Inside Compass’ Therapeutic Support Services

Every interaction, every plan, and every decision is shaped by an understanding of trauma, attachment, and emotional well-being. This approach ensures that children are not simply cared for but truly understood, and that the adults supporting them are held, guided, and empowered to make a lasting difference. 

Compass’s therapeutic services are guided by an experienced leadership team whose focus is quality, consistency, and depth of support across all regions and service areas. 

Clinical Lead, Samantha Keogh, oversees the clinical practice across Compass, supporting a wide network of independent therapists alongside a growing in-house psychotherapy team. Her relationship-first approach is grounded in empathy, compassion, and curiosity, reflecting a belief that meaningful change happens within safe, trusting relationships where children and adults feel seen and heard. 

Senior Therapeutic Manager, Natascha Stack, leads therapeutic services across fostering, residential care, parent and child assessment, and education. Her role is both strategic and deeply human, embedding Compass’ therapeutic model across all eight regions, maintaining high standards, driving innovation, and offering consultation in complex and high-risk situations when it matters most. 

Working alongside them, Therapeutic Development Managers support each service area day to day. Acting as a vital bridge between clinical leadership and frontline practice, they ensure therapeutic thinking is not simply discussed, but lived, felt, and experienced in every setting. Reflecting on the role of Therapeutic Development Managers, Natascha explains: 

Within Compass fostering services, therapeutic support is built around both the child and the foster carer, recognising that healing happens in relationships. 

Every fostering household is supported by a dedicated Therapeutic Practitioner who works alongside carers to deepen emotional understanding, explore behaviour through a trauma-informed lens, and develop strategies shaped by each child’s unique experiences. Regular interdisciplinary reviews and close multi-agency collaboration ensure that support remains joined-up, responsive, and centred on the child. 

For children with more complex needs, Compass offers an enhanced therapeutic fostering package. Alongside carer support, children can access individual therapy, shared planning, clinical reporting, and coordinated multi-agency input – creating a sense of containment, consistency, and safety during some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.

In Compass residential services, therapeutic care is not confined to sessions or meetings – it is woven into daily routines, relationships, and environments. 

Each home is supported by a dedicated Therapeutic Practitioner who works closely with staff to create trauma-informed, emotionally attuned spaces. This includes training in trauma, attachment, and emotional regulation, reflective practice groups to support staff wellbeing, and therapeutic group work that helps young people feel understood and less alone. 

Alongside this, young people can access individual therapeutic support when needed. Where appropriate, direct one-to-one therapy is offered in a way that is guided by each young person’s readiness, voice, and individual needs, ensuring care moves at their pace, not ours, and that support is there when it matters most. 

Compass’s Parent and Child Assessment Services balance clear, robust assessment with emotional safety. Therapeutic support ensures parents and children feel contained and understood, creating the conditions for honest reflection and meaningful outcomes. Therapeutic support includes: 

This approach ensures assessments are ethical, compassionate, and firmly centred on the well-being of both parent and child. 

Therapeutic thinking continues into Compass education settings, helping to create trauma-informed school cultures where children feel safe enough to learn, regulated enough to engage, and supported enough to grow. 

Within these settings, young people can access direct therapeutic support when they need it. Therapeutic Pastoral Leads work alongside education teams to offer one-to-one therapeutic and emotional support, group work, restorative spaces, and reflective practice. Through ongoing staff training and close collaboration across Compass services, care, education, and therapy come together seamlessly around each child – ensuring the right therapeutic support is available at the right time and shaped by the young person’s voice and needs. 

Senior Therapeutic Manager Natascha Stack says integrity underpins every therapeutic decision made at Compass.

Clinical Lead Samantha Keogh adds that this commitment requires courage, particularly when supporting children who have experienced trauma.

Both leaders emphasise that care sits at the heart of Compass’s therapeutic relationships. For Samantha, this means understanding the story behind behaviour and responding with empathy rather than judgement. 

Natascha highlights that this care extends to carers and professionals across the Compass Community. 

Together, these principles shape Compass’s therapeutic approach, ethical, brave and deeply human.