Hello
Current Roles
Adjunct Professor UCD School of Psychology
Clinical Director and Principal Psychologist at The Adult Autism Practice
Co- Director and Principal Psychologist at The Children’s Clinic
Author at Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Board Director (and founder and lead in Ireland) at Gig Buddies Ireland CLG
Advocate for Neurodiversity Affirmative Services
Background
Davida is a Chartered Educational and Child Psychologist with the Psychological Society of Ireland (Membership Nmb:M5129C) and an Adjunct Professor in the UCD School of Psychology and is a passionate advocate for the vital change to neurodiversity affirmative clinical services. She has been working with Autistic children and more recently adults for over twenty five years. She received her undergraduate Psychology degree from Trinity College Dublin and graduated with a 1st class honours from her MA in Educational Psychology, UCD. She is late identified ADHD.
In addition to setting up The Children’s Clinic and The Adult Autism Practice, Davida previously worked for the HSE for ten years, as a Senior Psychologist in Disability Services Carlow/Kilkenny and prior to this in HSE Beechpark Services, Dublin (providing specialist services to Autistic children).
She is a Board Member and spearheaded bringing the non profit Gig Buddies Ireland to Ireland, which aims to increase social inclusion for disabled adults.
Davida provides consultation and training (alongside her Autistic colleagues) in the area of neurodiversity affirmative services and autism identification (assessment) to a number of different groups and agencies including Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, the National Council of Special Education and the National Educational Psychology Service (NEPS) in addition to presenting training workshops and webinars at Psychological Society of Ireland and conferences.
In 2023, Davida was invited to present to the Irish government’s Joint Committee on Autism. See here to read a copy of her opening statement.
Davida has contributed to local and national media including Prime Time (discussing the importance of the regulation of psychologists) The Irish Times, The Sunday Independent, Newstalk, the Irish Independent, KCLR Radio and the Organisation for Autism Research as well as professional publications in The Irish Psychologist and the British Psychological Society journal.
She has written six books with Jessica Kingsley Publishers in the area of supporting Autistic children and adults. Her latest book written alongside her colleagues in The Adult Autism Practice and Thriving Autistic is called “The Adult Autism Assessment Handbook: A Neurodiversity Affirmative Approach” and is out now. ‘The Neurodiversity Affirmative Child Autism Assessment Handbook” is due out in 2025.
The Adult Autism Practice
Davida is founder and Clinical Director at The Adult Autism Practice specialising in strengths based, neurodiversity affirmative collaborative remote adult autism and more recently ADHD identification (assessment). The team at The Adult Autism Practice is a proud #ActuallyAutistic, otherwise neurodivergent and neurotypical mix of professionals.
The Children’s Clinic
Davida is Co-Clinical Director and Principal Psychologist at The Children’s Clinic.
The Children’s Clinic offers multi-disciplinary services (Psychology, Speech & Language Therapy and Occupational Therapy) to children 0-18 in Sandycove, Co. Dublin, with a strong speciality in the area of the Autistic experience.
Please note that although active within the clinic in relation to managing the team and supervision of psychologists, Davida’s caseload is currently full and she is not currently taking on new clients and does not operating a waiting list.
Gig Buddies Ireland
Gig Buddies Ireland CLG is a non profit (starting in Dublin) which Davida brought over to Ireland and is now a Board Member of.
Gig Buddies is a voluntary befriending service that pairs up adults with Learning Disability and/or Autistic adults with support needs in relation to accessing community events, with people with low to no support needs in this area to be friends and to go to events together (or just enjoy mutual interests, it doesn’t have to be events!). The aim of Gig Buddies is for people to have fun, connect, make friends, and do cool things that they both want to do.
The Gig Buddies project aims to make volunteering easier for people in Ireland by enabling volunteers to go to gigs and do things that they would already probably be doing anyway, but with someone who likes what they like, but who just needs a bit of extra support.
