Adèle Fuller, 60, is a self-employed child therapist with a Master’s degree in Therapeutic Childcare. She has two children: Gareth, 38 and Sarah, 36. She lives in Berkshire with her husband David, 57, and their two dogs, Freddie and Flynn.
I’m usually woken up by sunlight shining through the curtains and the sound of the birds outside. David wakes up at a really unearthly hour, about 5.30am, which of course wakes me up at times as well. I’m not a very good sleeper. Once I start thinking about the day ahead of me I usually can’t get back to sleep.
The very first thing I do in the morning is feed and brush Freddie and Flynn, our Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. They are so adorable, but they cost a mint when they go to the vet.
It’s really daft, but I never used to have breakfast. I’ve been a Weight Watcher for the last few years so I know how important it is to have breakfast. On a normal weekday I have Marmite on toast and watch the news. I don’t have orange juice, but I have a cup of tea and drink lots of water throughout the day. When I haven’t got to go out early, I’ll have a boiled egg and Marmite soldiers, which is a treat.
In the land of the living I like to be downstairs and ready to leave the house by 9am. I have to be focused before I go out to do a session with a child. In my mind I have a plan about what I’m going to do and the different toys I might need for each child. I drive to work, but I don’t usually have to go very far.
I work with children who have difficult lives. They may be in foster care, being bullied at school, or sexually, physically or emotionally abused at home. Because I am self-employed, schools and social services contact me and ask me to help children, usually when social services’ own therapists are not available. Occasionally parents will have seen my name on the internet and personally ask me to help their child with any problems they may be having, because no one else has been able to help them.
The main way that I work with children is by using play therapy. I call these sessions my play and chat sessions. Play therapy is a very natural means of communication for children. I will go in and see a girl or a boy and if they are very young I will use play. I’ll take in puppets, board games, dressing up clothes, all kinds of things.
My day can vary. In the morning I could be seeing a six-year old who may have been abused by her family, and by the afternoon I could be seeing a teenager who wants to talk about nothing but boys, music and fashion. I have days where I’m doing quite a lot from hour to hour, and on other days I may not being doing so much contact work, but I’ll have reports to write at home, or meetings to attend with social services.
My friends think that because I work from home I’m there to just have a coffee and a good old chat. I don’t answer the telephone when they call. I can hear them on the answer phone asking me to pick up, or knocking on the door because they can see my car outside. I’m a really nervy person. Friends have come round through the back gate as I’ve been working, and they’ve made me shriek by putting their faces up against the patio window.
I fit lunch in around where I happen to be. If I’m at home I usually get hungry at about midday. For lunch I like corn on the cob, or a toasted sandwich with a bowl of tomato soup. At the moment my favourite food is pineapple. I cut up a pineapple and put it in the fridge so it’s really nice and cold.
I’ve been self-employed since 1991 and I still charge the same price for each session now as I did then. It probably seems incredibly stupid, but it means that I can see a child for a year instead of just six months. I’m still going to get money for those sessions, but that child has my input for that much longer.
The number of sessions that I do with a child, on average, is usually not less than three months. They can go on for over a year. It can take quite a long time to get to the situation where a child or young person can trust me enough to be able to feel relaxed in what they’re doing and saying.
I do find my job stressful at times and I sometimes feel that there is a lot of weight on my shoulders. Watching somebody else’s pain is not very easy when it’s a young person. You have got to be really strong. But it is a very rewarding job and there are a lot of happy stories. It’s not all doom and gloom. People say to me ‘How can you do your job? Aren’t you sitting there crying all the time?’, and the answer is ‘no’. If I was like that I wouldn’t be doing this job and I wouldn’t be any good to the children I work with. I chose not to retire because I enjoy my job so much.
I worked with one little boy for two years after he had been in and out of foster placements. When he was finally adopted, his adoptive parents threw him back in the pool because they couldn’t cope with him. By the end of the two years that I was seeing him, he had normalised and become a very well balanced and fairly happy young man. I had the pleasure and privilege of seeing him in later years and he was doing really well. It was amazing to think that I’d worked with him for all that time and people had thought that he would never make anything of himself.
I arrive home from work at 5.30pm and record a report of the day’s session, which can take a couple of hours. I’m a stickler for recording. Each recording includes the aim of the session, in other words, why I was doing that session and what I intended to find out that day. This is known as a process recording. It’s really quite detailed. I try to remember as much as I can from each session: what we did, what they said, how it went.
When I write my main report, which is every six to eight sessions, I will use the recordings as a basis for the report. I know that my recordings of the sessions are very accurate, so I feel confident about the accuracy of the main report. A lot of therapists don’t bother. They’ll write a few notes here and there and try to remember the sessions a few weeks later. That is not the way I work. I think it’s really wrong to do that.
I might’ve only seen one adult all day because I’m always around children, so I want a decent conversation when I get home. This can be difficult when David comes back from a busy day at work and wants peace and quiet.
I’m not a hermit type of person. I like where we live at the moment because it’s a village, but a busy village. The house and street itself are fairly quiet. I like the thought of not being miles away from civilisation. I like being around people.
I always make dinner when I come home. A typical meal would be pasta with fresh tomato and chilli sauce, or I might make lentils and rice. I don’t have a sweet tooth so I very rarely have dessert.
David never cooks. We’re both vegetarians, but I eat fish. I love fish. Every now and again I get so annoyed because David doesn’t like fish, so I tell him that I’m going to have fish for dinner and he can make his own meal. He makes out that he’s so desperately silly regarding cooking that I’ll feel sorry for him and give in and cook.
Some evenings David and I have friends over for dinner, or we’ll go to watch a play or a ballet inLondon. I used to do ballet, but not at this age. You wouldn’t want to see me bouncing around like the Sugar Plum Fairy elephant. The Nutcracker is probably my favourite ballet.
I really find it quite difficult to relax. By the time I’ve got to the relaxing stage, I’m absolutely shattered. I love painting and drawing, but I have to be in the mood and have enough time to do it. I’ve just had my latest painting framed. I also write poems and short stories. I’ve always wanted to write a children’s book. I don’t have time to write an awful lot though. I read before I go to sleep at 10pm to get myself into a relaxed mode, so my eyes get tired and I can fall asleep easily.
