A Warm Welcome!‍ ‍

LION Therapy CIC was founded to be a crucial safety net offering low-fee, longer-term psychotherapy for women who have grown up in care or have had a child taken into care. It offers the right kind of psychotherapy, delivered by suitably-experienced clinicians, at a price the care-experienced person can afford.

Will you be part of our Coalition of the Willing to change the cycle of deprivation and trauma and to reduce the numbers of children ending up in the care system? If so, please click on one of the links below:

Donate to LION

Become a LION Therapist

Refer Yourself/Someone Else

A Little History

LION Therapy CIC was started by Annie Pesskin, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist based in Oxford, UK, in March 2024. She was motivated to create a longer-term, low-fee psychotherapy service for women at risk of losing a child to the care system because she could see there was no service out there to meet this significant therapeutic need, while the costs to the individuals concerned, as well as to the taxpayer, are so very high. She teamed up with her two other Directors, both senior Social Workers, to incorporate LION Therapy as a CIC in May 2025.

Why We Are Needed

The latest Care Leavers Association’s report, Caring for Better Health (Department of Health, 2017) noted that:

“The Services and interventions must not just be quick fixes but provide lasting solutions. More focus needs to be placed on mental health which includes emotional well-being. Many care leavers we encountered did not have diagnosed mental health issues, but had serious well-being issues that prevented them from living life fully.”‍ ‍

Since publication of this Report in 2017, we have found no evidence that such a service has been set up, either at a local or a national level.  Care-experienced clients are often highly traumatised but cash-strapped, so they struggle to afford the type of clinician who can handle the significant challenges they present with the risk that their trust is misplaced once again.  

“It’s really f***ed up how Care Leavers end up being stigmatised, how there’s this taboo. And it doesn’t help to have been moved round like a piece of furniture, chucked out with your rubbish bags of all your worldly goods, treated like trash.” Anonymous, Care Leavers Association Report 2017

It is a truism that behind every number is a person.  But LION Therapy knows that every person who has gone into care has had trust in their caregivers shredded. LION’s aim is to ensure the care-experienced person builds a bridge back to safely relating with others. So they can thrive, not just survive.

Our Aims

Over the next 5 years, we aim to increase the number of women LION Therapy CIC treats from 3 to 15. It costs £2,000/year to treat each woman with LION Therapy’s offering. Depending on our fundraising, we hope to offer 5 new clients LION Therapy every year so that by 2030, we will have at least 15 women in treatment. To read more about how LION Therapy works, click here.

To read about a client who has already transformed thanks to the work they have done with LION Therapy’s help, click here.‍ ‍