Beyond Psychology

Who we are

Beyond Psychology was co-founded by Dr Kirsty Hughes and Dr Louise Mansell in 2017 as a not-for-profit social enterprise. The business closed for trading on 28th March 2024, but our resources on this website remain available until March 2025, supported by GMCA and the Alex Timpson Trust.

Our Story

The emphasis was always about bringing Clinical Psychology knowledge and evidence together in an accessible way, to help improve the mental health and well-being of children, their families and those that work with them. Our primary focus has always been about providing children, families, schools and professionals with the necessary psychological understanding, support, intervention and training to help them enhance children’s mental health and essentially, support recovery from Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). The aim was to empower all in the process with understanding and related skills for sustainable change.

As a social enterprise, our drive has always been about focussing on social need, specifically developing a service that targeted building awareness of the impact of ACEs and the connected developmental trauma. Through the different areas of work and our experience, we know that people who have experienced ACEs do not have to become part of the associated negative statistics for the social, emotional and educational outcomes. Our experience tells us, that this does not have to be the case and that with knowledge, understanding, guidance on empathic ways of helping and managing young people with these experiences, the outcomes can be very different.

The Launch of Beyond Academy

Given the correct type of support and an increased understanding across services, we can help ourselves and others to heal and recover from trauma, not only impacting positively on the individual and the family, but also the wider community and society as a whole.

In 2022 we launched our Beyond Academy, a series of pre-recorded trauma informed workshops and related resources. The academy gives a really good basis for understanding the impact of trauma, but also considers how those working alongside children and young people can support healing through the interactions that they have. The academy has already successfully been rolled out to the workforce across Greater Manchester and will continue to be used to help their service wide trauma informed care programme. View the Impact Report.

The future of the Academy

Though we have now closed, our social impact mission remains a significant part of our drive. We have therefore welcomed funding from GMCA to keep the website available until March 2025, for people to be able to utilise the resources that we hope can continue to help the social impact mission we set up with at the start of our journey. Any money generated through people accessing the resources will be donated to the Alex Timpson Trust who help fund many fabulous projects for care experienced people and foster carers.

We know that all the work we have achieved since 2017 will continue to have a ripple effect for all those who have worked with and alongside us. We hope we have left a trail of compassion behind us that will continue to penetrate the areas in which we worked. We are delighted that our work will continue to have a social impact, both in the content of the workshops and also in supporting the Alex Timpson Trust.

Join the Academy