qualifications & experience
In the unregulated Coaching market, certification helps reassure you that you are in safe hands. You may see coaches stating that they "completed ICF Accredited Training" - which is great, but does not show they have additionally committed to the work of achieving their individual formal coaching credentials.
I completed a 116+ hour training course with the world class, ICF accredited ADD Coach Academy (ADDCA), covering ADHD awareness, personal transformation and ADHD coaching. I subsequently went through a program of mentor coaching and a formal assessment of my coaching skills (against ADDCA, ICF and PAAC markers) through submission of a recorded coaching session, to become an ADDCA Associate Certified Coach (AACC). My recorded coaching session was selected as an "exceptional" submission by ADDCA's Director of Training, and added to the ADDCA student library for future trainee coaches as "an example of what a great submission looks like".
I am a member of the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and have attained their credential as an Associate Certified Coach (ACC), which required 60+ hours of ICF accredited coach training, 100+ hours of client coaching, 10+ hours of certified mentor coaching and a formal examination covering the ICF core competencies and Code of Ethics. As a firm believer in continuous development and learning, I continue to work with mentor coaches and soon begin ADDCA's Advanced Coaching Programme - the next step on my path to the higher certification levels of ACCG (ADDCA Advanced Certified Coach Graduate) and ICF PCC (Professional Certified Coach).
My non-coaching qualifications include a Cambridge University Architecture degree, Qualified Teacher Status (after completing a PGCE at the Institute of Education) and CPT3A (Certificate in Psychometric Testing, Assessment and Access Arrangements; member of the British Psychological Society's Register of Qualifications in Test Use).
​​​​​​​I also offer the perspective of a life's experience of my own ADHD, right from knowing how it felt to be "a bit different" at school through to almost 20 years' experience as a classroom teacher, one to one teacher, Head of Learning Support, SENCo and ADHD Lead and finally realising the flippin' obvious and getting my own ADHD diagnosis a little into my 40s.
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Like many ADHDers, my career path has had some tangents: art foundation; architecture degree; fashion industry work; art teaching; songwriting, performing at folk festivals and leading ukulele workshops; maths teaching; 1:1 teaching; psychometric testing / exam access arrangements assessing; working in large state comprehensives and independent boarding schools and, of course, ADHD/Neurodiversity coaching, training and education.
about me
I aced it at school. Well - I aced it in exams. School in general was more of a mixed bag, as my school reports testify with such nuggets as:
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"She is highly intelligent, creatively gifted, musical and instinctively astute. Her difficulties have absolutely nothing to do with anything intellectual but can be ascribed purely and simply to bouts of complete chaos."
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"Caroline is an excellent mathematician... but a terrible student."
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"Caroline is a consummate waster of time."​
"She just has to motivate herself to go to her desk and then to sit there until her work is all done."​
"I don't know about doing her homework on the top of a bus, but it wouldn't surprise me if Caroline did her homework walking to school, in the bath, or anywhere else equally remarkable."
After school and throughout adulthood - as a Cambridge graduate, fashion production co-ordinator, songwriter, performer, workshop leader, qualified teacher, assessor, SENCo - it has often felt like if someone were still writing reports on my work life, or my general life admin, they would read in a similarly contradictory and exasperated way as those old school reports.
For so long, I didn't understand why I could be so brilliant at times - and at others so "rubbish" - and it left me questioning whether I was lazy despite appearing so hard working, whether I was stupid despite allegedly being so smart, whether I was incapable despite a wide array of achievements and successes.​
Do you recognise this*?​
Now that I understand my ADHD, being a total contradiction no longer surprises me. Even better, that inner critic has piped right down and we are even becoming friends...​​
ADHD Coaching is a big part of how that happened - and I am passionate about passing that on to others like you.​​
* Researchers and experts in ADHD report this charming and infuriating contrarianism as a core ADHD trait. Ned Hallowell describes this in his wonderful book ADHD 2.0: "It helps to think of ADHD as a complex set of contradictory or paradoxical tendencies: a lack of focus combined with an ability to superfocus; a lack of direction combined with highly directed entrepreneurialism; a tendency to procrastinate combined with a knack for getting a week's worth of work done in two hours; impulsive, wrongheaded decision making combined with inventive, out-of-the-blue problem solving; interpersonal cluelessness combined with uncanny intuition and empathy; the list goes on."