Therapeutic Services
Services Available
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Individual therapy is available across the life span, for children, young people and adults.
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Family therapy is available to work with the whole of the family. See available family therapies below.
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Therapeutic groups can be designed for specific cohorts of children and young people.
Sarah is also trained to facilitate parenting groups.
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Sarah is available to provide specific training, workshops and presentations for parents, educators and mental health staff to build their capacity and knowledge around children, mental health, play and trauma.
Individual Therapy:
Individual therapy is provided across the lifespan. Sarah is trained in a number of different therapeutic interventions and will find the most developmentally appropriate intervention. When working with children and young people, a thorough assessment with parents/care-givers and then the child, will help determine an intervention plan that will be developed either prescribing an individual therapeutic approach or integrating modalities.
Humanistic Play Therapy
Humanistic play therapy is a non-directive, child-centered approach that provides a safe space for children to express themselves using their natural language, play. Materials are available for the child to explore and creatively express through play. This is a non-directive intervention where children can choose how and what to play. The therapist provides a warm and accepting environment to support the child to access the therapeutic powers of play. Humanistic play therapy is for children 3 to 12 years of age. This is an evidence based practice shown to be an effective form of treatment, assisting with internalising and externalising issues, academic performance, social issues, self-esteem, trauma, anxiety, development, attachment issues, disruptive behaviours, issues related to family environment, PTSD, aggression, developmental delays, autism and more (Lin & Bratton, 2015).
Learn to play
Children may not always have the play skills required to express their world. This is a more directive play therapy intervention that aims to develop the ability of children to spontaneously engage in pretend play. It is for children aged 18 months to 10 years who find playing difficult. Learn to Play Therapy was developed for children with developmental difficulties, including autistic children, children with acquired brain injury, learning difficulties, language disorders, and developmental issues that impact on language and social ability. The type of children who would benefit from Learn to play include children who are not socially aware of others, children who destroy the play scenes of siblings or peers, children who want to socially interact with others but do not know how to do this, children who do not understand a story or find it difficult to think what will happen next in a story, children with delayed expressive and receptive language, poor narrative language and children who are highly anxious in social situations (Stagnetti, 2022).
Expressive and Creative Therapy
Expressive arts therapy is an integrative, multimodal approach that utilizes a variety of methods including writing, music, visual arts, drama, and dance to help people achieve personal growth (Malchiodi, 2020). Sarah integrates expressive and creative therapeutic modalities, in both directive and non-directive ways, with an emphasis on individual expression and an awareness of the somatic and sensorimotor needs of the child. This form of therapy can be adapted to work with children, adolescents and adults.
EMDR
EMDR stands for Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing and is a form of psychotherapy that was devised by Francine Shapiro in 1987 and originally designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories. It was originally named EMDR because it was the bilateral movement of the eyes that supported the reprocessing of trauma. Clinicians have found that it is not the eye movement alone that reprocesses memories but the bilateral movement. Sarah has engaged in specialist training to integrate EMDR with Play Therapy with children and young people and has also trained in a special type of EMDR that is called Relational-Integrative EMDR. RI-EMDR is a powerful therapeutic approach that combines the proven effectiveness of attachment informed EMDR with the depths of Resource Therapy (parts work) and Somatic/Polyvagal work. This is an incredibly effective therapy to heal those who have experienced relational wounds. Sarah is skilled in honouring and nurturing your wounded child parts, and finds working with parents own trauma has the most significant impact on future generations.
Family Therapy:
Families play a really important role in a child’s healing process. When the family is supported, children are more likely to have better outcomes. In family therapy, parents & carers are supported to better understand their children to learn how to create secure and safe bases for children to thrive. Sarah is trained in a number of family therapy approaches and will either provide support using the one modality, or integrate multiple modalities according to the child and families needs.
Filial Therapy
Filial Therapy focuses on the child and parent/carer relationship. The therapist teaches the parent/carers skills to run special time play sessions with their children where they follow the lead of the child during play, learning how to use skills to support their child’s social and emotional wellbeing (VanFleet, 2011). Throughout this intervention, the skills learnt during special play time are generalised to everyday situations.
The Circle of Security® Parenting™ program
Sarah is a trained facilitator in The Circle of Security® Parenting™ program. The COSP™ model is based on decades of research on attachment and how secure parent-child relationships can be supported and strengthened.
Theraplay
Theraplay is a dyadic child and family therapy. Theraplay is an effective intervention to support healthy child/caregiver attachment. This more directive play therapy approach is effective when working with children who have experienced developmental trauma and require more directive scaffolding in repairing attachment wounds. Theraplay can be used with people of all ages, including babies and when adapted can also be used with adolescents.
