Dr Dora Bernardes

Dr Dora Bernardes is an experienced Clinical Psychologist with a specialist interest in working with children and young people. She offers specialist psychological assessments and interventions to children and young people presenting with a wide range of mental health difficulties. This includes fostering and adoption therapeutic support for families and/or professionals.

Dora has worked as a clinical psychologist in a number of services in the NHS including Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, Child Development Centres, and Paediatric Psychology services in England and Scotland. Currently, she leads a Paediatric Psychology Service in the NHS, in addition to her private practice work.

Dora is friendly and creative in her approach with children and young people. She can use play and the arts (e.g., drawing, puppetry and storytelling) to engage children and young people in conversations about tricky subjects. She enjoys working collaboratively with professionals providing supportive and enriching clinical supervision, training and consultation to professionals and teams.

Dora has trained in Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (Level 1) and aims to proceed to Level 2. This approach supports children to develop secure attachment relationships with their parents/caregivers. Dora is very committed to work collaboratively with parents and professionals drawing on a number of approaches to support families. She often can draw on Parenting with PACE (Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy) to support families building close and strong connections and foster a healthy sense of identity, belonging, and resilience.

Recently, Dora trained in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with Young People; she also completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Evidence-based Psychological Therapies Practice with Children, Young People and Families at the University of Exeter. This course provided Dora with a deep knowledge of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) with Children and Young People.

Dora undertakes regular clinical supervision and is very passionate about keeping on learning to best support clients. She received the British Psychological Society Award for contribution to Clinical Psychology at doctoral level in 2012.