An experienced specialist occupational therapist, Advanced SI Practitioner & director of Active Play Therapies. Anna set up Active Play Therapies 10 years ago, striving towards offering the best neuroaffirmative approaches and providing consultancy services to schools and organisations. She is particularly interested in working at a whole school level alongside SENCOs and senior leadership teams to create neuroaffirmative educational environments. She has set up and designed various sensory integration rooms and sensory spaces over her career.

Beth Smithson is an accomplished Occupational Therapist and Advanced Sensory Integration Practitioner. Her diverse career spans roles in the NHS, special schools, mainstream schools, community trusts, and NGOs overseas.

Beth's journey into sensory integration began with a Vietnamese NGO, where she spent two years educating staff in sensory integration theory and sensory-based interventions. Motivated by positive outcomes, she completed training with Sensory Integration Education in 2016, becoming an Advanced SI Practitioner.

In clinical roles, Beth applied sensory integration with children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) in mainstream schools and students with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD) in a specialist secondary school provision. Recently, Beth managed Occupational Therapy services in the NHS, successfully advocating for and embedding sensory processing and integration practice into routine NHS service delivery.

Committed to advancing sensory integration, Beth supports others in their learning journeys, empowering clinicians, parents, and schools to advocate confidently for sensory integration practice.