Family Therapy Service

What is family and systemic psychotherapy?

Family and Systemic Psychotherapy — often called family therapy — helps people in close relationships better understand and support one another.

It creates a safe space to explore difficult thoughts and emotions, understand each other’s perspectives, recognise individual needs, build on family strengths, and make meaningful changes in how you relate and live together.

Challenges rarely appear in isolation. It is often a signal of distress, disconnection, overwhelm, or unmet emotional needs — and when we work systemically, we create change that doesn’t rely on one person trying harder.

Who this is for and What can Family Therapy Help With?

Family and Systemic Psychotherapy can work with people in any form of relationship including couples, families, groups, carers, professional groups, teams and businesses.

At Rainbow, we focus on helping families work through a wide range of challenges they are experiencing, including:

Family relationship difficulties
Child and adolescent mental health issues
Adult mental health issues
Child, adolescent and adult behaviour difficulties
Parenting issues
Illness and disability in the family
Separation, divorce and step-family life
Fostering, adoption, kinship care and the needs of care experienced children and young people
Domestic violence and abuse
Self-harm
Drug and alcohol misuse
The effects of trauma
Physical illness, death, dying and bereavement
Eating Disorder
Difficulties related to ageing and other life cycle changes

This work supports families with children of any age — from early childhood to teens, and also adult family relationships where old dynamics are still active.

What makes my approach different?

Across nearly 30 years, I’ve supported families and individuals living with complex realities — trauma, neurodivergence, mental health challenges, high conflict, breakdown, safeguarding concerns, and long-standing relational pain.

From the first session, we work to understand the families' stories, what’s driving the difficulty, where the system is stuck, and what needs to change and in what order.

Many families come to me after months or years of individual therapy that helped them understand more — but didn’t change day-to-day life.

My work focuses on moving families out of patterns, not just insight. I draw on 4 trained disciplines and use an integrative therapeutic interventions to support families, with clear therapeutic goals in mind. I usually recommend starting with a short block of sessions after initial consultation so we can build momentum and assess change properly.

Ways we can work together

Families come to therapy at different stages, and the level of support needed can vary depending on the complexity of the situation. For this reason, I offer two ways of working with families.

Family Therapy (Recommended starting point)

Many families begin with a block of six sessions after initial consultation, meeting regularly to explore the patterns shaping the current difficulties and begin working towards change together.

This approach provides a contained starting point while allowing us to understand the family system more fully before deciding on any further work.

Structured Systemic Intervention for families in crisis (3 or 6 Month Support)

In some situations, the level of conflict or distress within the family means that a more structured level of support is helpful.

Structured Systemic Intervention is a three-month therapeutic container designed for families where patterns have escalated and the situation feels difficult to stabilise. Alongside regular therapeutic sessions, this level of work allows the therapeutic process to be held more actively between sessions where appropriate.

The intervention is tailored to the needs of the family and typically involves a structured block of work designed to stabilise relational dynamics and support meaningful change within the family system.

The intervention typcially includes:

Weekly systemic family therapy sessions focused on stabilising relational dynamics and supporting sustainable change within the family system.
Flexible session composition, where different family members may attend different sessions depending on what is most helpful for the therapeutic work at that stage.
Therapeutic email or brief telephone reflections between sessions, where clinically appropriate, to support continuity and containment between meetings.
Liaison with professionals within the wider system, such as schools, CAMHS, or other mental health services, where collaborative working is beneficial.
Written summaries or reports, where clinically appropriate, to support clarity and coordination across the wider system.
Reflective consultation with professionals involved in the family’s network, where appropriate, to support shared understanding and coordinated responses.
Collaborative therapeutic input where helpful. In some cases, the work may benefit from co-facilitation with another family therapist or the use of a reflecting team approach to support the therapeutic process.

The aim is to create enough continuity and support for meaningful change to begin stabilising within the family system. If you have questions about Structured Systemic Intervention, you can find out more information in our FAQ section here.

How to get started

The first step is to complete a brief enquiry form so I can understand what you’re facing and advise whether family therapy is the appropriate support for your family regardless whether your considering blocks of family therapy or stuctured systemic intervention.

You can enquire about family therapy here

If your situation feels urgent, you can add a line in your message and I’ll respond as soon as possible.

If you still have questions about family therapy, here's a leaflet for your information, and please visit our FQA section.You can also find more detailed information about Family Therapy in our Blogs too.

Fees & availability

Fee is £195 for each 70 minute family therapy session (UK residents only).
Family Therapy Sessions are online or in-person in Edinburgh (depending on your location/availability)

If you’re a professional looking to refer care experienced children, young people and their families for family therapy or commission family therapy support please visit or Professionals Page Here