I had the privilege of attending a celebration at Westminster marking the 10th Anniversary of Children Heard and Seen. It was a wonderful opportunity to reflect on how far the charity has come and the incredible impact it continues to have on the lives of children and families affected by parental imprisonment.

The evening was also deeply personal.

I was incredibly touched to receive a letter from the charity’s Founder and CEO, Sarah Burrows, recognising my contribution to helping establish the organisation over a decade ago. Looking back, it is hard to believe how much has grown from those early conversations and the determination of a small group of people who believed these children deserved to be seen, heard, and supported.

In 2013, I was instrumental in helping establish Children Heard and Seen following its initial crowdfunding campaign. I worked alongside the founding team to develop the charity’s business plan, governance, and policies, helping secure charitable status and laying the foundations for what would become one of the UK’s leading charities supporting children with a parent in prison. During its first year, I served as both Trustee and Company Secretary, helping guide the organisation through its formative stages.

In 2019, Children Heard and Seen was awarded the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, the highest honour bestowed upon volunteer groups in the United Kingdom and often described as the equivalent of an MBE for voluntary organisations. The award recognised the charity’s outstanding work in reducing the stigma, isolation, and disadvantage experienced by children affected by parental imprisonment.

Being part of the founding team meant that I also had the honour of receiving my second Queen’s Award for Volunteering—a recognition that remains one of the proudest moments of my voluntary career. However, the greatest achievement has never been the award itself. It has been seeing thousands of children receive the support, encouragement, and opportunities they deserve.

Children with a parent in prison are among the most overlooked groups in society. They often experience profound loss, uncertainty, financial hardship, disrupted family relationships, bullying, and social stigma. Despite having committed no offence themselves, many carry an invisible burden that can affect every aspect of their lives.

Without the right support, these children face an increased risk of poorer educational outcomes, mental health difficulties, victimisation, and, for some, future involvement with the criminal justice system. Early intervention can make an enormous difference, helping children develop resilience, build positive relationships, and imagine futures beyond the circumstances into which they were born.

This work also connects closely with my more recent research interests.

Research increasingly demonstrates that neuro differences such as ADHD and autism are overrepresented within the criminal justice system. Too often, unmet needs, misunderstanding, and systemic barriers contribute to pathways into offending rather than timely support. These neuro differences frequently run within families, meaning that many children affected by parental imprisonment may also be navigating their own neurodevelopmental needs while coping with trauma, loss, and social exclusion.

Supporting these children therefore requires more than compassion. It requires systems that recognise complexity, respond to individual needs, and seek to break cycles of disadvantage rather than reinforce them.

That is exactly what Children Heard and Seen has spent the past decade doing.

Looking back, I feel incredibly proud to have played a small part in helping create an organisation that continues to change lives every single day. Seeing the charity flourish over the past ten years has been both humbling and inspiring, and I remain enormously grateful to everyone who has dedicated their time, expertise, and compassion to making its vision a reality.

Congratulations to Sarah Burrows, the staff, volunteers, trustees, mentors, supporters, and, most importantly, the remarkable children and families whose courage continues to inspire us all.

Sometimes the greatest privilege is not being recognised for the work you did, but seeing the difference that work continues to make many years later.

I was honoured to receive the Best Roundtable Presentation Award at the 2025 Division of Coaching Psychology Conference for a session exploring a question that sits at the heart of my work:

What happens when coaching unintentionally reproduces the very barriers it seeks to help people overcome?

Coaching is often presented as a neutral process. We talk about goals, performance, resilience, productivity, growth, and success as though these concepts are universal and value-free. Yet every coaching conversation takes place within a broader social, cultural, and political context. The assumptions we hold about what constitutes a “good life,” meaningful progress, or successful functioning are rarely neutral. They are shaped by dominant societal narratives.

One of those narratives is ableism.

Ableism refers to the privileging of certain ways of thinking, communicating, behaving, learning, working, and existing, while positioning other ways as deficient, problematic, or in need of correction. While overt forms of ableism are often recognised, more subtle forms can become embedded within professional practices, including coaching.

During the roundtable, participants explored a case example and engaged in reflexive discussion about how ableist assumptions can quietly shape coaching goals, interventions, and outcomes. Together, we considered questions such as:

• Who decides what “success” looks like?
• When does adaptation become pressure to conform?
• Are we helping clients flourish, or helping them fit into systems that were never designed for them?
• What assumptions sit beneath concepts such as productivity, motivation, communication, professionalism, and resilience?

These questions become particularly important when working with autistic individuals, people with ADHD, and other neurodifferent clients. Traditional coaching approaches often emphasise linear goal progression, behavioural modification, productivity enhancement, and performance optimisation. While these approaches can be helpful, they may also inadvertently reinforce the message that the client must change in order to be accepted.

Many neurodifferent individuals have spent years receiving explicit and implicit messages that they are “too much,” “not enough,” “too sensitive,” “too intense,” “too disorganised,” or simply wrong. Coaching that focuses solely on adaptation without questioning the systems that create these pressures risks reinforcing internalised ableism and further disconnecting individuals from their authentic ways of being.

The discussion also explored the potential for coaching psychology to become more than an individual change methodology. Coaching psychology has the capacity to act as a vehicle for social change by helping people critically examine the narratives that shape their identities, challenging deficit-based assumptions, and creating spaces where difference is not merely tolerated but genuinely valued.

This requires a shift from asking:

“How can this person function more effectively within the system?”

towards also asking:

“What aspects of the system need to change?”

Such an approach aligns with broader movements within psychology that recognise the importance of context, power, identity, and social justice. It invites coaches to move beyond individualistic explanations and to consider the wider structures that influence wellbeing, opportunity, and belonging.

The conversations that emerged during the session were thoughtful, courageous, and deeply encouraging. Participants shared reflections from their own practice, challenged assumptions, and explored what anti-ableist coaching might look like in action.

Receiving the award was a genuine honour, but the most meaningful aspect of the session was the collective willingness to engage with these complex questions. The discussion reinforced my belief that coaching psychology has an important role to play in creating a more inclusive future—one that recognises human diversity not as a problem to be solved, but as a valuable part of what it means to be human.

Thank you to everyone who attended, contributed, and helped create such a rich and reflective conversation. The work of challenging ableism is ongoing, and I look forward to continuing the dialogue together.