Professional training
Why qualifications matter in ADHD coaching – and what people have to check
The ADHD coaching industry is unregulated.
There is no legal requirement to hold any qualification, complete any training, or demonstrate any safety or competence before calling yourself an ADHD coach and charging people for sessions. That’s not a criticism of any individual – it’s just the reality of how the industry currently works.
If you’re looking for support, this creates a real problem.
How do you know whether the person you’re considering working with has genuinely studied ADHD, coaching methodology, and the neuroscience that underlies both – or whether they got diagnosed six months ago and just decided to start charging for talking to you?
The honest answer is: you look at their training, and you look at what that training actually involved.
This page exists to make that easy.
Core Training:
PCAC – The credential that matters most
The Professional Association for ADHD Coaches (PAAC) is the only professional body dedicated specifically to ADHD coaching.
Their flagship credential, the Professional Certified ADHD Coach (PCAC), is the highest specialist standard available in this field.
To hold a PCAC, a coach must demonstrate:
- A minimum of 60 hours of ADHD-specific coach training
- 250+ hours of coaching experience
- Submission of coaching recordings for independent assessment
- 10 hours of Mentor Coaching
- A formal examination in ADHD knowledge and coaching application
- Active maintenance of continuing education requirements
None of this can be ‘self-certified’ – Katherine is one of a small number of coaches in the UK currently holding this credential (fewer than 8 in the UK in April 2026).
PAAC publishes their credentialed coaches publicly. If you are considering working with any ADHD coach, you can check whether they appear on that list. Many coaches who describe themselves as ADHD specialists do not.
One of the reasons many people have not heard of PAAC is that it’s not a large, corporate style organisation – it’s run by and for ADHD coaches who are passionate about the standard of coaching and raising the level of service we provide to clients.
Katherine’s core training
ADHD Coaching — ADDCA Basic, Advanced and Family Programmes (ADD Coach Academy)
ADDCA is one of the most respected specialist ADHD coach training institutions globally. Unlike generic coaching programmes that include an ADHD module, ADDCA exists specifically to train coaches in ADHD: its neuroscience, expression across different life stages and its impact on relationships, work, as well as identity.
Katherine has completed all three levels:
Basic Coaching Programme: foundational ADHD coaching skills, understanding of executive function, working with the ADHD brain in a coaching context.
Advanced Programme: deeper work with complex presentations, chronic disorganisation, shame, motivation, and the identity-level work that distinguishes ADHD coaching from general life coaching.
Fundamentals of Family Coaching Programme: ADHD doesn’t exist in isolation. It runs in families, affects relationships, and shapes the environments people grow up in. This training equips Katherine to understand and work with the broader systemic picture, not just the individual.
Combined, these programmes represent hundreds of hours of specialist ADHD coach training, as well as the group peer support, class studies and assessment of recorded calls.
ICF – PCC (Professional Certified Coach)
International Coaching Federation (ICF)
The ICF is the global standard-setting body for professional coaching. Their PCC credential – Professional Certified Coach – sits in the middle tier of their framework, above the entry-level ACC and below the master-level MCC. It is one of the most recognised coaching credentials in the world.
To achieve PCC, Katherine completed:
- 500+ hours of verified coaching practice with real clients
- Mentor coaching and reflective supervision
- Independent performance evaluation of her coaching
- A rigorous multi-part examination
PCC credentialing matters because it separates coaches who understand the theory of coaching from those who have been assessed on whether they can actually do it. Many coaches, especially many ADHD coaches, do not hold ICF credentials of any level.
However – the ICF makes no assessment of ADHD coaching knowledge or experience.
Deeper Training
Cognitive Ergonomics from the Inside Out®
Jeff Copper (DIG Coaching)
Developed by ADHD coach Jeff Copper, Cognitive Ergonomics is built on Dr Russell Barkley’s ADHD construct, among the most research-grounded frameworks for understanding ADHD that exists, and applies it through a methodology designed to make executive function observable and workable.
Most approaches to ADHD focus on managing symptoms or adding strategies. The problem is that strategies work inconsistently for ADHD brains, and most people with ADHD have already tried more strategies than they can count. Cognitive Ergonomics works differently: it builds genuine cognitive literacy: the capacity to observe what’s actually happening inside your own brain, identify the real source of where you’re getting stuck, and design solutions that fit your actual cognitive behaviour rather than a neurotypical template.
