Ruth Paris
        Coaching Support and Help for Teenagers

For over eighteen years now I have worked as a coach and counsellor, with professional qualifications in both areas. My focus is specifically on coaching, which concentrates on what the client wants now and in the future, rather than on what was wrong in the past.

During this time I have increasingly specialised in working with teenagers and young people, enjoying their energy, intensity and flexibility (qualities that are sometimes not immediately apparent!). I have two daughters, both now grown up, who gave me privileged first hand experience of the extraordinary delights and challenges of contemporary parenting.

Beginning when my children were little, I worked for fourteen years as a volunteer with the Citizens' Advice Bureau in Surrey, and remain grateful for their excellent training and supportive culture. I learned a lot from that experience; helping, coaching and counselling clients, many of them young people, from all sorts of backgrounds and with a wide variety of life circumstances and often serious problems, both practical and emotional.

In 1991 I co-founded a niche business consultancy developing leadership, team and individual performance. I specialised as an executive coach and mentor and continue to undertake leadership coaching since becoming freelance in 2002.

As well as a master's degree in Linguistics and Social Anthropology from Edinburgh University (1974), I have a counselling qualification from the University of Surrey (1992) and am an accredited NLP coach (1998) and master practitioner (1993). I was involved in the Parents' Network for several years at an early stage in its development. I am a member of the International Coach Federation and subscribe to their rigorous Code of Ethics.

As a professional coach I continue, of course, with my own personal development, undertaking trainings that interest and stretch me, while also having regular coaching and supervision myself.

I am based in a village near Farnham in Surrey, easily accessible from London, Guildford and Basingstoke via the A3 or M3.