When Jessica Hayes set out to build Reimagine Therapy, she wasn’t just starting a business – she was creating a service that would allow adults and young people to access therapy in her local area, without the waiting lists and restrictions of the NHS, and to make training and information available for those who needed it. She was also creating a service for parents navigating some of the most challenging chapters of family life. A devoted mum and experienced therapist, Jess specialises in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and perinatal mental health, amongst other areas. She blends professional expertise with lived experience, offering compassionate, evidence-based support for new and expectant parents. From her innovative “Ask a Therapist” service to a children’s book in collaboration with her son, she is on a mission to make mental health care more accessible for those that need it. Here she talks to The Natural Parent Magazine about the inspiration behind what she does, her biggest breakthrough, the challenges she has overcome, and her hopes and dreams for the future.
The passion: What inspired you to set up your business?
The passion was initially in the role I wanted, rather than having my own business. You’ll see below that I have been passionate about working in this field for a long time. The thing that inspired me to go into private practice and set up my own business was the work-life balance and being disheartened by the NHS and how therapists there have to work. I initially wanted to gradually build my business alongside working, but I wasn’t able to do this and be the type of present parent I wanted to be – I would have had to work over full-time hours to do this. So I took the leap. I spent months planning it and then had to choose when to end maternity leave, and carefully and gradually built up from there.
The launch: How did you start out in the beginning?
I have been working in the mental health field for years, always aiming to become a Clinical Psychologist (since my GCSEs). The route to that is really brutal and I was applying for the course each year whilst gaining more experience and living my life around it (I even planned my wedding in what would be the holidays for the course just in case) and I got fed up of putting off my goals of becoming a mum. So I had a rethink and decided to train as a therapist whilst working at a suicide prevention charity (Papyrus) and on mental health wards. I worked really hard, studying and working and doing a placement. And then towards the end of my course, I fell pregnant. I continued working and building therapy experience right up until maternity leave and then submitted a flexible working request, but they could only grant me 30 hours and then I would need to work in a different therapy job on top of that. I am one of those people that have always been incredibly passionate about being a mum, but also focused on a career – so I needed a better balance. I handed in my notice for work and then spent half of my maternity leave actually setting up my business.
The innovation: What was the biggest breakthrough for you with your business?
The biggest breakthrough for me came with positive feedback and with my first specialism. I initially accepted therapy work through third parties – people and companies going through solicitors and work schemes. This has a lower rate of pay and really hard payment terms – you often invoiced at the end of your sessions (so say, 12 sessions in 12 weeks – you invoice after the final one) and then you often waited between 1-3 months after this to be paid. So you are working for months without payment. Thankfully, people who I had seen this way were happy with my work and referred me directly to employers and friends, etc. And then I was able to get direct referrals. I then started to do further training in obsessive compulsive disorder because it interested me and I was seeing a massive trend of people who were mistreated and harmed in therapy by those who didn’t know how to work with it. Doing positive work with people with OCD resulted in my name spreading as a specialist in this area and I started to get more clients than I could take on. I focused on this for a while and then started to get a lot of new parents with perinatal OCD – which is even more misunderstood and mistreated than other forms of it, I found. I then wanted to combine my passion as a parent with my work and started doing more research and training into working with new and expectant parents, and this also seems to have resulted in spreading my name further and helped my business to grow.
Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
This is a hard one. Family life is extremely important to me and I am constantly warring with myself over wanting to push my business and wanting to be with my children. My home life is also a bit chaotic and makes the balance a bit harder than average I would say, because my eldest son is autistic and both him and my toddler are quite high needs. It means no guarantees of working after bedtime because they both often need a lot of support in the night. I found that I need to really schedule in bits of time when I can to do 1-1 time with my kids to help them to feel connected to me, so I can then do work when they are feeling more settled. I find the wider parts of my business the hardest to manage around family- I have dedicated times for my client work but the admin and training and all of the bits that help my business to grow take a lot more thought and preparation to fit in. I am currently answering these questions during a nursery settling session for my toddler- I brought my laptop with me and so I can work on this guilt-free! It is all about tiny changes and allowances, and thinking of what compromises I can make with work and family that still let me work and parent according to my values.
