About Clare

About me

I have spent much of my career trying to understand what sits underneath a child's behaviour, what makes them feel safe, and what helps them to thrive.

I've worked in education since 2007, beginning my career as a secondary music teacher. I trained across Key Stage 2 and the secondary age range within the middle school system, and taught Music and Music Technology through to GCSE and A Level for 12 years.

Along the way, I developed a particular interest in pastoral care, working extensively with children in care and children who had experienced developmental trauma. I later joined Cambridgeshire Local Authority in Education Welfare, where my role took me across attendance, Early Help, Social Care and SEND.

I worked closely with schools, supporting them to navigate an increasingly pressured system, while working alongside children with complex developmental and environmental needs and families going through hard times.

I then moved into mainstream primary education as a Pastoral Lead, where my role grew to encompass attendance, wellbeing, behaviour, mental health and safeguarding. I've been a Designated Safeguarding Lead for seven years.

Qualifications & experience

Along the way, I've picked up a rather eclectic collection of experience and qualifications, including:

• NPQ in Leading Behaviour and Culture

• Advanced Senior Mental Health Lead

• Currently completing my NPQ for SENCO

• Training in STEPS/Therapeutic Thinking

• Professional development in developmental trauma and attachment

• PACE (Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy)

• FASD

Additional experience includes:

• Safeguarding

• SEND

• Attendance

• Behaviour

• EEBSA (Environmental and Emotional Barriers to School Attendance)

Music

Music has been a thread running through my life for as long as I can remember, but more than that, it has always been where I have found belonging. I grew up playing cornet in the brass band community and was, and still am, a total band geek!

I continue to teach singing and trumpet alongside my work in education. I've led contemporary choirs, bringing people together to sing, taken choirs to festivals and performed on stage at Lincoln Center in New York.

I'm still a working musician today, singing in a funk and pop covers band and playing trumpet in a soul band.

Music has given me some of my strongest experiences of connection, belonging and being part of something bigger than myself. That's a big part of why music-making will sit alongside the educational and therapeutic work at Nurture Studio.

Belonging

I am particularly interested in the space between therapeutic and behavioural approaches: knowing when a child needs connection and safety, when they need structure and clarity, and when they are ready to be gently challenged.

I believe we can be both deeply nurturing and highly rigorous — as long as whatever approach we take remains relational, compassionate and human.

Belonging Education has grown from that experience.

It is about creating environments where children don't have to spend all their energy trying to fit themselves into education, but where education can become flexible enough to meet them where they are.

And ultimately, this isn't about me.

My role is to bring experience, curiosity and professional knowledge to the table — and then work with children, families and the people around them to understand what might help.

Because when people feel trusted rather than judged, understood rather than questioned, and valued rather than defined by their difficulties, something begins to change.

That's where belonging begins.