History of
Trauma Recovery UK
Stories shape us
Trauma Recovery UK came about as the result of a dream from our Founding Director Betsy de Thierry MBE, who is now our Chair of Trustees. The dream was of a trauma recovery centre helping many families who had no one to support them in the aftermath of a traumatic experience. 15 years on, Trauma Recovery UK have operated across the UK and the Channel Islands and their data shows that the average length of time a family comes to Trauma Recovery UK is one year (40 sessions), with many children coming for over 100 sessions.
It has been quite a unique journey to get here and it was a very challenging start, but we are so proud of what we have achieved over the past 15 years.
Our First Therapy Centre
Trauma Recovery UK's first therapy centre is located in Bath in the UK, and has a purpose-designed building for therapy.
Hosted and seed-funded by a generous church who got behind the vision of the charity, Sound Church renovated their Kids and Community building to be able to host the Bath Trauma Recovery Centre. We will always be so very grateful to them for how they seed-funded the charity from day one, as well as allowing us to use their building for the past 15 years and continue to do so.
A challenging start
In May 2011, Trauma Recovery UK opened its doors to their first clients. Trauma Recovery UK then had a very challenging few years, as the Founding Director, Betsy de Thierry MBE, was victim to a horrific death threat, cyberstalking and harassment over four years by one man and two of his friends, who tried to close Trauma Recovery UK down. The thousands of emails slandering Betsy and Trauma Recovery UK sent to the local authority and other professionals, alongside the main perpetrator buying thousands of domains in Betsy's name, led to the police saying Betsy needed to take her name back. We were grateful for the private investigators at The Big Lottery who were a large enough organisation to finally identify one of the key harassers, a man who was then arrested.
We are also so grateful for Bill McKitterick. He was Trauma Recovery UK's Organisational Supervisor who supported us in this difficult period. Bill came to us as the retired Director of Children's Services in Bristol and brought his wisdom and experience of the statutory system to us as he supported us during the police investigation into the attacks and slander against Betsy. He had a bright yellow van and sometimes accompanied the senior team of Trauma Recovery UK to help the police uncover who was behind the harassment. We remain deeply grateful to him, and continue to honour his memory following his passing a few years ago.
Our Motivation and the Evidence
our Approach works
Testimonials of lives transformed are our motivation to continue to do this work over the years. We have continued despite the huge challenges and opposition because we believe families can recover from the devastating long term impacts of trauma and complex trauma. It was the reason the charity was created and the reason we still exist today. We know first hand that recovery is possible and that there is always hope. It's a privilege to do this work and support families as they piece their lives back together until a wholeness can be found.
The Trauma Recovery UK team are all passionate about working with with complex trauma effectively, and have trained in a pioneering trauma recovery focused approach that was created by Betsy de Thierry, and underpinned by neuroscientific research.
In 2019, we partnered with Canterbury Christ Church University's Salomons Institute for Applied Psychology to evaluate our developing evidence base of clinical assessments; they evaluated our work and reported a significant clinical reduction in trauma symptoms in 98.8% of the children and young people (across a sample of 248 clients).
We are an approved provider of specialist trauma recovery focused creative therapy and parenting support to a number of local authorities and organisations, and we work closely with other organisations supporting the wider needs of the families in our local communities. It’s our privilege to do this work.
Oakside & The Treehouse Project
Oakside Creative Education Centre was started in 2013 for children aged 6-15 years who were struggling in mainstream education. It ran three days a week and the children were welcome to come back with a Parent or Carer to access a further therapy session with a Parent/Carer therapeutic support group on another day. Our staff were all qualified as primary or secondary school teachers, creative psychotherapists and therapeutic mentors.
We had a primary class who had a qualified primary school teacher teaching them a curriculum that was based on projects and themes that were of interest to the children. The classroom included the soft play centre, wooden play castle and the outside castle garden. Each child had therapy sessions two or three times a week and every member of staff was trained to be therapeutic and trauma recovery focused.
Our secondary class had a bespoke curriculum for each child which was designed to motivate their engagement with each subject. These students also had therapy two or three times a week and placements in other work places to enable them to develop skills in professional settings for future work skills.
Unfortunately Oakside was closed due to the building being less than ideal in its location and a lack of open space.
Our Treehouse Project is a specific project element of our trauma recovery centre which specialises in the recovery from the experience of human trafficking. Our team includes specialist psychotherapists in the recovery from sexual exploitation, manipulation and control.
Looking to the future
We are hugely positive about the future and are often asked to start new therapy centres in cities across the UK. We are always assessing whether a new location has the right venue, an abundance of experienced and trauma recovery trained team and the referrals ready for us to start.
Watch this space to see where new therapy centres will launch soon!
