CCChat-Magazine_Issue-15

CCChat Interview
Sue Penna
Sue Penna is the Chief
Creative Officer of
Rock Pool Life CIC.
She has worked with
individuals who have
psychological trauma
as a result of adverse
childhood experiences
(ACEs) for over 30
years in her
professional life as a
clinician, trainer and
supervisor both within
the NHS and
independently.
Sue has written
trauma informed
domestic abuse
programmes including
the Inspiring Families
Programme, Adult and
Children and Young
People Domestic
Abuse Recovery
Toolkits and the
Sexual Violence
Recovery Toolkit.
Sue has also devised
the ACE Recovery
Toolkit written for
parents and the
ACE Recovery Toolkit
for children and
young people.
www.rockpool.life
S
ue
Penna specialises in writing psychoeducational
programmes that promote
trauma informed practice and a
recovery model and CCChat is delighted
to be able to interview Sue, to find out
more.
Min: Hi Sue, thank you so much for agreeing to this
interview, I’m really glad to be able to speak to you and
find out more about what you do at Rock Pool.
Sue: It’s lovely to be asked, thank you.
Min: Could you tell me a little bit about you and how
you came to start Rock Pool?
Sue: My background and training is in occupational
therapy. I specialised in adult mental health and also
trained as a counsellor. Most of the clinical work I did,
when I was in the NHS, was working with adults that
had experienced some sort of trauma as children,
mostly child sexual abuse. I left the NHS back in 2004
and became a domestic violence coordinator in the
third sector before it was mainstreamed into the local
authorities, back in the day when it was all voluntary
sector. I did that for a couple of years. I didn’t want to
go back to a mainstream local authority and so started
working on my own.
The world of domestic violence, bizarrely, started for
me, when I moved house and started volunteering. I
didn’t know anybody where I moved and saw an advert
in the local art centre asking for women interested in
sitting on a management committee of a refuge and
that’s where it all started. I went along and became a
member, I did that for a while and that was even before
I became a DV coordinator and it sparked my interest
and frustration around what happens to women really.
I was also volunteering in a refuge, another refuge, and
they wanted to run a programme for the women in the
refuge .
Making The Invisible Visible