We wish her all the best in her future endeavours!
Sarah Sharpe is a registered Provisional Psychologist working in Calgary. Using a range of approaches hand-picked for you, your child and your family, Sarah can assist you in identifying your priorities and meet your goals.
Sarah was born in Newfoundland, and she grew up with a passion for helping people, especially children. After completing her B.A. in Psychology, along with a Certificate in Criminology, Sarah felt drawn to working with children who have special needs. She went on to move to Calgary and become a development and behavioural aide working with families who have children with special needs. 
From there she returned to school to complete her Masters in Psychology, specializing in Child and Adolescent development. After graduation, Sarah spent a year working in a school setting providing counselling to students as well as performing psycho-educational assessments. It was in the school setting that Sarah realized she wanted to support children and their families in their everyday lives.
Since then, Sarah has been consulting with families who have funding through FSCD, providing parent coaching, providing counselling to children, as well as performing assessments.
Sarah is interested in guiding you, your child, and family to discover as well as build upon your existing skill set to best manage the challenges you are currently facing–whether it’s a special needs child, working together as a family, helping your child through divorce, or helping you to better understand your child’s needs. By listening to your story, concerns, asking questions, and exploring different perspectives, working with Sarah will help you to understand yourself, your family, and your concerns better as well as develop strategies to meet your needs. Sarah is committed to using effective, warm, and well-researched approaches to help you meet your goals.
Sarah tends to use two different therapies, depending on her client’s needs:
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
CBT examines the connection between thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. When a change is made in one of these areas, it can positively (or negatively) affect the other areas. It can be difficult to directly change our emotions, for example. She may use CBT with a client to help them better understand how their thoughts, feelings and behaviors affect each other. Together, Sarah and her client will examine which element affect the pattern the most and work towards creating a healthy and positive pattern.
Applied Behaviour Analysis
ABA focuses on the principles that explain how learning takes place. Through the use of ABA, Sarah is able to help child clients replace negative and inappropriate behaviours with more appropriate and functional/positive behaviours. ABA techniques can be taught to caregivers in supporting the growth of their child.
When working with children, it is important to remember that their main job is to play and learn. Sarah is a believer that play has purpose and that many skills can be taught through play. Her goal when working with children is to teach, support, and help the child grow without the child knowing they are doing ‘work’. Essentially, she will make learning fun!
She also understands that it can be difficult for guardians to understand their child’s needs. Sarah works with guardians to assist in developing a better understanding of behaviors, diagnosis, as well as to help them find resources to support their child. She is able to perform a variety of assessments to explore the needs of the child and family.