Dr Vicky Sutton
Consultant Clinical Psychologist
Creating safety for children through relationships
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, Parenting and Practice
Hi, I’m Vicky.
At the heart of my work is a simple principle: healing happens in safe relationships.
When children have lived through frightening or overwhelming experiences, the world can feel unsafe. I offer a trauma informed, attachment focused approach that helps children and carers build emotional safety, strengthen connection, and make sense of behaviour through a relational lens. I also work alongside professionals and organisations around a child—offering consultation, reflective practice, and training to help create safer systems of care.
• build connection and trust
• strengthen emotional safety and regulation
• understand behaviour through trauma and attachment
Together, we slow things down, stay curious, and create space for repair, growth, and hope.
About Dr Vicky Sutton
Clinical Psychologist specialising in attachment and developmental trauma
Dr Vicky Sutton is a Clinical Psychologist with over 20 years’ experience supporting children and young people affected by developmental trauma.
Her work focuses on strengthening safety and attachment within the child’s key caregiving relationships, alongside the wider professional system around the family. She has held specialist roles with care experienced children across the NHS and Social Services, and has worked in independent practice since 2012.
Areas of work include:
• psychological assessment and formulation
• therapeutic intervention for children and families (attachment and trauma informed)
• organisational consultation, for example embedding Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) as a practice model
Her practice is grounded in the principle that children recover best within safe, attuned, and reliable relationships—and that supporting parents and carers is central to sustainable change.
If you are considering therapy, consultation, or an assessment, the following pages outline her therapeutic approaches and areas of specialist work.
DDP Training & Workshops
Creating safety for professionals, carers, and the systems around children
When Relationships Feel Safe, Healing Happens
Therapeutic Interventions
Core Approaches
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) and Trauma Informed Stabilisation Treatment (TIST)
What is Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP)?
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP)
A relationship focused therapy for children with attachment difficulties and developmental trauma
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), developed by Dr Daniel Hughes, is an evidence based, attachment focused approach for children who have experienced abuse, neglect, and disruptions in caregiving relationships.
DDP focuses on strengthening the emotional connection between a child and their parent or carer. Therapy works primarily with parents and carers, supporting them to understand behaviour through the lens of trauma and unmet attachment needs, and to share this understanding with the child in a safe, developmentally appropriate way.
Through these ongoing, reciprocal and intersubjective interactions, children begin to experience relationships as safer and more predictable. These experiences form the foundations of attachment security.
Parents and carers are supported to develop therapeutic parenting skills and to adopt an attitude of PACE — Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy. This approach helps children feel emotionally safe enough to share, both verbally and non verbally, deeply distressing somatic (body based) memories from their traumatic past.
Within this safe relational space, children are supported to develop a more coherent narrative of their experiences. This process gently challenges entrenched beliefs of self blame and worthlessness, allowing children to reframe their past in ways that recognise their strengths, resilience, and adaptive survival responses. Over time, children learn to trust, feel safer in relationships, and develop a stronger, more integrated sense of self.
For more detailed information, please visit:
https://ddpnetwork.org/about-ddp/dyadic-developmental-psychotherapy/
What is Trauma Informed Stabilisation Therapy (TIST)?
Trauma Informed Stabilisation Treatment (TIST) was developed by Dr Janina Fisher, a Clinical Psychologist based in the United States. It is a trauma informed, integrative therapeutic approach designed to address severe trauma related symptoms, including self harm, suicidality, dissociation, and addictive or high risk behaviours.
TIST is grounded in the understanding that behaviours often described as “unsafe” or “maladaptive” are, in fact, instinctive survival responses that developed in the context of overwhelming or life threatening experiences. Rather than attempting to eliminate these responses, TIST helps individuals develop a compassionate and curious relationship with the parts of the self that learned to survive when no safer options were available.
Early trauma, particularly within caregiving relationships, can create a profound biological and psychological dilemma for children. When the caregiver is also a source of fear, opposing survival responses are activated simultaneously: the need to attach and the need to protect oneself from threat. In infancy, when fight or flight responses are unavailable, dissociation becomes a primary means of survival.
Over time, repeated traumatic experiences can lead to increasing fragmentation of the personality, with different parts of the self organised around distinct survival states — such as Fight, Flight, Freeze, Submit, and Attach — alongside parts that manage everyday functioning. TIST draws on the structural dissociation model, alongside sensorimotor psychotherapy, neuroscience, attachment theory, and intersubjectivity, to help individuals safely recognise, stabilise, and work with these parts rather than being overwhelmed by them.
Therapeutic work within TIST is carefully paced, with a strong emphasis on stabilisation, safety, and respect for the protective function of all parts of the self. Clients are supported to differentiate present day experiences from trauma driven, “here and now” body and emotional memories, gradually increasing choice, agency, and self compassion.
