Emotional Problem Solving Ltd was originally launched in 2006, and closed in 2010 so that Founder and Director, Lavinia Dowling, could return to university. Two years later, she completed her Masters in Professional Practice (Emotional Problem Solving), after which she named her company and model of care.
Over the next few years, Lavinia acquired further knowledge and skills in project managing for different companies with a view to relaunching EPS, which she did in 2021, having launched sister company, The M Word cic, in 2020.
Emotional Problem Solving Ltd is very much the training side of things, not only helping professionals, but also parents acquire more knowledge and understanding around mental health and neurodiversity. This is because Lavinia felt passionately that many parents were being sent on parenting courses that were wholly inappropriate for them, especially for parents of children with Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA), or Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD).
Parents often felt more isolated, ashamed, and upset at their lack of parenting skills having been made to feel a failure, when in fact the training was not appropriate. Lavinia felt that parents needed to be upskilled in a very different way conveying that with the right information, these parents could build on their skills becoming specialist skills in how to best support their children. Lavinia refers to it as the ‘Expert Parent program’ which is a bespoke package specifically supporting parents with children who have SEN. The feedback from parents was overwhelmingly positive in that they were being ‘believed’, ‘validated’, and how their ‘lives have changed’.
See below for a selection of feedback from parents who have completed the specialist programme.
- It is so helpful, and life changing. Those times when you lose your confidence, or doubt creeps in, and you are there saying ‘Remember, you are the only people this child has, you are the only one standing by them the way they need it to be done’, and it helps you not to fall into the boundary trap or punishment trap – things that you get fed on the outside.
- You are the only professional I know that understands PDA. It is unique, and it is the only place I am getting the support. It is really, really, helpful and life changing.
- The key benefit that I got out of my sessions was the validation that enabled me to believe in myself and have the confidence to plough on. I was so beaten down by it all and it made such a difference to have someone listen that just ‘got it’. There were things that I didn’t need to explain or justify.
- Firstly, validation. To know that we were doing the right thing in keeping our son at home rather than continuing to force him into school, when all around us were contradicting our gut feeling.
- As it happened EPP was even more flexible than we expected as our son could join sessions and communicate via typing. Also we hadn’t realised when we first approached it was going to be the bespoke 1-1 sessions that we did have with Lavinia. These have been life saving.
- As well as educating us more generally about ASD, and PDA which we knew very little about, we learnt how to best help our son based on our family life, our reality and even on how the previous week had been. Our son immediately bought in too and felt understood and heard in a way he hadn’t been before. We knew that even with setbacks came huge learning opportunities. We feel empowered. We never feel judged. There is humour and empathy in our sessions. In addition, the M Word Facebook community backs up this learning. Unearthing and the weekly update reinforces the messages we are taking away in our 1-1 EPP sessions. It feels (to me) a fully immersive experience.
- Invaluable support, with realistic targets (homework/things to think about before the next session), opinions and new things to try to help the situation, but also helping me unpick situations and understanding why he/we felt like that? and most importantly no judgment. I really felt at ease when talking to Lavinia. Not being in a classroom (like I was with the early bird plus course) with people that weren’t interested, or weren’t interested in sharing experiences. Each session was tailored to mine / my child’s or the family needs.
- Our son is our 3rd child and I didn’t need advice on practical, typical parenting. What we needed was support for us 2 as parents in navigating the world of SEN, to learn how to advocate for our children confidently instead of worrying we would upset someone, how to not feel guilty for the odd date night or walk on our own, how to cheer on the children’s successes which would be considered small to typical parenting but for us are massive (he showered himself this morning!!! Huge!!) and to allow the children rest and understand their overwhelm in everyday things.
- Our entire lives have changed..and that includes my middle child who doesn’t struggle but I was very aware he wasn’t getting much of me and was easily being left alone as my other two needed so much of me. My son was able to tell Lavinia things that he wasn’t able to verbalise otherwise i.e why he couldn’t enter the science room (which is now his favourite lesson since!!!) We started understanding the actual reasons why he couldn’t access school and I was able to advocate for him and realise when I was being gaslighted and ignored. I felt confident in hammering points home to school until they finally understood, whereas I’ve always trusted schools knew best. I started to understand him in a way I’ve never understood and our home life became so much more settled and less explosive and ‘needy’. With Lavinia attending school meetings and educating school herself my son has successfully returned to school.