This training is foundational to how Katherine works. It’s the methodology behind “designing with your brain instead of fighting it” – not as a phrase, but as a practical approach. You can learn more about Cognitive Ergonomics by Jeff Copper HERE.
TED* Certified Coach – The Empowerment Dynamic
International Coaching Federation (ICF)
TED* – The Empowerment Dynamic – is a framework for understanding how people approach challenges and difficulty as we go through life. The Karpman Dreaded Drama Triangle (DDT) describes the reactive patterns almost all people fall into under pressure: Victim, Persecutor, Rescuer. TED* offers an alternative way to live: Creator, Challenger, Coach.
It’s not fluffy mindset, motivational content without depth. The Empowerment Dynamic has roots in family systems and has been developed over decades of application in leadership, coaching, and organisational contexts. Katherine has completed both the Basic (18 hours) and Advanced (28 hours) programmes, and has been assessed on her application of the framework directly by Donna Zajonc, co-creator of the programme with the late David Emerald.
For adults with ADHD who have spent years, sometimes decades, internalising the message that they are broken, lazy, or simply not trying hard enough, the shift from a reactive to a creative orientation is not a small thing and needs repeated application, support and invention.
TED* provides Katherine with both the additional framework and the language to support that emotional, belief shift in a coaching context.
Specialist Training
UCLA PEERS® – Certified Training Provider
Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLAÂ Telehealth and In-Person Certification
PEERS® (Programme for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills) is one of the most rigorously evidence-based social skills programmes in existence, developed at UCLA’s Semel Institute and backed by decades of peer-reviewed research. Katherine holds certification as a PEERS® provider for both adolescents and young adults, in telehealth and in-person formats.
Social cognition — how we read relationships, navigate unwritten rules, and manage the demands of other people — is frequently affected by both ADHD and autism, and rarely addressed meaningfully in standard coaching or even therapeutic approaches. This certification gives Katherine both the evidence base and the practical tools to work with this dimension of experience directly.
Burnout Coaching
Dr Neha Sangwan, Coaching.com
Dr Neha Sangwan is a physician, TEDx speaker, and internationally recognised burnout specialist. Her approach sits at the intersection of medicine, communication science, and coaching and takes burnout seriously as a physiological and systemic phenomenon, not just “being very tired.”
This programme involved approximately 43 hours of training, nine assessed capstone assignments, and mastermind coaching sessions with Dr Sangwan directly.
Burnout is not an edge case for late-diagnosed ADHD adults. It is extremely common, the predictable result of spending years or decades pushing an ADHD brain through systems, workplaces, and expectations designed for a different kind of nervous system.
Katherine’s training in this area means she can help clients to recognise burnout, understand its stages, work with clients who are in or recovering from it, and avoid inadvertently accelerating it through coaching that asks too much too soon.
Lived Experience
40 Years of ADHD and Autism, without diagnosis
All of the above matters. Credentials are how you verify that someone has done the work to understand what they’re doing.
But there is something no training programme can replicate: knowing this territory from the inside.
Katherine is late-diagnosed with both ADHD and autism. She has navigated burnout, the exhausting gap between how capable you appear and how hard everything actually is, the years of not understanding why certain things were so much harder than they seemed to be for everyone else, and the long process of building a working life that fits her actual brain rather than the one she was supposed to have.
That isn’t a substitute for rigorous training. It’s what makes the training applicable for both her own life and yours – the difference between a coach who has studied this landscape and one who also lives in it.
My PhD: Bronze Age Syrian Mythology…?
Not medicine but still useful
Katherine holds a PhD in Bronze Age mythology. She does not present this as a clinical or coaching credential: it isn’t one, and she never pretends otherwise.
What it represents is a particular way of engaging with complex information and research: the capacity to hold large amounts of information, identify what’s actually significant, build and test an argument rigorously, and stay curious about questions that resist easy answers.
If you’ve ever worked with someone who can track the real thread of what you’re saying rather than fitting it into a pre-existing template or who has pre-decided your answers, you’ll recognise why this matters in coaching.
What to do with all of this information
If you are considering working with any ADHD coach, Katherine or anyone else, you are entitled to ask about their training, their credentials, and what those credentials actually required.
A coach who is confident in their qualifications will welcome that question.
Katherine is available for a WAILT Review: a structured one-session review that gives you a clear picture of what’s going on for you and what would actually help.
It’s the right place to start if you want to understand what working together could look like before committing to anything longer.