Natalie Bailey

Natalie Bailey is Programme Leader for PGDip/MSc Integrative Counselling and Coaching. She is a counsellor-psychotherapist and researcher-practitioner with over 16 years’ experience supporting individuals across private practice, the NHS, and further and higher education. Her work is rooted in an integrative, trauma-informed approach that values relationship, authenticity, and inclusion. In leading the programme, she draws on her clinical background to create a learning environment that is practitioner-focused, reflective, and responsive to the realities of contemporary therapeutic work.

Students can expect Natalie's teaching to be grounded, thought-provoking, and collaborative. She supports students in developing clinical confidence, critical thinking, and the capacity to work with complexity. Her teaching connects theory with lived experience in ways that are meaningful and applied.

Natalie's research explores trauma, identity, and the narratives of communities whose voices are often marginalised or misunderstood. She has previously focused on autism and motherhood, and her current doctoral research examines serious youth violence. She uses narrative inquiry to explore how lived experience disrupts dominant assumptions and creates space for new meaning and connection. She also supervises research in areas such as counselling in schools, cultural identity, and the physical and emotional realities of women's lives, including maternal experience, uterine health and midlife transitions.

Natalie has held national leadership roles in the profession, including serving as Chair of BACP. She brings this experience into her academic work, with a commitment to supporting ethical, socially engaged practice that responds to the complexities of people’s lives. She regularly speaks and writes about the evolving role of counselling and psychotherapy, and is committed to supporting ethical, socially engaged practice that responds to the complexities of people’s lives.