Hello, kia ora,

I have been practicing as a family therapist for 31 years. The first 20 of these were working in social service agencies, including 10 years as a senior therapist supervising a team.

I then moved into teaching on a tertiary counselling programme alongside private practice. I now have a part time private practice in Westmere providing family therapy, supervision and some training.

My Approach: My training is in Family and Narrative therapy. This means that I see that people’s experiences/issues/problems are shaped by the context in which they have lived or are living. I am interested in experiences people have of family, of culture, gender, sexuality, and how these influence the stories of their lives, and the problems or issues they are facing.

I work from the belief that people have the most knowledge about their own lives and experiences, and our work together is to make use of those knowledges as we discover possibilities for new understandings, new direction or change.

Issues I work with: I work with many different areas that adults or children are finding challenging in their lives. For instance; work with couples and relationship issues, families in the process of change, families having parenting difficulties with children, challenges for adults such as depression or loss.

My work includes one parent families, repartnered (step)families, separation and mediation. As well as providing family therapy, I have facilitated groups for parents, for women in one parent families, groups for repartnered families, and have been providing training in this area for many years.

Supervision: I supervise both practitioners and student counselors, and my Masters degree included a certificate in supervision.

Publication: After many years working with repartnered families, and living in one myself, I wrote the book “Repartnered Families: Creating new ways of living together beyond the nuclear family” as a resource for these families.

Qualifications and Professional Membership: I have a Diploma of Teaching, and a Masters of Counselling. I am a member of the New Zealand Association of Counsellors and adhere to their practice standards and Code of Ethics.