Our Commitment to Community

At Thriving2Gether CIC, we strive to enhance the wellbeing of individuals and communities through compassionate, trauma-informed support. Our focus on empowering children, young people, families, and their carers ensures that everyone has access to the resources they need. We are dedicated to diversity, resilience, and inclusion, believing that every individual deserves support tailored to their unique experiences, particularly those affected by trauma and neurodiversity. Through our various services, we seek to foster emotional wellbeing and strengthen community connections for a brighter future.

Meet the Team

Marie Lupton

Marie is a UKCP-registered accredited psychotherapeutic counsellor and a Social Worker registered with Social Work England who works therapeutically with individuals and families. She has completed specialist training in Transactional Analysis (TA) and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), and also practices as an independent social worker and therapist specialising in fostering and adoption. Commissioned by a range of agencies, Marie provides support, consultation, and training to families, foster carers, and professionals working with looked-after children, using an attachment- and trauma-informed approach. She delivers Therapeutic Parenting training and facilitates supervision and reflective practice groups for carers and professionals. With over 30 years’ experience in fostering and adoption services, Marie is passionate about improving outcomes for children who have experienced early life trauma and believes this is best achieved by strengthening the quality, consistency, and accessibility of support for all parents and carers, including foster carers, adopters, kinship carers, special guardians, stepparents, and birth parents. In her spare time, she enjoys taking on new challenges such as crocheting, spending time with family and friends, and drinking endless cups of tea.

Sara Waldron

Sara is an Integrative & TA Accredited Psychotherapeutic Counsellor and Psychotherapist with a specialism in working with children and young people, alongside supporting adults. She is a trauma-informed practitioner and EMDR therapist who provides a safe, nurturing space where individuals can explore their experiences and begin to heal. Sara understands that children and young people often communicate through behaviour when words feel difficult. Using a creative, relational and developmentally appropriate approach, she integrates Transactional Analysis, trauma-informed practice and play-based interventions to support emotional understanding, resilience and growth. She is passionate about early intervention and works collaboratively with parents, foster carers, families, schools and professionals to provide compassionate, joined-up support that helps children and young people feel heard, valued and empowered.

Marie Lupton

Marie is a UKCP-registered accredited psychotherapeutic counsellor and a Social Worker registered with Social Work England who works therapeutically with individuals and families. She has completed specialist training in Transactional Analysis (TA) and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), and also practices as an independent social worker and therapist specialising in fostering and adoption.

Commissioned by a range of agencies, Marie provides support, consultation, and training to families, foster carers, and professionals working with looked-after children, using an attachment- and trauma-informed approach. She delivers Therapeutic Parenting training and facilitates supervision and reflective practice groups for carers and professionals.

With over 30 years’ experience in fostering and adoption services, Marie is passionate about improving outcomes for children who have experienced early life trauma and believes this is best achieved by strengthening the quality, consistency, and accessibility of support for all parents and carers, including foster carers, adopters, kinship carers, special guardians, stepparents, and birth parents.

In her spare time, she enjoys taking on new challenges such as crocheting, spending time with family and friends, and drinking endless cups of tea.

Sara Waldron

Sara is an Integrative & TA Accredited Psychotherapeutic Counsellor and Psychotherapist with a specialism in working with children and young people, alongside supporting adults. She is a trauma-informed practitioner and EMDR therapist who provides a safe, nurturing space where individuals can explore their experiences and begin to heal.

Sara understands that children and young people often communicate through behaviour when words feel difficult. Using a creative, relational and developmentally appropriate approach, she integrates Transactional Analysis, trauma-informed practice and play-based interventions to support emotional understanding, resilience and growth.

She is passionate about early intervention and works collaboratively with parents, foster carers, families, schools and professionals to provide compassionate, joined-up support that helps children and young people feel heard, valued and empowered.

Maria Ffoulkes

Maria is a UKCP-accredited Integrative Psychotherapeutic Counsellor specialising in Transactional Analysis, using an integrative approach tailored to each client’s needs. She has over 20 years’ experience working with care-experienced children and young people, supporting those affected by early trauma and its impact on self-perception and life patterns.

Maria has extensive training in areas including Child Sexual Exploitation, Criminal Exploitation, neurodiversity, and ARX, and has worked across multi-agency settings such as fostering, leaving care, refugee and asylum services, youth justice, CAMHS, education, housing, Corner House, and Mesmac.

She is passionate about listening to and validating people’s unique stories and works relationally with compassion, particularly with vulnerable children and young people. Outside of work, she enjoys walking, sewing, DIY, and spending time with her family, including her two grandchildren in Australia