About us

Cinnabar Training is a family business run by mother and daughter. One is a seasoned counsellor and supervisor, one is a writer and trainee occupational psychologist working toward Chartership. Both are teachers.

We publish resources and hold one-day workshops for counselling students, practitioners, support workers and other professionals. Our aim is to provide value-for-money training combining practical activities, real life case studies, and high quality materials. We try to be challenging, innovative, engaging, encouraging, informative, and above all, relevant and practical.

At the heart of Cinnabar is a belief that counselling training in this country doesn’t do all that it needs to do.

We aim to inspire workshop attendees to “think around the corner” and develop the confidence to apply theory and research further ideas themselves. We aim for attendees to leave our workshops excited and ready to put something that they learnt into practice.

We set out to build something together and our relationship is constantly surprising us into new creative areas. We are very different people, but we are also very much the same.


Mo Smith

Mo Smith is a senior accredited counsellor and supervisor and a Fellow of the Counselling in Prisons Network. In addition to having a well-established private practice, she has worked in a prison since 2004, organising counselling for inmates and coordinating volunteer counsellors. 

Mo is a qualified teacher and has past experience of teaching counselling courses from introductory to degree level as well as Level 5 CBT courses. The Cinnabar workshops benefit from case studies drawn from this extensive experience, as well as her incredible patience.


Toni Close

Toni Close is a freelance writer and researcher with a background in psychology and publishing. She has had a varied and interesting career as a research consultant during which she developed her natural talents for interviewing clients, designing communication tools and writing for a diverse audience.

A qualified teacher, she designs and creates the Cinnabar workshop materials, and facilitates the workshops alongside her mum.


The writing

While Toni is the writer in the family, the content of the Cinnabar books comes from Mo’s amazing experience and her perspective as a counsellor. Our voice is a mixture of Mo’s wisdom and Toni’s need to use crystal clear and beautiful words.