Art Therapy is a tool that can help children communicate their mood, ideas and dreams.

Children often draw pictures about their relationships with others and the world around as they perceive it. Children’s drawing skills develop along with their Mental and Motor skills, so assessing development through Art is very useful and revealing.

Children’s drawings can be a cry for help, a window into their world or just an outlet for emotion.

As an Art Therapist I look very carefully at signs of needing, wanting and strong emotions in a child’s drawing. By their use of space, colour choice, proportion of detail and the type of stroke the child uses. This can often tell me much more than what the child is actually saying, especially if they have been through a traumatic experience and find it difficult to talk at all.

Sexual Abuse, witnessing violence or any other traumatic incident cannot always be helped by words and counselling alone, this is where Art Therapy becomes critical to the long road of the healing process.

Boys who find expressing their emotions difficult and tend to use anger in place of these emotions often benefit greatly from Art Therapy.

After a few sessions with me parents will be able to assist their children to express themselves through art at home.

My sessions are conducted at your home, because it is of the utmost importance that the child feels comfortable and relaxed in their own environment.

I will arrive informally (normally in jeans and sneakers) because it is necessary that the child feel's that I am somewhat on their level and in that way, they should able to relate to me better.

The initial session includes a basic evaluation within the hour session period, but I do conduct full diagnostic evaluations - specific to emotional/ behavioural or developmental issues, usually referred by doctors/ teachers or guidance counsellors.

These are in depth and involve Child observation, age appropriate milestones, emotional and behavioural assessments, to diagnose a specific problem or disorder to what degree.

Using my training as an Art Therapist my sessions are usually drawing based, painting or drawing pictures together. Although counselling and cognitive therapy is incorporated along side the Art.

Even if your child is not comfortable talking with me for the first few sessions, there are many telling signs I have been trained to read in their pictures.

What is Cognitive Therapy?

Training your thought process to follow a different pattern. It is a way of learning how to stop and think about what you are going to do before you do it and modify your usual behaviour into the desired behaviour for that problem or situation.

I work with children of all ages from as early as 3 months old right up until 18.

If however you have a child who has some form of mental retardation and their mental age is anything up to 16 years but they are chronologically well over 18 years, I am more than happy to assist in your particular challenge.

It is important to note that parents are very much a part of the process and together we will make the changes and improvements to your children's lives.

For our parents that require a professional diagnosis and are not able to afford the $5,000 fee and the wait from other organisations is too long.

I offer, in conjunction with your school, a group diagnostic session. My diagnosis are of emotional or behavioural problems, such as, Attention Deficit Hyper-activity Disorder, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, Conduct Disorder, I can conclude whether it is an emotional behaviour that is causing scholastic problems or scholastic problems causing the behaviour problem but I am not an Educational Learning Disability Expert. I can assess minimum 2, maximum 3 children per session and the parents can split the cost at $2,000 per child.

The standard $5,000 fee for 1 child will be reduced to $4,000 only if recommended by your school. The parent is required to see me for at least 10 mins prior to the session to pay and give me a brief background. The teacher is required to give me a brief written overview of the child’s behaviour and challenges in the classroom.

After the session - which can take up the whole school day (breaks and lunch as normal) By the same time the next week I need to see the parent and discuss my diagnosis, what to do next and necessary actions required. I write a formal diagnosis for the school and a copy for the parents. All I require from the school is a small room with space for the 3 children to write comfortably.

It is my aim to provide teachers and parents with the right tools to help the child with whatever diagnosis I have given. I give unlimited telephone and email assistance and advice at no charge and subsequent sessions are billed at a reduced rate