Our Mission Statement
Roundabout’s mission statement is ‘Turning Lives Around with Dramatherapy’. In order to do this we subscribe to our core values:
Professional, Effective, Empowering, Supportive and Inclusive.
• Professional: all our dramatherapists are HCPC registered, which means they are fully qualified and DBS checked.
• Effective: our statistics and track record show the benefit of our work.
• Empowering: our work is client led, always listening and acknowledging and working from the positive.
• Supportive: we pride ourselves on the level of support we provide for our team, which in turn allows a high level of support for all our clients.
• Inclusive: we believe dramatherapy is a highly effective and accessible way of working therapeutically with people who have a very wide range of disadvantages, regardless of ability, ethnicity or gender.
Roundabout is the largest and most successful charity of its kind in the UK. We are unique in terms of size and years of experience, and the only organisation in the UK that offers tailor-made professionally facilitated dramatherapy sessions to such a wide range of clients.
Roundabout was founded in 1985 by Lynn Cedar and Deborah Haythorne, who are the Project Directors for the Charity. The Project Directors co-ordinate Roundabout’s work from the Charity’s Head Office in Croydon. There is a second office in Islington, run by Susan Crockford, for projects in the North London area.
Roundabout conducts long-term, short-term and individual dramatherapy projects with a range of clients. We work with individuals and groups of all ages. Dramatherapy involves verbal and non-verbal work and makes use of a wide range of theatrical and dramatic techniques, such as story-telling, story-making and enactment, improvisation, role-play, mime, puppets, movement, music and voice work.
The general aims of Roundabout’s dramatherapy sessions include:
- Building trusting relationships
- Expressing and exploring feelings
- Developing social interaction skills
- Developing artistic and creative skills
- Improving self-image and self-confidence
- Working with the imagination
- Creating opportunities and skills for self-advocacy
- Having fun
We also run staff workshop’s prior to starting projects and inset training for staff in schools.
Roundabout’s therapist regularly present their clinical work and research at conferences both throughout the UK and internationally.
Roundabout’s dramatherapists are registered with the Health & Care Professions Council (HCPC) and are checked by the Disclosure and Barring Service. The HCPC’s standards of proficiency for arts therapists can be viewed by clicking here:
http://www.hpc-uk.org/assets/documents/100004FBStandards_of_Proficiency_Arts_Therapists.pdf
We work according to the British Association of Dramatherapists’ Code of Ethical Practice, which can be viewed by clicking here
http://badth.org.uk/sites/default/files/imported/downloads/information/Code of Practice May 2008.pdf
and with a contract drawn up between ourselves and our clients. We are a registered charity, number 297491.
