Lauren Sayers

Lauren has worked in the field of mental health and wellbeing for over 7 years. She has seen people from many walks of life, some have been young and some have been older and they have presented with a wide variety of experiences and life struggles. When working with clients Lauren helps them to foster a sense of empowerment and courage to be able to face life’s difficulties independently. She has a calm, warm and delicate attitude, which is important when building a therapeutic relationship, developing trust and creating a safe and grounded environment. Lauren has trained in and has experience in approaches to working with people who have experienced trauma and supported such people as their whole sense of identity has been affected by what they have experienced.  She incorporates this understanding to work holistically with her clients and supports them to be in tune with how their distress is felt and expressed in everyday life.

Lauren has been at the core of all that EASE has done for the past 7 years since 2015. During her time at EASE Lauren has been involved in the recruitment and training of clinicians and creates a supportive and encouraging environment for EASE’s team members to continually develop their clinical abilities. As the senior project manager, she has developed their clinical training material, co-developed their clinical handbook, as well as conducted research and co-published articles. As part of EASE’s research team Lauren and others have won the IMEC 2017 Innovative Research award and the PCP 2018 award for ‘Ongoing Commitment to Researching Therapeutic Change’.

Alongside working at EASE, Lauren also volunteers for a charity supporting women and girls who have experienced abuse and violence and this has deepened her understanding of working with the clients at EASE as she completes her doctorate in counselling psychology.

Lauren has been able to combine her love of travelling with her volunteer work. Through a charity she volunteered in Bali for one month and was based in the first government funded mental health hospital, as well as in orphanages and schools, supporting Balinese children and adults. Working in an age appropriate and culturally sensitive manner is an important aspect of Lauren’s practice with clients and at EASE.         

Previously, Lauren has worked as a volunteer counsellor at Childline for two years.  An aspect of this role she found most rewarding was creating the space to listen to young people’s life experiences, witness their resilience and sense of hope and support them to make choices for themselves to create a better future.