Meet Karen

The experience, learning, curiosity, and values behind my work.

I’m Karen Smith, a retired Therapeutic Counsellor and Psychological Coach, and the founder of The Shift Space.

Much of my professional life has been shaped by working alongside children, young people and their families. Across education, family support, mental health, research and community settings, I have worked with families experiencing very different circumstances and challenges throughout different stages of life.

Those experiences were not simply part of my career. They were an important part of my learning.

Working alongside children and young people taught me to look beyond what was immediately visible. To become curious about behaviour rather than simply react to it. To recognise the importance of relationships, environment and individual experience. And, perhaps most importantly, to understand that adults don’t always have the full picture simply because we are the grown-ups in the room.

Parents and carers offered another perspective. They reinforced how different family life can look from the inside compared with how it may appear to those looking in, and the complexity of supporting a young person while navigating everyday life, competing advice, expectations and our own uncertainty about whether we are getting things right.

I am a mum too. Parenting has given me a very different perspective from working professionally alongside families. Knowing the theory doesn’t mean always having the answer, and professional experience doesn’t remove the emotion or complexity of supporting your own child as they grow.

Experiencing both has reinforced something important for me: parents and carers don’t need another voice telling them how to parent perfectly. They need good information, practical tools, space to reflect and permission to remain curious about the individual young person in front of them.

Experience & Professional Background

My background includes many years in education and family support, alongside wider experience across mental health and wellbeing, research, community services, supported employment and the private sector.

I have worked directly with children, young people, parents and carers, and collaboratively with schools, local authorities, charities and other professionals. I have also contributed to research support with the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH).

Communication and relationship building have always been at the heart of my work. Long before formal training provided the theory and frameworks that would later strengthen my practice, I understood the importance of listening well, building trust and creating genuine connection.

I later qualified in Therapeutic Counselling and Cognitive Coaching, deepening my understanding of emotional wellbeing, communication, identity, relationships, self-awareness and change.

Bringing these different perspectives together, young person, parent, carer and professional, has taught me that each can experience the same situation very differently. That understanding continues to influence my work today.

Children, Young People & Families

I have always been particularly interested in what happens between people.

What sits beneath behaviour that adults find difficult?

How does a young person experience the adults and environments around them?

What happens when they don’t yet have the words to explain what they need?

And how might our own experiences, expectations and assumptions influence what we see?

Instead of immediately asking:

“How do we change this behaviour?”

I am interested in what happens when we become curious enough to ask:

“What might we be missing?”

These questions have followed me throughout my professional life and now sit at the heart of my work through The Shift Space.

Children and young people do not develop in isolation. Relationships, environments, experiences and expectations all matter. So too do the adults around them and our willingness to reflect on the part we play.

What Informs My Work Today

Although I no longer offer individual therapeutic work, my counselling and psychological coaching background continues to influence my writing, reflection and resource development.

Through The Shift Space, my work is returning to where much of my learning began: children, young people and the adults around them.

I bring together professional experience, therapeutic understanding and years of working alongside families with an enduring curiosity about how we might understand young people differently, and how the relationships and environments around them can better support who they are.

I have always believed strongly in individuality and in allowing people to be themselves rather than expecting them to fit neatly within systems, labels or assumptions. I am also willing to question established ways of doing things when I believe there may be another way of seeing, understanding or responding.

That hasn’t changed simply because I have retired from professional practice.

I don’t believe there is one approach that works for every child.

I don’t believe every difficult behaviour needs another strategy.

And I don’t believe adults need to have all the answers.

I believe in listening.

In context.

In relationships.

In individuality.

In curiosity before assumption.

In giving children and young people a voice in the things that affect them.

And in being willing to consider that sometimes it may be our approach, rather than the young person, that needs to change.

Retirement may have changed the pace and shape of my working life, but it hasn’t changed the things I care about or my desire to contribute to them.

Today, I do that through writing, reflection and developing practical psychoeducational resources for parents, carers, professionals and others who support children and young people.

The children, young people and families I have worked alongside have not simply been people I supported. They have helped shape what I understand today.

My role now is to continue listening, learning, questioning and contributing to support positive change for children, young people and the people who support them.

Karen Smith
The Shift Space