Meet the Director & Team

Carol co-founded Red Kite Training in 2014, offering training in Contemporary Psychotherapy and Counselling in South Liverpool. She became Director in 2019 with Hayley Marshall of a training partner, and has taken Red Kite in a new direction to view all psychotherapeutic theory and practices, including Transactional Analysis, within an eco-systemic frame of reference through a lens of intersectionality. This shift in direction reflects Carol’s growing awareness of the rising complexities in the world today and deeper awakening to the ecological crisis to feel compelled to ask soul-searching questions about our work as psychotherapists. She believes that what is now needed is a spiritual response with psychotherapy playing a vital part in holding a sacred space for the deep work of the soul. Carol is interested in the interplay between the ecological, co-creative and relational approaches to psychotherapeutic theory and practice; and the impact of the wider cultural and global realities upon our being-well.

As Training Director and Principal Trainer, Carol holds overall responsibility for Red Kite’s curriculum, qualifications, and adherence to UKATA, EATA, and UKCP standards. She brings a wealth of experience from over 25 years of personal and professional experience as a psychotherapist, supervisor, and trainer across culturally diverse environments. The transpersonal dimension (soul and spirit), including the natural world, is central to Carol across her life. She has focused her energies over many years helping to set up accessible, creative and inclusive sacred spaces, including in a wine bar, and within Liverpool Anglican Cathedral where she served as a Trustee and Lay Canon at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral for 10 years.

Her personal journey, including her mixed heritage and international upbringing in South Africa, Belgium, the US and different parts of the UK has given her embedded passion for inclusivity and social justice. This has shaped her decisions to live and work in socio-economically deprived areas of Merseyside, where she has developed accessible mental health services for the local community over the last 25 years. Carol has an academic background and qualifications in Psychology and Counselling but what attracted her to become a Certified Transactional Analyst (Psychotherapy) and a TA Trainer and Supervisor (Psychotherapy) was the international TA community which has offered her a relational home for her multiple cultural selves.

Carol has extensive clinical experience working with complex mental health issues and runs a private practice in South Liverpool. She offers psychotherapy, supervision, and training in both indoor and ecological spaces. In 2019, she helped establish the Liverpool Centre for Psychotherapy and Counselling, now directing a team of 20 therapists.

An active contributor to the Transactional Analysis (TA) community, Carol serves on the UKATA Ethics and Professional Practice and UKATA Training Standards Committees. She has presented at national and international conferences and was awarded the UKATA Medal in 2022 for her contributions to the field.

Outside of her professional life, Carol practices yoga, meditation, and journaling to draw inspiration from various spiritual and ecological traditions. She also enjoys open-water swimming, long-distance cycling, trail running, and hiking in high mountain ranges such as the Pyrenees, Drakensberg, the Dolomites, the Tatras, Snowdonia and the Lakes. She is married with two adult daughters.

Barbara has been involved with Transactional Analysis for over 30 years, qualifying as a CTA in 1999, and subsequently becoming a TSTA in 2015. Between 2010 and 2017 she was the Director of Physis Training in Edinburgh, a Registered TA training establishment that maintained a strong TA presence in Scotland. She has held roles in UKATA as Chair of Conferences, and served on the Training Standards Committee. She has also been part of the Assessment Board for the Humanistic and Integrative College of UKCP, reviewing a range of training organisations from across the Humanistic and Integrative field, in partnership with their staff, to ensure that they met the psychotherapy training requirements for UKCP and HIPC. She played an active part in the European Association of TA – as UK delegate from 2017, member of the Commission of Certification dealing with the organisation of exams, and finally as a member of the Executive Committee overseeing the operation of EATA as a TA professional body.

Barbara stepped down from many of these roles when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019, needing to focus on surviving the treatment process and managing the long journey of recovery and renewal that has followed. She resigned from the EATA Executive Committee in 2021 when the duties of the role became incompatible with her recovery. She was awarded the EATA Silver Medal for her service to the organisation.

Throughout all this time she has been drawn to considering the role of spirituality in psychotherapy, training and supervision, and to explore these processes as themselves being spiritual and soul-full endeavours. She wrote an article on psychotherapy from a spiritual perspective for the TAJ in 2021 and has facilitated numerous workshops on the topic. She is currently immersed in an exploration of life writing (or memoir writing) and the transpersonal and archetypal dimensions of sharing our deep personal stories through the written word. In 2020 she was awarded the UKATA Medal in recognition of her contribution.