Jon Dachs
has been involved in telephone counsellor training since 1998. In 2002,
Jon was instrumental in the development of the Certificate III and
Certificate IV in Telephone Counselling Skills qualifications for the
VET sector. In addition to training hundreds of Lifeline telephone
counsellors, Jon has conducted counselling skills training for trauma
rehabilitation workers and community support workers in Uganda. He has
conducted a similar course for student pastors in Bangkok, and
International aid agency workers and village elders in the Kyangwali
Refugee Camp, in Uganda. Currently, Jon trains and supervises students
and staff as service manager with Uniting Care in Queensland. Jon is
passionate about the primacy of the therapeutic relationship in
counselling and psychotherapy and the core stance of ‘being with’
clients, and has developed the concept of the “spiral of empathy”
technique to enable a way of ‘being with’ that is deeply client-centred.
Dr Andrea Breen is a creative arts therapist,
counsellor and educator. In recent years, she has specialised in working
with former refugees recovering from trauma and working with children
using non-directive play therapy. She is also a musician and composer
and believes that listening is fundamental to therapeutic relationships.
Dr Tristan Snell BSocSci(Psych),
BAppSci(Psych)(Hons), MPsych(Couns)/PhD, MAPS. Tristan has been a
lecturer in counselling for the past six years at Monash University, and
course leader of the Monash Master of Counselling for the last 12
months. He is an experienced Counselling Psychologist with practical
experience working in private practice, employment services, psychiatric
rehabilitation, university counselling, and school settings. He has
published a number of articles on course design and counsellor
education, and is currently undertaking a long-term research study on
counsellor pathways to employment.
Dr Judith Ayre has been a counsellor educator since
2003 and has taught counselling at postgraduate and undergraduate levels
and in the Vocational Education and Training sector, written curriculum
for all levels, and maintained a clinical practice that includes the
clinical supervision of counsellors and psychotherapists. In 2005,
Judith introduced Emotion Focused Therapy as an 80 hour counselling
specialisation into the Masters of Counselling at La Trobe. There are
now more than 200 hundred graduates practicing EFT, and a specialised
centre for emotion focused practice and practitioner training has been
established in Victoria. Judith has been active on the leadership group
of ACCAPE since 2017.