Helen commenced duty as Lecturer in Counselling with Notre Dame in January, 2008. Prior to joining the Counselling team at UNDA she worked part-time as student and staff counsellor with the University of Southern Queensland. In addition to her work with USQ she conducted a private counselling practice, primarily providing support and supervision to counselling staff of a sexual assault service and staff of a residential facility for homeless youth. Between 1996 and 2006 Helen was one of two Directors of the Expressive Therapies Institute specialising in providing training in utilising creative arts or expressive therapies to Counsellors, Social Workers, Psychologists, Teachers and other professional helpers. Helen has qualifications in Sandplay Therapy, Expressive Therapies with Children, and Transpersonal Psychology. She has written and conducted counselling training programs for students in Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand and around Australia.
Before being inexorably drawn into a career in Counselling, Helen worked, for several years, as Manager of Employment Equity both within the Queensland public service and within the tertiary education sector. While she works with clients across the lifespan in her private practice, Helen’s passion is developing creative counselling interventions for young people traumatised by abuse and neglect and has created a range of activity-based creative strategies to support children and youth. Helen is a co-author of the only Australian text on Sandplay Therapy, and has been a sought-after speaker at conferences relevant to Counselling. She is currently working on an Australia-specific book on Expressive Therapies due to be published late 2008 by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. |
