child. Lavina has often led the practice of this type of work using the Signs of Safety Words and Pictures tool based on narrative storyboard techniques.
Over the past 18 months in her work in the Child and Family Agency, Lavina’s practice was centred in the field of domestic violence and coercive control. She has completed the Safe & Together Core Training. She was lead writer on “Domestic Violence Informed Practice: Guidance for Practitioners”, the first agency practice guidance for working in assessment and safety planning where there are worries about domestic abuse and coercive control in families. Lavina presented in 2023 at the IASW/BASW-NI Domestic Violence Conference, leading an interagency parallel session on working with mothers who have experienced domestic abuse and has particular strength in the assessment of the impact of coercive control on children and an interest in working with men who use emotional and physical violence.