Elizabeth (Betsy) de Thierry, founder and pioneer of Trauma Recovery Centre (TRC), a charity with its flagship centre in Bath, has been awarded an MBE for Services to Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Trauma Recovery as part of the King’s Birthday Honours announced today.
Betsy founded the first Trauma Recovery Centre (TRC) in Bath in 2011 to help children and families recover from trauma, driven by the powerful message that ‘Trauma Recovery is Possible’. 14 years on, five Trauma Recovery Centre’s have operated across the UK and Channel Islands.
The Trauma Recovery Centre reports that an impressive 98.8% of children and young people see significant reduction of their symptoms through the TRFM® approach (Canterbury Christ Church University evaluation report[1]).
“I truly believe, and I’ve said this to her myself, that Betsy saved my life,” said a parent of a child who has attended the TRC in Bath.
“With [Betsy’s] vision, support and all the work she does – she made it so that the TRC has sessions that support parents, as well as the children”.
Alongside founding Trauma Recovery Centres across the UK, Betsy pioneered the Trauma Recovery Focused Model (TRFM ®), a clinical framework which facilitates recovery for those who have been impacted by a range of traumatic experiences, from single traumatic incidents, to complex trauma experiences, which result in trauma symptoms such as depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicidality and dissociation.
Betsy also wrote a parenting course for the parents and carers of children coming to the TRC, called Parenting the Traumatised Child. A parent who came to TRC with her children said, “It taught me from their parenting support videos that the things that happen on the outside with a child aren’t the same things that happen on the inside.”
Betsy’s recognition in the King’s Birthday Honours 2025 acknowledges her continued commitment and belief that every child, young person and their family can recover from trauma. It is this belief that has seen Betsy voluntarily give thousands of hours to the community, to build the organisation to be what it is today.
Today, Betsy is advancing the trauma recovery approach into sectors of society beyond the charity sector through her other organisation, Trauma Recovery Global, training 40,000 professionals in the Trauma Recovery Focused Model (TRFM®), in a mission to equip professionals and restore hope, and support more families in our communities. She has also authored nine books in trauma recovery, including her most recently published The Trauma Recovery Handbook. Together, Trauma Recovery Global and Betsy’s pioneering model, TRFM®, are a growing movement working to see children and young people free from the impact of trauma.
Heather Brown, General Manager of the TRC, commented, “It has been a privilege for TRC to have Betsy as our Chair of Trustees, who without fail, keeps the child at the centre of all that TRC does. Because of Betsy’s work they know that trauma recovery is possible and so do so many of the children and families that they work with.
“From all of the team at the Trauma Recovery Centres, they want to send Betsy a huge congratulations for such a deserved award.”
[1] Data calculated using a sample of 248 clients’ data.
