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Carole Hunt, Principal Therapist
Carole Hunt is a qualified social worker and therapist with many years of experience. She gained her Certificate of Qualification in Social Work (CQSW) in 1980 and began her career as a social worker for residential care before moving to the children’s charity, Barnardo’s.
She later became interested in therapy and began training, originally as a Psychodynamic Counsellor, and gained her Advanced Diploma in 1994. In 2003 she began Family Therapy training and qualified in 2007 with an MSc in Systemic and Family Therapy.
Carole is accredited as a Family and Systemic Psychotherapist with the Association for Family Therapy (AFT) with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). She is also registered with the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) and the General Social Care Council.
Expertise in Children’s Services
In her time in the social work sector, Carole has specialised in child protection, the impact of trauma and abuse, and attachment difficulties. She has a wide range of experience, having worked with victims of abuse, perpetrators of abuse, and non-abusive partners. This work has involved individuals, couples, families and groups.
Although Carole worked as a social worker for many years, she was drawn to therapeutic work and, after working in child protection, moved to work with the NSPCC for children who had been abused. She later worked with adults with mental health issues before moving to FCA in 2003 to help create stable, healthy outcomes in addition to her part-time tutoring role at the University of Leeds’ Family Therapy training programme.
The day to day work of a Principal Therapist
Carole’s work is diverse and changes from one day to the next. One day she could be managing the therapy team and supervising therapy team members in surrounding areas. The next minute she could be training staff and carers to offer extensive training in working with Attachment Difficulties. She could be seeing a child and carer for a therapy session, visiting with a carer to help them with the therapeutic needs of their looked after children, or working with a group of ‘Kids who Care’ (the birth children of foster carers).
For Carole, however, the most rewarding aspect of the work she does is the focus at the heart of all our business:
“The best part of my job is helping children; particularly fostered children who need to develop attachments to their carers,” says Carole. “Many of the children and young people who come to us have suffered abuse, neglect and multiple losses. They find it hard to trust and they need very special people to help them. I’ve had the pleasure to work with dedicated carers and staff over the years and this is what makes my job special. I can honestly say that people at FCA really are prepared to go the extra mile in responding to the needs of the children who are with us. This is without doubt the very best part of my job.”
