Parents & Professional Forum

Therapeutic Art Approaches with ‘Third Culture Kids’

Date: Wednesday 6 March 2019

Programme:

10:00 – Doors open

10:30 – Start of programme

This is a combined Parent & Professional Forum Meeting.

Topic: ‘Therapeutic Art Approaches with ‘Third Culture Kids’

Providing a safe creative space might be straightforward if you are a therapist, but it is different if you are a parent, teacher or coach. In this presentation, Shellee Burroughs will provide a brief training in art-therapy based tools for parents, teachers, coaches and therapists which can also be used at home, in school and in clinical settings with ‘Third Culture Kids’.

Shellee will explain what to do if concerns arise, how to use simple materials and how to keep dialogue going (often on paper). The activities she will discuss have been a huge help to the families she has worked with in the past and also with her own children. Clear, step by step ways to work using image-based activities are explained and there will be time to discuss any questions you might have.

Creating images and the use of simple materials can open doors to more effective communication and awareness of the impact that transition, loss and identity have overall. From the children who left the ‘do not rub out’ images on the whiteboard in her office, to families who drew timelines with their children when a move was imminent, these tools have a proven track record with many children and their families and she look forward to sharing them with you.

Presenter: Shellee Burroughs(HCPC) Art Psychotherapist & TCK Specialist BA(Hons), DVATI, PGDip, MA

Shellee is a parent of two TCK children and is a third culture adult herself having lived in the US, Australia, Japan, Canada and Malaysia. Having lived abroad as a single woman, wife and parent, she understands both the benefits and challenges of being an ex-pat and having children who have grown up outside their passport country.

Shellee first qualified as a graphic designer and illustrator in Wales. A few years later she moved to Vancouver and trained as an art therapist. Later returned to the UK in order to complete her MA in Advanced Art Therapy Studies and to become HCPC registered.

Her first Lead Art Psychotherapist position was at a sexual abuse survivor charity which taught her an enormous amount about trauma and loss. After having her children, she worked for the ‘Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service’ as an NHS therapist and case assessor until the service was privatized in 2013.

As a result of the high levels of trauma and PTSD in the communities she have worked with, she trained as a ‘Child Accelerated Trauma Technique’ practitioner and trainer. She has taught CATT in the UK & Jordan and uses this approach extensively with children and adolescents.
In 2013 her family moved to Kuala Lumpur where she worked as a whole-school counsellor for four years. In 2017 she repatriated to the UK where she currently works as an associate therapist for adoption consultancies in the Exeter area. Shellee says that another move can never completely be ruled out as her whole family have caught the ‘global nomad’ bug.

Having worked in clinical settings with children and adolescents for almost 20 years, my experience is with the following groups:
• Third Culture children, teens and adults (UK & Malaysia)
• Rwandan refugee children (UK)
• ‘First Nation’ children (Canada)
• Adopted children and their families (UK, Canada & Malaysia)
• Sexual abuse survivors (Canada and the UK)
• International School Students (Malaysia)
• Third Culture Kids and adults (UK & Malaysia)
• Trauma & PTSD in children and adolescents (UK, Canada & Malaysia)