Infants, Children and Young People

Explore our Interest Groups:

Infants, Children, and Young People

EOI’s are invited from members who are interested in joining a SIG dedicated to the infants, children, and young people and it is open to any member who works therapeutically with children (0-11 years) and young people (12-25 years). The SIG aims to draw together counsellors and psychotherapists working in a wide range of settings and with diverse training and experience who have a strong interest in professional practice and professional development relevant to this cohort.

Leadership Group

Dr Emma van Daal

Pronouns: she/her

Dr Emma van Daal is an infant mental health consultant/practitioner, Child Psychotherapist, and Arts Therapist working in private practice and community organisations for the past 18 years. Her passion is early intervention of early life trauma with children 0-5 years and their families, bringing playful, creative, and relational approaches that nurture wellbeing and vital in healing from trauma.

Emma has presented internationally and nationally on this work as well as publishing research focused on mapping the materiality of lived experiencing grounded in the relational ontology that strongly informs her practice, writing, and research.

She is currently establishing the Centre for Infant Wellbeing with a focus on consultation, supervision, research, and training in creative, playful, and relational approaches as a vital component of perinatal and infant mental health.

In her down time, Emma tries to find time to nurture her own artistic passions and travelling.

Objectives

The SIG will bring focus to early intervention and prevention as priority areas; however, will also aim to promote the effectiveness of developmentally appropriate and self-deterministic therapies including play therapy, creative arts therapy, parent-child therapies, group therapy, and bush adventure therapy as examples.

The SIG will focus on the following objectives:

To develop low-cost PD’s to support counsellors and psychotherapists already working with, or looking to learn how to work effectively with infants, children, and young people and their families and/or carers.
To offer a community of practice that promotes interdisciplinary collaboration and consultation, and provides opportunities to share information, knowledge, and expertise.
To provide consultation to PACFA regarding Federal and/or state policy and legislation concerning the mental health and emotional well-being of infants, children, and young people and assist with drafting documents.
To partner with other key agencies and bodies and build a stronger reflexive alliance and strategic partnerships that enable us to achieve the goals of the SIG.
To develop and extend the practice knowledge and expertise of counsellors and psychotherapists at any stage of their career.
To elevate the voices of infants, children, and young people and act as their advocates for their inclusion in society, policy, and initiatives that impact or involve them. Promoting infant and child-centred or led frameworks, policies, and practices will be a key priority. This might include innovative projects that focus on amplifying their voices in spaces where they are silenced or overlooked.

The SIG will be framed up from several pillars of practice that will orient “why we do”, “what we do”, and “how we do it”, and continually reviewing this. They are:

Infant/child/young people-led practice
Trauma-informed practice
Healing-centred engagement
Cultural safety
The rights of the child
Infants, children and young people are understood as having capacity to be agents of change.
Infants, children, and young people are held in mind and kept in view.