Cathy O’Byrne won the ‘Positive Impact’ award earlier this month and expressed that it “means more than anything” to receive this recognition for The Swallow’s Trail.
The Swallow’s Trail is an online support service for parents to provide guidance and reassurance for families navigating child development, mental health, and behavioural challenges. Her platform celebrates parents’ innate power and fosters confidence through practical, evidence-informed support.
The name of the practice also has a beautiful meaning behind it. Cathy explained that “parents can come to me as often as they need for as long as they need, and very often they’ll return. You know, like the swallows, a year later or six months later or two years later.”
“Swallows are a sign of hope, renewal, love, loyalty, protection, guidance, resilience, and transformation. That was the name I had for my play therapy practice when I set it up. When I created this service, it didn’t feel right to change it.”
Cathy began her play therapy practice in 2012 and then completed her master’s degree in Adolescent Psychotherapy with a specialization in play therapy. Her practice had a variety of clients which resulted in long waiting lists. Particularly after the pandemic, she felt there was a “really overwhelming demand for support for children and teens” for both play therapy and psychotherapy.
She started to feel “limited by the capacity” she had in her private practice which sparked inspiration for ensuring that parents too, received the right support for themselves.
“I decided to just pivot and divert and create a new service, an accessible online service that parents could access, where they wouldn’t have to wait for support if they needed it and where they could get what they need in a timely, targeted way.”
“The inspiration really was to try to meet the needs that I was seeing in parents, and to try and make a timely response to that.
“We are living in a world where we’ve never been so flooded or overloaded with information about parenting, different ideologies, different ideas, rights and wrongs, do’s and don’ts, shoulds and should nots.”
Cathy wanted to ensure that closing down her practice in Shannon came to “a natural close” for her clients which took about 9 months.
In January of 2022, she began “building this service up from the ground again” and initially, there were struggles. She divulged that “It was tough at the start. It was almost like beginning again, from the seed.”
“I have a great network of colleagues in the therapy world because I worked as a play therapist and I work as a trainer for children’s therapists, so I know a lot of them are in the same situation. I’m very lucky that a lot of them began to refer parents who were on their waiting list to my service so that they’d have support in the interim.”
She reveals she may have been naive at the start, but Cathy undoubtedly built her parenting support platform from the ground up.
“Even with all that experience as a therapist and years and years of experience as a primary teacher I felt I needed to do a lot in the beginning to remove any stigma around parents asking for guidance as it can feel vulnerable to reach out for support.”
She also shared recommendations for parents saying that “because I’m a play therapist and I really believe in the power of play, a lot of my approaches to that are creative and playful.
“I love working with groups of parents as well, because I think my favorite thing is it can really take out that sense of isolation that parents can feel, when they’re in the thick of something really hard.”
The Swallow’s Trail has really become “a safe haven for parents” as Cathy O’Byrne has been successful in destigmatising parents asking for help.
This was recognised by the Female Founder Awards and she reflected on the “phenomenal sense of energy, celebration and collaboration” in the room.
It has “always been about the work and the kids and the families and really believing in parent power for me, to actually become the winner of the Positive Impact for 2025, I just can’t put it into words, genuinely it’s an honor and it’s humbling.”
She has received an outpouring of celebration and support and has received so many beautiful messages since her win and has left her feeling “so proud.”
She finished by sharing her advice for those who are starting out and noted the importance of “finding your tribe.”
“Of course, you’ll have bumps on the road, and you’ll have setbacks” but she believes the most important thing is to “hang in there.”
“If it’s something you really believe in and you have good people around you, it’s worth sticking at.”
Find more information about The Swallow’s Trail here.