Why I created CloseKin Therapy

Hi, I'm Jenny, founder of CloseKin.

For more than 20 years, I've worked with children, young people and families across NHS and private mental health services. Before becoming a child mental health nurse, I spent eight years working in special education, and today I combine clinical practice with my work in health technology, helping develop digital solutions for NHS mental health services.

I'm also a parent of a neurodivergent child, so my understanding of family connection comes from both sides — as a professional and as a parent.

Throughout my career, one thing has remained constant: what happens between therapy sessions matters.

Families can leave a session with insight, ideas and good intentions, but everyday life quickly takes over. The conversations we hoped would happen can be difficult to start, therapeutic homework can be forgotten, and by the next appointment another week may have passed.

I created CloseKin Therapy to help bridge that gap.

CloseKin Therapy gives therapists a simple way to guide parent–child connection between sessions by setting thoughtful questions, activities and check-ins linked to the work already happening in therapy.

It isn't designed to replace the therapist or turn family life into another therapy session.

It is designed to create small opportunities for parents and young people to talk, listen and understand each other a little better — in their own time and in their own home.

Because sometimes the most important therapeutic change doesn't happen in the therapy room.

It happens in the conversations that follow.