Oran Blackwood has been working with young people with special needs for almost 10 years. He is also a SENCO and qualified counsellor. Qualified in Child Counselling and Integrative Psychotherapy, he works with both adults and children.
He is also the parent of a son with Autism and Developmental Delay.
Through his work in education and his voluntary work for the National Autistic Society (NAS), he realised that services available for children with special needs were largely oversubscribed and underfunded. This was especially true for services that supported mental wellbeing. Working as a counsellor, he decided to develop and offer low-cost counselling service for families of children with autism spectrum conditions.
He identified two main challenges within families; support for parents and support for children with Autism. With the public sector services inundated with referrals, counselling support is often delayed or cut short and issues with depression, social anxiety and school refusal may not meet the threshold for statutory services.
He is highly experienced in working with adults and children who present with a range of symptoms and conditions. These include working with client’s suffering from depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, self-harm, bereavement and loss, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), long-term illnesses, and eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia and binge eating.
A skilled practitioner in the use of counselling techniques including Person-Centred Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Gestalt Therapy and Psychoanalysis he also uses art and play therapy with younger children tailoring his intervention to his client’s needs.