Dr Barley Birney

Barley is a Chartered Educational Psychologist with over 25 years’ experience working in local authority services, including as a Principal Educational Psychologist, Head of Service and Consultant.

Her work includes delivering psychological supervision, leadership coaching, and consultancy, as well as facilitating training in areas such as Reflective Supervision, Trauma-Informed Practice and Person-Centred Planning. She is particularly skilled at supporting professionals and senior leaders working with complexity in emotionally demanding roles.

Barley has worked across a wide range of settings including Local Authority Educational Psychology Services and Specialist Teaching Services, Children’s Centres, Social Care, Health, and Education. She has a strong background in safeguarding, having acted as Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) for two services. She also provides leadership support and coaching for leaders in the Voluntary Sector Organisations delivering support for women and girls.

Barley led a long-standing project delivering psychology service for SureStart Children’s Centres in Tower Hamlets, where she also managed and co-delivered a borough-wide Person-Centred Planning project. Her doctoral research explored young people’s experiences of person-centred planning. She is an accredited Video Interaction Guidance (VIG) practitioner and has embedded relational and strengths-based practice throughout her work.

She has developed and delivered training on topics including emotionally based school non-attendance, suicide prevention, resilience-building for staff teams, emotional regulation, PERMA wellbeing model, and safeguarding against child criminal and sexual exploitation. She was part of the DfE-funded Violence Reduction Taskforce and supported trauma-informed practice development in Enfield schools.

Barley has provided professional supervision since 2007 and has received training in supervision from the Tavistock Centre, BRIEF (Brief Therapy Practice), and other nationally recognised providers. She is also an ILM Level 7 qualified coach and integrates psychological insight with leadership development in her work with senior professionals. She has extensive experience supporting individuals and organisations to reflect, grow, and lead with purpose.

Barley’s main areas of expertise are:

·         Psychological Supervision,

·         Coaching and Mentoring

·         Reflective Practice and Staff Support

·         Leadership and Management

·         Systemic and Strategic Thinking and Working with Complexity

·         Evaluation and Service Development

·         Person-Centred Planning and Participation

·         Trauma-Informed Practice

·         Strengths-Based and Relationship-Centred Approaches

·         Early Years and Children’s Centres

·         Video Interaction Guidance (VIG)

Professional Qualifications and Accreditations

BA (Hons) Experimental Psychology – University of Oxford
PGCE – University of Cambridge
MSc in Professional Educational Psychology – Institute of Education, University of London
Doctorate in Educational and Child Psychology – Tavistock Centre/ University of Essex
Registered Practitioner Psychologist (HCPC) and Associate Fellow of British Psychological Society (AFBPsS)

ILM Level 7 Certificate in Executive Coaching and Mentoring

Accredited VIG Practitioner - AVIGuk