Child Development Costa del Sol
Social-Emotional
& Neurological Development
Victoria Howard
Shine Family Therapy and Behaviour Specialist
Victoria Howard is our Family Therapy and Behaviour Specialist. Over the past 12 years, she has dedicated her career to helping children and young adults make the best of their education and to make sense of the world around them.
Her education is in Child Psychology, main stream Psychology, Social Care, Teaching, and is a qualified Counsellor and CBT Practitioner. As well as her extensive education and work experience, Victoria has also had the privilege to live among various cultures in India, here in Spain, and the UK.
The combination of her education, life experience, and evidence based therapy methods makes Victoria a supportive, non-judgemental and valuable practitioner.
As well as working with families to be the best they can, Victoria is also a Psychology Professor, working to make the best of our next generation psychologists! In her spare time, she enjoys quality time with her 2 children and Spanish family
Hayley Firman
Shine Sleep Specialist Consultant
Hayley is a psychology specialist and child and baby Sleep Consultant with experience guiding a range of ages and needs into fantastic sleep. Her approaches are all gentle, and reassuring – tailored to the specific need of the child.
Hayley has come from a place of sleeplessness herself – with her own son Milo not sleeping for 12months. This encouraged her to leave her job teaching to retrain and ensure that no other family had to feel the pain that goes along with unnecessary sleep deprivation.
​
Her mission is simple to provide a service that makes SENse around sleep and ensure that families are well rested and enjoying each other.
In her spare time Hayley can be found painting, at the beach with her 2 kids or pottering in her vegetable patch.
​
“My son is now getting the sleep he needs, and I have my sanity and freedom back, it’s nothing short of a miracle!”
Dr Sara Sopena, BA, PGDip, MSc, DClin.
Shine Chartered Clinical Psychologist Consultant
Dr Sara Sopena is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist with extensive experience of working with families with children with emotional, behavioural and/or learning difficulties. She has worked both doing psychological research and clinical work in different mental health NHS settings and has contributed to the development of well known neuropsychological assessment test batteries.
​
Dr Sopena has experience in carrying out complex assessments to help families understand the difficulties they might be facing and develop evidence base interventions to best suit their needs. She can offer general assessments of common psychological difficulties (e.g., anxiety, depression) as well as more specialist services such as diagnostic (Autism Spectrum Disorders and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and cognitive/learning assessments.
She is trained to offer different evidence based therapeutic approaches which are tailor-made to the need of the child and family. These include Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Narrative Therapy, Behavioural Therapy and Neurorehabilitation.
​
Dr Sopena can also offer assessment and therapy to Spanish speaking individuals.
​