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) is an attachment based intervention that works with the intersubjective relationships within a family and the impact of developmental trauma on those relationships. This type of therapy helps parents/carers and children have deeper relationships by understanding the impact earlier experiences have had on the child’s current behaviour. This modality works well with older children and in combination with a more playful Theraplay approach, to repair attachment wounds.
Group Programs:
Sarah is available to develop specific group interventions for specific cohorts of people. Sarah has developed and facilitated creative therapeutic groups with children and young people for over 15 years in preschools, primary schools, high schools and community settings. Sarah has developed emotional resilience programs,
Rhythm to Recovery
Rhythm to recovery utilises fun and engaging rhythmic musical activities to support social and emotional development. Based on the latest neuro-science. This approach has been shown to support increased emotional regulation, improved social connection and reduced levels of anxiety and other elements of psychological distress.
Emotional Resilience and Wellbeing Group
The emotional resilience and wellbeing group can be designed to meet the developmental need’s and specific concerns relevant to that group. Group’s are therapeutic, and use a range of creative and engaging experiential activities to support children to express, reflect, connect and grow in a group setting. Groups use a variety of different expressive and play based activities such as movement, art, drama and music. Groups are intentionally engaging, regulating and focused on creating a felt sense of connection and safety, both within the individual and within the group.
Growing Strong, Kind Kids Program
In 2023 Sarah was consulted to develop a domestic violence prevention program for Kyogle Family Support Services, after a community led fundraiser identified that a school education program would be an effective prevention measure to reduce domestic violence in the local community. This program was developed in consultation with community and through researching best practice in respectful relationship programs. This program aimed to make a program that was trauma-informed and developmentally targeted. The program is a bottom-up, body oriented program that promotes a felt sense of safety and connection, using Bruce Perry’s Neuro-sequential development framework, providing a program that is regulating and relational, integrating a range of different approaches. Therapeutic models included Tree of Life (Narrative Therapy), Rhythm 2 Recovery (R2R), Water Play Therapy, Dramatherapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Expressive Arts Therapy.
This program aims to enhance the emotional resilience of children, fostering a culture of kindness, respect, and mutual care. This 6-week program is designed to educate and empower children on key themes such as safety, emotions, gender, healthy relationships, power dynamics, boundaries and respectful communication. Through engaging and developmentally appropriate activities, including playful games, puppets, drumming and expressive arts activities, the program aims to empower children with the knowledge and skills necessary for fostering healthy relationships to build a safer and more compassionate future.
We ran the pilot program in Term 3 of 2023 at Woodenbong Central School and had such positive feedback from both teachers and students. 100 percent of student’s who completed feedback forms said they really liked the program and 100 percent said they would recommend it to other students. 75 percent felt they knew who to go to if they felt unsafe.
Stacey Shaw, Woodenbong Assistant Principal said:
"As the Assistant Principal at Woodenbong Central School, I have had the privilege of witnessing the profoundly positive impact that this program has had on our students and the potential it holds in significantly reducing domestic violence within our community and others… The program successfully engaged the students and provided them with a comprehensive toolkit of skills to navigate challenging situations. Utilising a play-based approach, the students actively participated in activities that facilitated the identification of their support networks, encouraged a focus on their strengths, promoted the cultivation of respectful relationships, emphasised the importance of upholding their values, celebrated their unique qualities, and educated them on how to protect themselves against life’s storms” - November 2023.
Children’s Book Making Workshops
Sarah learnt how to engage in community publishing when she collaborated with Kids Own Publishing and Many Hands International in 2012 to facilitate community workshops with children and their families in Timor-Leste. Sarah has facilitated local book publishing projects with KidzSpace and the Gugin Gudduba Local Aboriginal Land Council in Kyogle. Sarah has been facilitating book making workshops as part of the Kyogle Readers and Writers Festival for 3 years now. Sarah believes in the power of storytelling to build hope and resilience.
Workshops & Training
Sarah has provided workshops and training for social and community workers, school counselors, early childhood educators, teachers and community arts workers. Sarah has experience presenting on Play Therapy, Children and Trauma and Creative Recovery in post-disaster communities. Having worked in Lismore following the fires and floods and collaborating with the Northern Rivers Community Healing Hub and Creative First Aid, Sarah has experience working in post-disaster communities supporting creative recovery and healing.
Play Therapy presentation at Social Futures
“Sarah’s presentation was so knowledgeable and outstanding. Everyone was inspired and very grateful”
Frank Couglan - Child and Family Counsellor
Creative Recovery Workshops at Tuntable Community School
“Thank you Sarah. The activities that you presented were beautifully crafted and immediately applicable to our students, such wonderful tools for gently and creatively moving through recovery from trauma. They are very relevant to our student group, but also carry over to all ages. Very clever and from the heart. We very much hope to have you back at our school in the future”
Joe Landers - Tuntable Falls Community School
Building Capacity through story telling in post-disaster communities: Workshop with Creative First Aid in Lismore, Post-floods 2022.