I am Chiara Santin, Systemic and Family Psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer, Director of Rainbow Family Therapy Services (established in 2013) and Rainbow Community Projects CIC (2019). I have worked with children and families for more than 30 years, in Italy as a community-based youth worker and in UK as a professional. I am passionate about promoting affordable family therapy, activity-based therapy and ecotherapy i.e. using nature as a therapeutic tool to support children and families’ wellbeing and resilience. 

I have always been passionate about working with children, young people and families in the small community in Italy where I grew up. I moved to Brighton in 1998 due to the economic crisis in Italy where I was working as an accountant to earn a living. Coming to live in a different culture and learning a new language, though a challenging experience, has opened up many new opportunities for me.

I wanted to make my passion of helping families a profession so I chose Social Science and Psychology as my first degree at the University of Brighton which I completed in 2002. Then I started working with families in Social Care for 10 years. In 2008 I completed my clinical master degree in Systemic and Family Psychotherapy to build on my experience of working therapeutically with families.

In 2012 I left Social Care and became an independent psychotherapist to be able to use my therapeutic skills more effectively and more creatively. This is when I created Rainbow Family Therapy Services ltd. I started developing an expertise in providing therapy to adoptive families offering a range of services e.g.

• Family therapy,
• Child-focused work,
• Attachment-based therapy,
• Family Narrative life story work,
• Therapeutic parenting,
• Non-violent resistance parenting approach, and
• EMDR trauma treatment.