Sophia Idowu
Qualified Play Therapist & Creative Psychotherapist
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Sophia Idowu
Qualified Play Therapist & Creative Psychotherapist
Sophia Idowu is a Qualified Play Therapist and Creative Psychotherapist with over a decade of experience working with children, young people, and families. Her background as a Social Care Worker in child and adult residential settings gives her a deep understanding of complex family dynamics and the many ways adversity can shape a young person’s emotional world. She works with children and adolescents aged 4 to 18 years old.
Sophia holds a Master of Arts in Creative Psychotherapy and Play Therapy from the Children’s Therapy Centre, Ballymore, bringing a rich, integrative foundation to her practice.
She offers a child-centred space where young people can explore emotions, worries, and experiences at their own pace. She meets each young person where they are, curious, unhurried, and fully present, creating a space where they feel truly seen, accepted, and free to express themselves.
Contact Sophia Today
Sophia Idowu is a Qualified Play Therapist and Creative Psychotherapist with over a decade of professional experience. She specializes in working collaboratively with children, young people and their families. Drawing on her background as a residential Social Care Worker, she possesses a deep understanding of complex family dynamics.
You can contact Sophia by phone, email or by completing the form on this page. I look forward to speaking with you soon.
Contact Sophia by Phone
You can call us on 0906 455 302
Contact Sophia by Email
You can email Sophia on contact@athlonecareclinic.ie
Contact Sophia
Therapeutic Approach
Sophia’s work draws on multiple modalities of Creative Psychotherapy, using play as the central pathway through which these approaches are woven together. Sessions may incorporate expressive arts, sandtray, storytelling, and other creative methods, always guided with sensitivity, safety, and respect for each child or adolescent’s individual needs.
Areas of Support
Sophia supports children and adolescents experiencing anxiety, worry and emotional overwhelm, specific fears and phobias including emetophobia, low confidence and self-esteem, and difficulties with emotional regulation and expression. She also works with anger and behavioural difficulties, attachment difficulties, grief and bereavement, and selective mutism.
Her practice extends to young people navigating school-related stress, family change, separation or divorce, trauma, and other difficult or challenging life experiences. She has particular experience supporting neurodivergent children, including those with a range of diagnoses and additional needs, children managing anxiety and loss of confidence related to chronic illness, and children in care, fostering, or kinship placements.
Sophia’s Specialist Areas
Play Therapy & Creative Psychotherapy for children and adolescents (ages 4–18)
Anxiety, specific fears and phobias (including emetophobia)
Neurodivergence & ADHD support
Trauma, grief & difficult life experiences
Attachment difficulties, behavioural & emotional regulation challenges
Parenting support & consultation
Parenting Support
Sophia offers dedicated parent consultations as an integral part of her work. She understands that when a child is struggling, the whole family feels it, and that parents deserve their own space to feel supported, informed, and empowered.
Sophia works from the understanding that parents are secondary clients in the therapeutic process. While the child remains at the centre of the work, parents are not on the outside looking in. They are active, valued participants whose understanding, wellbeing, and confidence directly shapes their child’s experience at home and beyond.
Sophia has a particular interest in supporting parents who feel their child is not fully understood, whether by schools, other services, or sometimes even within the family. She works alongside parents to make sense of their child’s unique way of experiencing the world, building connection and practical strategies that fit their family, not just in the therapy room, but in everyday life.
Parent consultations are available as a standalone support, alongside a child’s therapy, or woven into the therapeutic process, whatever best meets the needs of the family.
Background & Qualifications
Sophia holds a Master of Arts in Creative Psychotherapy and Play Therapy and a Postgraduate Diploma in Play Therapy, both from the Children’s Therapy Centre, Ballymore, alongside a BA in Applied Social Care Practice. Her further training includes Sandtray Therapy (a trauma and developmentally informed approach), Teleplay Therapy and Advanced Teleplay Therapy, Play Therapy and Expressive Arts, Human Development and Play, Exploring Patterns and Behaviours, and Trauma-Focused CBT.
She has also completed the ADHD Clinical Services Provider (ADHD-CCSP) certification, focused on strength-based interventions to support young people with ADHD from childhood to adulthood.
Sophia is a registered member of the Irish Association of Play Therapy & Psychotherapy (IAPTP).
My Journey Into Becoming a Therapist
Sophia’s path into therapeutic work did not begin with a single moment of clarity. It grew steadily, shaped by over two decades of lived experience, professional dedication, and a deepening understanding of what it truly means to support a child through difficulty.
Her own childhood experiences gave her an early understanding of resilience, of navigating the world without always having the support she needed, and of how profoundly the right relationship at the right time can change a young person’s path. That understanding is not something she learned from a textbook. It lives in her, and it shapes every session she holds.
Sophia moved to Ireland over twenty years ago and built her life here from the ground up. That experience, of finding her footing in a new country, navigating unfamiliar systems, and discovering what resilience really looks like from the inside, stays with her in her work. She understands what it feels like to keep going when things are uncertain, to work hard to belong, and to build something meaningful in the face of challenge. It is this lived understanding that shapes how she sits with children and families who are carrying their own version of that weight.
Her professional journey began in 2010 in early childhood settings, before moving into child and adult residential social care, work that brought her face to face with complex family situations, trauma, and the many ways adversity leaves its mark on a young person’s emotional world. Over time, she found herself drawn not just to supporting children in crisis, but to understanding the deeper emotional and developmental landscape beneath their behaviour.
That curiosity led her to Play Therapy and Creative Psychotherapy, modalities that finally brought everything together: the science of child development, the power of relationship, the language of play. She completed her Postgraduate Diploma in Play Therapy and went on to complete a Master of Arts in Creative Psychotherapy and Play Therapy, building an integrative, evidence-based practice grounded in warmth, attunement, and deep respect for every child she works with.
For Sophia, this was never just a career change. It was a calling that had been quietly forming for years.
A Personal Note to Families
You are probably here because something has not felt right for a while. Maybe it is the mornings that feel like a battle, the silence when you ask how school went, or watching your child struggle in ways that seem small from the outside but are not small to them.
I have sat with many parents who reach a point in our first consultation where they simply cannot hold it together any longer. If that happens to you, please know it is not weakness. It is what love looks like when it has been carrying something heavy for too long without anywhere to put it down.
Children rarely arrive able to say what is wrong. They show us instead, through play, through silence, through what they choose and what they avoid. My work is learning to read that language, and gently helping them find their own.
I do not work in scripts or quick fixes. Some children need time to simply feel safe before anything else can happen, and I trust that process, even when it is slow. I have seen what that patience makes possible, children who find their voice again, families who find their way back to each other.
Parents are not bystanders here. You know your child better than anyone, even when it does not feel that way. We do this together, and you will leave each step a little lighter, carrying something practical, not just hope.
Whatever you bring into this room, you will be met with empathy, not judgement, and with the belief that things can get better. I meet every family exactly where they are, and I will walk alongside you from there.
