Lucy works as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Great North Children’s Hospital in Newcastle, working with families to manage living with kidney disease and the hospital environment.
Lucy supports children and families at all stages of kidney disease, right through to kidney transplantation and beyond. Lucy works with both the children and their parents and understands that they often approach situations in very different ways; while parents may be looking to the future, children are often more interested in what they might be doing tomorrow. Lucy also uses psychological solutions, such as distraction techniques, to help children cope with procedures or treatments while in hospital.
A large part of Lucy’s role is encouraging parents and carers to utilise their skills and previous parenting experience. She mentions that parents can often feel deskilled after a health diagnosis, and she works to support parents to use their previous strengths to continue the ‘normal parenting stuff’ and helping children living with kidney disease to feel safe and secure.
Seeing how resilient families can be through these circumstances is amazing.