Gateway was launched in 2013

Founded by Dr Meryl Forse, Gateway Psychology has become one of the leading independent psychology services for children, young people and families in the North West.

As we’ve grown, both in team members and office space, our service has developed too. We are one of the largest providers of adoption support and assessment, and our highly qualified team are experienced in a wide variety of different therapeutic approaches. Our training course offering has grown too, and we now provide a range of in-house developed courses both online and face-to-face.

Timeline

2013: Dr Meryl Forse founds Gateway Psychology

Our founder, Dr Meryl Forse, was practising independently alongside her work with the NHS since 2007. In August 2013, Dr Forse made the decision to form Gateway Psychology Ltd. Six months later, we were officially registered with Companies House.

Dr Forse has worked in the Stoke-on-Trent area for many years, which is why it made sense to base Gateway Psychology in Tunstall. We rented a small property on Tower Square, although we soon outgrew the space.

In August 2014, we registered with Ofsted as an Adoption Support Agency. This cemented our expertise in working with children with attachment difficulties, giving us the right registration to provide therapeutic input to adoptive families and special guardians.

Our business quickly grew, and we made the decision to purchase a larger property. In March 2015, we moved across the square to The Boulevard. Our new premises had 5 storeys, providing us with plenty of space. However, we decided to completely renovate the space to make it suitable for hosting therapy, assessment and training sessions.

As our physical space grew, our number of people did too. We expanded our team of clinical psychology associates from 4 to 8.

We also did our first charitable trip to South Africa, delivering our TR-UST training to adoptive parents and carers in Port Elizabeth and East London.

To top off a busy year, we had our first Ofsted inspection in July 2015. We were rated ‘Good with Outstanding Features.’

We finished the first floor renovations in 2015, and continued transforming the space for the next 6 months. We officially opened our new space on 16 July 2016.

Our team continued to grow too. We added two new clinical psychology associates, bringing our total number up to 10.

While we had been working with associate staff for a number of years, we made the decision to hire our first employee in April 2017.

We also took this opportunity to formalise our business systems, investing in new software to deliver the best possible experience to our clients and customers.

Our team of employed staff continued to grow. By the end of 2018, we had hired 6 clinical psychologists, 1 psychological therapist, 3 administrative staff, a trainee psychologist and an assistant psychologist. We continued to work with associates as required too.

We had our second Ofsted inspection in September 2018, in which we were rated Outstanding.

We spent 2019 consolidating our team, our systems and our processes. We also took this opportunity to further develop our training courses, making sure we continued to provide the most up-to-date research to the families and organisations we worked with.

Alongside this, two of our clinicians embarked on a charitable trip to South Africa to deliver our TR-UST course to adopters, foster carers and guardians. This two-week trip included locations like East London in the Eastern Cape and Cape Town in the Western Cape. We delivered the training to over 100 adopters/carers/guardians during the trip.

Like most people across the world, the coronavirus situation affected the team at Gateway. On 16 March 2020, we closed our doors to face-to-face appointments and our entire team began working from home. While this unprecedented situation was challenging, it is a credit to our staff members that 80% of our work continued as planned. We got to grips with virtual working, coming up with innovative ways to keep providing support to the children, young people and families we work with.

We also took our TR-UST course online for the first time. Following the success of our first virtual eTR-UST course, we were commissioned to provide 9 additional eTR-UST courses over the summer of 2020, which were all facilitated under the emergency COVID-19 funding from the Adoption Support Fund.

While we returned to some face-to-face working, changing lockdown rules meant that we finished 2020 working from home again.

While the coronavirus situation was ongoing and our team began the year working from home, we were planning big things for 2021. We expanded our team of clinical psychologists and admin support staff to help deliver our goals.

We also bought a new building! We purchased the property next door to the existing Gateway building to help house our expanding team, as well as provide the space for training and video studios.

We continued to provide high-quality therapy and assessment services while developing our training offering. We developed and provided a range of webinar and e-learning options, along with longer courses to provide in-depth learning, theory and practical tips for parents, carers, children and young people.

In 2022, we had another Ofsted inspection. We were delighted to be rated Outstanding again by Ofsted for our work with adoptive parents and families.

OUR TEAM

Find out about our team of clinical psychologists, therapists and support staff.

OUR BUILDING

Read more about our specialist therapeutic space in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent.

CAREERS

Looking for work? Find out about our current vacancies and job opportunities.

FAQs

If you have any questions, read our FAQs for more information about working with us.