- My daughter’s mental health had been hugely impacted by her school anxiety and masking on a daily basis. She didn’t leave the house or her bedroom unless it was for school, which then just made her exhausted. Because all the other help had concentrated on talk therapy with her and she had no trust in any more professionals as ‘they never help me’ I was so worried about her on a daily basis and hated to see her a shell of her former self at Primary school. Lavinia helped me to look at the issues from a different angle and gave me the confidence to believe that I knew the right things to do for her. Between us we managed to get my daughter to attend an optician’s appointment and visit a supermarket which were huge steps forward and started to build her resilience and self-esteem back up. This enabled us to move forward a great deal and she is in a much better place than she was. (We still have tough days but she knows she can bounce back again).
- EPP supports you to believe that you are the expert when it comes to your child and with that very inside knowledge you learn techniques that help you apply them to different situations. It has been life-changing for my daughter and our family.
- I did all the screenings and MH assessments with Lavinia first and then I realised how valuable it had been meeting Lavinia and how much she was helping our family, just by believing me and what I was saying about the children. Although we knew they were all autistic, it was a lot for us as parents to get our heads around. Having more time with Lavinia was a no-brainer. I needed her help to build my confidence.
- For six weeks I was able to share my week, discuss each child and what we were going through, find solutions and suggestions, but also I felt so much more empowered to speak up for them, and more confident in what I was dealing with. She gave me the skills to be able to be a good advocate and understand that I wasn’t making it all up, it was real and I had a very valid reason to say to school that no, I don’t accept that they are doing everything they can for my children, and here’s some suggestions to help them.
- When I have been on other parenting courses, a lot of it was making us feel guilty for getting it all wrong. There was never anything specific to autism or SEN, it was all general and of course that makes you feel worse because the reality is parenting has to happen differently in a house full of autistic children! I don’t remember feeling very empowered at any other parenting course or programme. I felt like I could take on the world after being with Lavinia for six weeks!
CPD courses
Emotional Problem Solving Ltd provides Continuing Professional Development (CPD) accredited courses for parents, clinicians, and practitioners.
All our courses are designed to provide lots of background historical information around mental health and the different types of neurodiverse labels. This then allows us to consider presentation traits, as to why this might be, as well as considering ways of working with each.
The courses are designed to be highly informative, as a wealth of information is required to understand very complex presentations. Each course currently accredited has been awarded 3hrs CPD points.
It is much easier if you start with the first course around The Emotional Blueprint, to then build on the knowledge of either or both Autism and ADHD before you go to the last module of Pathological Demand Avoidance, as you are then building your layers of knowledge.
- Mental Health and The Emotional Blueprint
- Mental Health and ADHD
- Mental Health and Autism
- Mental Health and Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA)
Online course – Online Courses (emotionalproblemsolving.ltd) or T – 07928232037
The courses have been designed for those who have some understanding around mental health and neurodiversity, but it’s not essential to have lots of understanding. If you are looking for a bespoke training face to face for your team, company, hospital or school, we can present this according to your budget.
Likewise, if you are looking for a public speaker to talk about mental health and neurodiverse traits, Lavinia is happy to accommodate talking about two of her favourite topics at a cost where all the proceeds are given to The M Word cic to support families who need support in the way of assessments, screenings, and therapy.
Creating research
Finally, Emotional Problem Solving Ltd is also about collecting data to further inform clinical practice and research using anonymised narrative stories and screening results (with the client’s permission beforehand). This is a very exciting aspect of EPS Ltd, as most other research is steered by the individual researcher’s interest and not that of clients. Services made available from statutory agencies often reflect what they feel is observed in the community or society at large, and clients often have to try and fit the services to get some form of help.
In contrast, the client’s narrative stories help inform the practice of care from The M Word cic, aided by the work Emotional Problem Solving Ltd draws upon. This is such an important aspect of EPS Ltd, so some time is spent on drawing on the research and then writing up the considerations.
- Systematic Review of Improving Access to Psychological Therapies
- The Emotional Blueprint
- Narrative Report of Meltdowns and Worries in an Autistic Teenager with a PDA profile (July 2022)
- Neuro-divergence and Mental Health in Four Autistic Mother and Daughter Dyads (September 2022)
- Narrative Report of Neuro-divergence and Mental Health in an Autistic Family (August 2022)
- The Wellness Journal