“Trauma Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) is a trauma informed parts approach to therapy. In TIST, we work with the ‘living legacy of trauma’: the emotional and somatic memories held by young parts of the self and experienced as here and now reality by our clients.”
— Fisher (2017)
For more information, please visit:
https://janinafisher.com/tist/
Integrating DDP and TIST
DDP and TIST share a common theoretical foundation, drawing on attachment theory, intersubjectivity, neuroscience, and an understanding of trauma as held not only in memory, but in the body and nervous system. This shared framework allows both approaches to be integrated in a thoughtful and coherent way.
By integrating TIST with DDP, therapy remains focused on the parent–child relationship, while also recognising that this very relationship may activate trauma organised survival responses within the child. Therapeutic work therefore attends both to the relational space between parent and child, and to the child’s internal experience, supporting all parts of the self with the same attitude of PACE.
This integrated approach enables therapy to proceed at a pace that prioritises safety and stabilisation, particularly for children who have experienced severe, complex, or relational trauma, and for whom connection itself can feel threatening.
My Experience
Since completing my training in Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) in 2010, I have embedded this model into all aspects of my clinical practice.
I previously held a specialist NHS post supporting looked after and adopted children, their families, and the professional systems around them. This role involved close collaboration with social care, education, and health professionals, and provided extensive experience of working within complex multi agency contexts.
I continue to engage in ongoing training and specialist supervision, deepening my understanding of trauma, attachment, and dissociation, and refining the skills required to support children and families in their healing journey.
“Although unspeakable, unimaginable horrors are done to children throughout the world, you cannot kill the child’s soul. Though it may only be a dimly flickering light, we have a duty to create safety enough to fan those flames into an inferno of blazing potential.”
— Goodwin, Sutton & Ryan (2022)
— Vicky
Reflective Practice Consultation & Supervision
Core approach: Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP)
Dr Vicky Sutton has been a certified Consultant in Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) since 2016. She offers supervision and consultation to professionals working with developmentally traumatised children across health, social care, education, and therapeutic settings.
At the heart of her consultation work is the belief that safety must exist at every level of the system — for carers, professionals, leaders, and ultimately for the child.
Alongside individual consultation, Vicky has supported many practitioners through the DDP certification pathway, including those training to become DDP Practitioners, Consultants, and Trainers themselves.
In addition, she provides ongoing consultation and reflective practice support to organisations, both large and small, who are seeking to embed trauma‑ and attachment‑informed approaches within their systems and cultures.
Organisational Consultation
Vicky is currently working in partnership with Wiltshire Local Authority, who have an ambitious and values‑led plan to embed DDP as their core practice model within their Fostering and Kinship Teams.
This includes:
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DDP Level One and Two training for all social care professionals
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PACE training for foster and kinship carers
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Ongoing DDP consultation and supervision for professionals and carers
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A wider programme of trauma‑ and attachment‑informed training delivered by skilled professionals who regularly access DDP consultation
This sustained and reflective approach has contributed to Wiltshire achieving an “Outstanding” OFSTED inspection, with specific recognition of the quality of training and consultation provided to foster and kinship carers and the professionals who support them.
Vicky is proud to be supporting Wiltshire Local Authority on their journey towards DDP Partnership status.
My Experience
“Supporting others to adopt DDP as their practice model—both individually and within organisations—has become increasingly important to me.
At the heart of DDP is the experience of safety. This begins with creating a sense of safety for parents and carers, who can then extend this experience to the child. However, parents and carers can only offer safety to their children when they themselves feel held, supported, and safe within the networks around them.
The DDP Consultant can play a vital role in bringing these networks together—social workers, teachers, mental health professionals, and family members alike. By leading with curiosity, the consultant helps foster greater acceptance, empathy, and understanding of the different perspectives held within the system.
This PACE‑based stance creates the safety needed to find a way forward in often highly complex and emotionally demanding circumstances.
For parents and carers to feel safe, the wider professional network must also experience safety—from their service leads, managers, and supervisors. Providing DDP‑informed consultation to professionals in leadership roles is therefore crucial. DDP offers a practice model where safety can permeate the entire organisation, from senior leadership to the child who remains at the centre of the work.
This is DDP practice at its best.
In today’s world, the resources available to support our most vulnerable children are increasingly stretched. Colleagues across social care, education, and mental health face extraordinary challenges as they strive to provide thoughtful, high‑quality therapeutic support for children who have experienced relational trauma.
In my consultation sessions, I am continually inspired by the compassion, skill, and dedication that professionals bring to this work. If I can play even a small part in supporting them to feel safer, more connected, and more resourced in their roles, I feel deeply grateful.”
— Vicky
DR VICKY SUTTON
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