Dr Alice Martell - Profile

I am a Chartered Clinical Psychologist with twelve years post qualification NHS experience of working with children, young people and families in both Paediatric and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).

Types of Clients

Paediatric Psychology

Children, teenagers and young adults, their siblings and parents living with (or previously treated for) a medical condition.

I can help with:

• Adjustment to and coping with medical condition and treatment
• Strategies to make it easier to take medication and follow treatment plans
• Dilemmas around decision making around treatment options
• Coping with physical symptoms where no organic cause has been found
• Coping with chronic pain/fatigue with an aim of reducing the impact the symptoms have on important areas of life

Child Psychology

Children, teenagers and young adults experiencing:

• Anxiety (including panic, social anxiety, phobias, school related anxiety)
• Low mood
• Difficulties with anger
• Coping with stress
• Difficulties with sleep, mealtimes, constipation/soiling, temper tantrums.

Approach

Our Initial meeting will involve:

• A very warm welcome, a playful and creative approach to help your child feel comfortable.
• Working together to define achievable goals/areas for change to help your child move towards.
• Asking questions and using other assessment measures (e.g. questionnaires, cognitive assessment) to help make sense of your child’s difficulties within the contexts that shape their experiences including family, school, developmental stage, and hospital/medical teams where relevant.
• For older children/teenagers it is likely that the meeting will be split into time with your teenager alone as well family members attending together.

I will liaise with relevant professionals who are involved with your child in different contexts to strengthen the assessment.

Developing a shared understanding (‘Formulation’) and plan for intervention

The information gathered will help us to develop a shared understanding ‘formulation’ of the factors contributing to the development and maintenance of the problems, as well as identifying the strengths and resources the child, family and systems around it can harness to help them move towards their goals. This will inform our plan for intervention which will draw upon evidence based research and may include aspects of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and Systemic and Behavioural approaches.

It might include:

• ‘Psychoeducation’ – increased understanding of the difficulties experienced
• Identifying and trying out new/more helpful ways of responding in order to move closer towards goals
• Developing strategies for coping with difficult feelings
• Learning ways of thinking differently
• Working with adults in the system (e.g. family, school, hospital) to encourage new ways of understanding and supporting your child.

From 2011, I have been working as Principal Clinical Psychologist at Wexham Park Hospital, where I set up a new service for children living with a broad range of physical health conditions, including sessions of dedicated and integrated psychology support for children and adolescents living with Diabetes and Cancer. The service was highly valued and the funded psychology sessions doubled over my time there. I also delivered teaching to other professionals attending study days, offered consultation and support to colleagues and provided supervision to trainees and qualified psychologists.

At the Evelina Children’s Hospital, I developed services for teenagers living with Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia transitioning from paediatric to adult services and conducted a needs assessment to inform service provision of the psychological needs of teenagers and young adults living with cancer, which we presented at the European Conference for Paediatric Psychologists in 2012.