The Children’s Therapy Tasmania Blog
Find grounded, practical posts that make sense of children’s behaviour and emotions, strengthen connection and confidence at home, and support thoughtful, trauma-responsive practice in the therapy room.
What a Child Client Taught Me About Play Therapy, Patience and Advocacy
As child and play therapist, we bring our training, theoretical frameworks, ethical responsibilities, clinical skills and growing understanding of child development, trauma, attachment and family systems. Yet children continue to remind us that professional knowledge is only one part of the therapeutic relationship. In this blog post, I share three lessons that one child taught me about informed consent, patience and advocacy.
Navigating Endings in Child Therapy: A Child-Led and Trauma-Responsive Approach
Endings are an inevitable part of child therapy. For children, therapy is not simply a service they attend. It is a relationship. It may be a space where they have felt seen, accepted and understood. As child and play therapists, we cannot prevent every ending from being difficult. We can, however, approach therapeutic endings with transparency, care and respect. In this blog post, I share how you can navigate endings in ways that are child-led and trauma responsive.
Feel Your Way Through the Play: Polyvagal Theory, Meaning-Making and Child Therapy
Like the supervisee who approached me wanting to expand their skills in meaning-making, many therapists reach a point where knowing the theory or mastering the micro-skills no longer feels like enough. In this blog post I explore using Polyvagal Theory as a lens to slow down and become curious.
11 Areas to Explore During a Child Therapy Intake Conversation
A purposeful intake and assessment process are an important foundation of child and family therapy. The questions we use help us move beyond simply recording a list of presenting concerns and towards developing a fuller understanding of the child, their relationships, their development and the wider context in which their distress is occurring. In this blog post I share 11 areas to consider exploring during your parent intake conversations.
How to Keep Children at the Centre of Parent Intake Conversations
Most therapists understand that before beginning therapeutic work with a child, we need to gather information. Yet a parent intake conversation is much more than a process of collecting background information. It is often the first meaningful therapeutic encounter we have with a family. Our role is to listen carefully to their concerns without allowing the child to become reduced to a list of problems or behaviours.
Why boundaries matter in sustainable children’s therapy practice
Healthy boundaries in child and family practice are one of the ways we care for ourselves, protect the integrity of our work, and continue showing up for children and families in a way that is grounded, ethical, and sustainable over the long term.
In this blog post I explore why boundaries matter so much in child and family practice, why they can be difficult to hold, and some practical ways to begin strengthening them.
Holding Yourself with Compassion in Child and Family Work
Part of being a child or play therapist is not only learning how to hold the child or the parent during sessions. It is also learning how to hold ourselves. In this blog post I wanted to share three gentle ways to work with the parts of yourself that might show up in the therapy room. This is so you can practice in a way that is trauma responsive, sustainable, and compassionate toward both your clients and yourself.
When a Session Stays With You: Practitioner Wellbeing After Emotionally Charged Work
If you work therapeutically with children, parents and families, chances are you’ve left a session feeling activated. In this blog post I explore practitioner wellbeing after emotionally charged and activating sessions. I share practical ideas to help you stay grounded so you can continue doing this work with depth, humanity and care.
When Systems Change: Moral Distress, Thriving Kids and the Impact
In this reflective blog post, I explore moral distress, moral injury and what it can feel like to stay values-aligned while navigating NDIS reform, the emerging Thriving Kids service design, and uncertainty across the child and family therapy landscape.
The 6 Key Practice Areas We Explore in Group Supervision for Early Career Child Therapists
In this blog post learn about the 6 key themes of practice we delve into in the ‘Group Supervision for Early Career Child Therapists’ program and why they matter.
Rest as an essential part of practice
In this blog post I encourage you to make your wellbeing a priority in the work you do - by viewing rest as an essential part of your practice with children and families.
When Supervision Doesn’t Feel Safe Enough to be Honest
I explore what can happen when supervision spaces do not feel safe enough to be honest. I unpack some of the reasons practitioners may not feel safe in internal supervision spaces, how this can increase risk for both practitioner wellbeing and ethical practice, and why external supervision can offer an additional layer of support.
Turning the Lens Inward: Culture, Gender and History in Trauma Responsive Practice
In this post I invite you to slow down and turn the lens inward, where we take an opportunity to reflect on how culture, gender and history show up in our work.
Holding Complexity with Care - A Trauma-Informed Approach to Case Conceptulisation
Explore a trauma-informed case conceptualisation framework that supports deeper understanding, ethical pacing, and intentional therapy planning.
How to bring trauma informed care to life
Explore practical ways you can move beyond trauma informed to trauma responsive practice