I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.
The CreateCATT team of global consultants and advisors
Bringing best practices to the children who need it most
Caroline Essame
CEO and Founder
Caroline is a British Occupational Therapist and creative arts therapist with a Masters Degree in education specialising in play-based learning. She has worked for over 40 years in the field of creativity and human development, with experience in health, welfare and education services in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the UK, the Philippines and India. Based in the UK she is the pioneer of CreateCATT Developmental Play and works school-aged children with special needs as well as teaching at Singapore University of Social Sciences. She is a consultant for Deepti special school in Kerala, India, on the board of TAPAS, Bangalore and is an award winning international trainer and author of "Why Play Matters" and teh upcoming "Why Nature Matters"
Caroline Clay
Director of Operations
Caroline is an occupational therapist with over 40 years’ experience in disability, welfare, health, education and management. She has worked as a senior manager and has won a leadership award for innovative practice within health and social care. She works with children with extreme challenges and special needs in the UK and is a trained sensory processing specialist. Caroline is Chair of the Candle for India Charitable Trust which supports special needs services in India and is a global consultant with CreateCATT training across Asia and in the UK.
Dr Andrew Duffy
Director of Communications
Andrew was an assistant professor of journalism studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and is now a trainee teacher in the UK with the organisation Teach First. He has worked in communication for over 35 years, and has a PhD in communications and new media from the National University of Singapore. His undergraduate degree is in English from the University of Oxford, and he worked as a journalist and editor for 15 years and recently received a Masters in Writing for Young people from Bath Spa University. He is the Director of Communications for CreateCATT and advisor on teaching creatively for secondary school children.
Advisors, consultants and affiliates
Erica Neve
Erica has a background in education, design thinking and bio-leadership. Her practice embraces nature-informed regenerative methods to help people reconnect with nature, develop their wellbeing, knowledge, leadership, and skills. Erica serves on the board of The Eden Project, a global organisation that promotes public education about the natural world and is also the board adviser for AimHi Earth, a climate and nature education, communication and technology business that trains in nature and green skills. She is the business development consultant and impact advisor for CreateCATT and works with the company to minimize Nature and Nurture Deficit Disorder in the UK and across the globe through the model of Developmental Play.
Monaliza Guce
Monaliza is the Director and owner of Kaleidoscope Therapy & Learning Center. She is a licensed occupational therapist in the Philippines and Oregon, USA. For the past 20 years, Mona has devoted her career working with exceptional children and promoting inclusion of these children into our society, as an occupational therapist and early educator. She worked in Singapore for seven years and was the head of Early Intervention Programme for five years. Mona is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Occupational Therapy and is involved with research into inclusion programmes and Developmental Play.
Emma Dunn
Emma has over 35 years of experience in education in the UK. She has worked as a SENCO in a nursery for children with special educational needs, and developed, managed and taught in a nursery for a Sure Start Children’s Centre. Emma also co-developed and ran an education centre for home-educating families in the south-west region. Emma went on to train and work as a Developmental Therapist for BIBIC; a national charity for children with special educational needs. Now as an Occupational Therapy Assistant, Emma is supporting the delivery of developmental play across schools for children with special educational needs.
Dr Suvi Pitkola
Suvi is a Finnish Occupational Therapist and Music Therapist based in Singapore. She is Director of Mighty Oaks Pre-School, the first Floortime School to be registered in Asia and also Co-Director of Kaleidoscope Therapy Centre. She has a Masters in counseling, the Advanced Level Certificate in DIR Floortime and a Ph.D. thesis on sound therapy and autism. Caroline and Suvi developed the first creative arts therapy network in Singapore in 2002, working on the launch of the Art Therapy Masters in 2004 and the first Creative Arts Centre for children with autism in Malaysia 2013.
Ying Li Looi
Ying graduated from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia with a Bachelor of Arts in Professional Communication majoring in TV Production. She produces corporate videos for clients including Singapore Airlines, SingTel, Singapore Tourism Board (STB), Media Development Authority (MDA), British High Commission, SingHealth, Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) and Community Development Council (CDC). A scriptwriter, director and editor she mixes her interest in social media as a multi-channel tool to craft forward-thinking and creative productions and develops the online content for CreateCATT.
Barnaby Duffy
Barnaby Duffy is British artist and legal advisor raised and educated in Singapore who studied English (with film) at the University of Exeter in the UK. Illustrator of concept art and comic strips, with completed commissions ranging from professional companies to student magazines and previous work for a documentary crew . He is the animator and illustrator of all CreateCATT graphics.
Sue Allen
Sue Allen is a Children’s Occupational Therapist, postgraduate lecturer, clinical researcher and author. Based in Singapore her clinical work aims to increase participation in home, school and community environments and she specialises in working with families and children with developmental challenges. She is studying for her PhD at Reading University, Department of Psychology looking at mechanisms to support families of children with sensory processing and integration difficulties and she is also a published author of several books and articles. She was awarded the Sensory Integration Network (UK and Ireland) Fellowship recognising her contribution to the field.
Professor Sue Jennings
Professor Sue Jennings is an anthropologist and pioneer drama therapist, play therapist and storyteller based in Malaysia and the UK. Her work for the past 40 years has mainly been developing play, theatre, and attachment-based interventions with people with special needs, especially those at the margins of society. Her doctoral fieldwork was in the Malaysian rainforest where she lived for 18 months with her three children, studying the Senoi Temiar people. She has held academic appointments at universities in the UK and was recently awarded a visiting professorship at Taiwan University of the Arts. She also works as a trainer in neuro-dramatic play in Malaysia, and has published over 40 books.
Dr Susan Mathew
Susan is the Director of Deepti Special School and Rehabilitation Centre in Kerala, India. She has a PhD in Theology from the University of Durham, UK, and is the mother of a child with cerebral palsy who was her inspiration for developing services for children with special needs and their families at Deepti, which started in 2009. Based in India, she teaches at the Department of The New Testament at Faith Theological Seminary in Manakala, Kerala, with a special interest in theology from a disability perspective. Susan has a Bachelors in Special Needs Education from India, and has been working for the past seven years integrating creative play and innovative integrated practices into the work at Deepti.
Clive Essame
Clive Essame is the inspiration for much of the work of CreateCATT. Born with a disability he was a passionate advocate for life in all its diversity. A horticulturalist, a playwright and an artist he also worked with people with challenges through the arts and nature constantly bearing testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit and the right of everyone to creativity and play. As his sister I dedicate my social enterprise to his memory.
