Jess van der Hoech

As a young, single parent, Jess van der Hoech began her career by volunteering for her local Citizens Advice Bureau while attending night school to gain a diploma in Law. After gaining her qualification, Jess started her first paid role as an outreach adviser for CAB in the National Probation Service. This was where Jess's interest in the impact of trauma first began to develop. Jess went on to work and volunteer in Victim Support, supporting clients in the immediate aftermath of traumatic experience, quickly working her way through training, until she was supporting people who had been witness to or subjected to extreme violence and high risk and complex situations. Jess wanted to take this training further and after qualifying as a counsellor in 2014 she focused her continuing professional development on the impact of early trauma, fast becoming a specialist in this area. After discovering the need for a service in her local area that provided specialist trauma treatment therapy for children and young people, Jess founded 'The Gap (Bedfordshire) Limited'. These Three Words is Jess's first independent publication and her second book. It follows What a Muddle (ISBN 978-0995617803), a therapeutic workbook for children struggling with emotional regulation, which she co-wrote with Dr. Renée Marks in 2016.