INTRODUCTION
Hello! I am Claudia Vau – accredited Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapist, trained by the London Centre of Psychodrama (LCP) to work with both Individuals and Groups, currently enrolled in the Systemic Programme of the Tavistock Centre, which informs my practice with Couples, Families and Organisations.
Clinically supervised and professionally insured, I am a member of three professional bodies that regulate and accredit my practice:
- The British Psychodrama Association (BPA) since 2012,
- The UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) since 2020,
- The Association for Family and Systemic Psychotherapy (AFSP) since 2024.
Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions about the services I offer that are not addressed below or elsewhere on this website. Reviews of my practice are available on Trustpilot, reflecting individual experience-based perspectives of people who have known me as a psychotherapist and colleague through the years.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
I have worked in other fields, but my professional identity has become that of a creative who uses action-methods, systemic approaches and (other) therapeutic resources in one-to-one, couples, family and group work, pertaining to individual and systemic development, well-being and mental health.
My clinical experience progressively expanded from embodied to hybrid and online practice, drawing not only on Psychodrama, Sociodrama and Playback Theatre (PT), but also on my growing interest and training in Systemic Psychotherapy, the Neuroscience of relationships, neurodiversity and intersectionality.
Previously, I worked in therapeutic community (TC) environment within His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) and the National Health Service (NHS), with people living with personality disorders (PD) and other complex diagnoses. A also worked in various charities (with vulnerable youth and women living with learning disabilities in the community), as well as with private providers of residential mental health recovery support services, residential care services for co-morbid learning disabilities and addiction rehabilitation.
I have also practised applied PT with women recovering from ED, and implemented creative action within a youth development programme – the BPA recognised this latter work with an Anne Bannister Scholar Award in 2014.
When it comes to one-to-one psychotherapy and counselling, I gained experience as school-based psychotherapist working with parents and school/staff, as volunteer bereavement counsellor and as freelance trainee Psychodrama practitioner, providing low-cost services to adult clients and adolescents in London. I have since relocated, first to Surrey then to Kent.
I now practice group and individual psychotherapy, counselling and coaching (online and face-to-face) in London and Kent, UK. I work cross-culturally, mostly with individuals, couples and families transgenerationally affected by, living with and recovering from trauma and addiction, mental health issues and neurodiverse diagnoses, dysfunctional relational patterns and systemic problems, that warrant more than individual-focused treatment.
I am welcoming referrals, keen on setting-up self-development and trauma-informed psychodrama groups, and available to devise sessions, workshops and systemic interventions for families, communities and organisations.
ACADEMIC BACKGROUND AND PUBLICATIONS
I started (re)training as a Psychotherapist with the LCP at the Maudsley Hospital (South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust), in 2011.
Prior to my Post-graduate Diploma in Psychodrama, I completed a Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations (PR) with the University Institute of Maia, Portugal (2000-2004), and a Master’s degree in Communication and Arts with the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the NOVA University of Lisbon (2006-2010).
I started working in PR as a Law student, before starting my PR degree, continued working in the field with a socially responsible ethos while studying PR, researched strategic PR contributions to Corporate Social Accountability (CSA) and overall dedicated a decade to PR and CSA, while also training in Drama (from 2004) and in Social Theatre (from 2007).
I have published a book in Portugal – on the role of PR in CSA (2005) – and several articles in Portugal and England – on Socially Responsible Communication and PR, Theatrical Mediation, Psychodrama and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) in TC, and Psychopathology.
More recently published by Routledge (in February 2022) and edited by Geraldine Akerman and Richard Shuker, the book “Global Perspectives on Interventions in Forensic Therapeutic Communities – A Practitioner’s Guide” includes a chapter I co-authored, with contributions from Vicky Gavin and women of Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) background, with whom we worked with in the only female forensic TC with a formal re-offending risk reduction programme, which is part of the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway in the UK. This chapter – the second chapter in the book – includes anonymised self-reporting testimonies of 2 former TC residents, describing my contribution to the core creative TC model and qualitative outcomes of the integrative approach (combining Psychodrama Psychotherapy and Art Therapy) that I developed in custodial TC environment, between January 2016 and September 2018.
Currently, I am in the foundation year of my second qualifying Psychotherapy course and Master’s degree, training to become a Systemic Family Psychotherapist. This Master’s is awarded by the University of Essex, taught by Tavistock Education and Training (part of the former Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust), and accredited by the Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice (AFT), which is now known as AFSP.
CLAUDIA VAU 