I am a UK-registered clinical psychologist. I currently divide my time working privately primarily in the autism diagnostic area and working at the national health service (NHS) helping children with chronic health conditions and developmental or neurological disorders including autism.
Prior to becoming a psychologist, I worked in a charity supporting war crime victims and then in children’s care homes. During my doctoral training and for my first post-qualification job, I focused on working with young individuals with complex emotional needs in a context of early life trauma. These experiences now help me to understand the difference between presentation of trauma and presentation of an underlying neurodevelopmental condition (as the two can often seem similar because the same brain areas may be affected). My background is Ukrainian British of Russian Jewish descent, which places me in unique position to understand the sensitive intercultural aspects in diagnostic and therapeutic work.
I trained in delivering the autism diagnostic interview (ADI-R) and the autism diagnostic observation schedule (ADOS) in 2018. I also attended additional workshops in cultural competency in 2021 and further supervision trainings in 2023 and 2024. Back in 2016, I traveled to China to carry out a parent workshop about applied behavior analysis approach for children with autism and to present a group cognitive behaviour intervention for children experiencing a national emergency (such as war or natural disaster). Now I sometimes offer guest lectures about psychology, neurodevelopment and trauma at University of Kent.