“Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships.” Stephen R. Covey
How does LION Therapy work?
LION Therapy offers up to three years of weekly psychodynamic psychotherapy to women who are care-experienced and at risk of losing their child/children to the care system. Due to their own early experiences of domestic violence and parental abandonment, LION Therapy clients often make high-conflict relationships with their partners. This unfortunate situation results in Social Services’ involvement as children who witness domestic violence are usually taken into care for valid and understandable reasons. The mother is forced to choose between the man she feels compelled to stay with and the child she loves. This is a terrible situation and all too often only temporarily resolves when the partner ends up in prison (usually on a short sentence) or more permanently if and when the child is taken from their mother via a Care Proceeding.
Breaking the Trauma Bond
LION Therapy gives a care-experienced woman the chance to understand why she finds herself in abusive relationships and to change her relating patterns for the long term, so her child/children do not have to go into care and she can be the good-enough parent she usually is, when her partner is not in the picture causing distress and aggravation. The high-conflict relationship she forms has a lot to do with the fact that her partner is often care-experienced too, and/or suffered abuse from his/her parents in childhood.
“The tactic of intermittent reinforcement - to ignore, then pay attention to, then ignore again - lowers the bar for what constitutes affection, so the victim perceives themselves as diminishingly worthy of love. According to attachment theory, inconsistent and tantalising connection creates an intense anxious attachment to the abuser. Feeling unsafe and confused, all attention is focused on the manipulative attachment figure, rather than on one’s own experiencing self. This is trauma bonding.” (Narratives of Attachment, Danger and Survival, Karnac, 2026, p. 53)
LION Therapy clients who are trauma-bonded take time to learn to trust their psychotherapist and only once a bond of trust has formed are they willing to delve into their painful pasts to understand how these patterns of attachment formed and then to engage in the difficult work of changing their relationship patterns into healthier ones. This is why LION Therapy clients are offered up to three years of psychotherapy as this work cannot be done in a rush. But once this work is done, their risk of losing their child/children into care will diminish because they will no longer make trauma-bonded, high-conflict relationships.
Where do LION clients come from?
Clients can be referred through the Care Leavers’ Association, NHS primary and secondary care services (Complex Needs, AMHT, GPs), Social Services or Probation, or indeed by self-referral through the LION Therapy website. Suitability for LION is assessed by an emailed questionaire, followed by an assessment with the highly-qualified LION Therapist they will see for the long term to ensure they are in the right place to start the work, both psychologically and practically.
How do Clients contract with LION Therapy CIC?
Clients sign a contract laying out what they can expect from their LION therapist and what their LION therapist will expect from them when they decide to start weekly psychotherapy, which can last for up to 36 months.
LION Therapy clients must make a financial contribution for every session, according to their means, which counts towards the £50 the LION therapist receives. This is likely to be in the £5-£25 range. If, after 36 months, the client and therapist wish to continue the work together, they can contract to do so independently of LION Therapy CIC. Hopefully by this point the client will be successfully earning and can pay for their own therapy if they wish to continue in treatment.
Therapy sessions last 50 minutes, ideally in person, but clients can be seen online if they cannot get to every session in person.
Only psychodynamic psychotherapists who are 5+ years qualified are permitted to see clients funded by LION Therapy CIC. All LION therapists are responsible for abiding by the Ethics of their Member Institutions, who need to be regulated by the British Psychoanalytic Council.
All LION Therapists are offered group supervision on a monthly basis by LION Therapy’s extremely experienced supervisors, Dr. Gwen Adshead and Dr. Carine Minne, both of whom are senior consultants at Broadmoor Hospital, UK.
How is LION Therapy’s Efficacy Assessed?
To judge whether or not LION Therapy is effective, clients fill out the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire when they start and when they end, and complete an Assessment Questionnaire on a monthly basis, so LION Therapy can track changes in their mental health over the 36 months of treatment.
The Reflective Functioning Questionnaire is designed to demonstrate shifts in self-esteem. Self-esteem is a quality derived from two independent variables: 1) self-efficacy and 2) quality of relationships. Both these factors have a profound effect on whether someone can manage their emotions well (or whether they can’t and turn to unhealthy support mechanisms, eg. substance abuse, threatening behaviour or actual violence). These variables also determine how well they cope with challenges in their personal and working life eg. can they productively resolve differences with a boss/partner/child, thereby keeping themselves employed, in a relationship and parenting effectively.
A thorough evaluation of LION’s efficacy will be undertaken every 24 months of operation and the findings will be published on the website.
LION Therapy CIC expects a client to make deep and lasting changes in the kinds of romantic relationships they make (from abusive to supportive ones) so that their children can stay with them and do not need to be taken into care.
For an example of a client who made just such a shift in their psychological functioning, please read our Client Story.