I am a Child/Youth and Family Therapist with over twenty years of experience in the field. I have worked extensively with children, youth, parents, families, psychiatrists, psychologists, occupational therapists, teachers and other professionals. I specialize in providing individualized assessment and treatment that addresses individual and family needs, strengths, challenges and obstacles.

I have a “strength-based approach.” I highlight people’s strengths and capacities and actively seek to understand their challenges and barriers.

• Most problems are “multi‑determined” or caused by many overlapping factors. I strive to think about the “big picture” as fully as possible and then develop practical, specific and constructive ways to support well‑being and change.
• I enjoy collaborating with others to understand and either overcome or work around obstacles and limitations.
• I imbue my “work” with “play” so hopefully they seem interchangeable. I love directly playing with young children and actively collaborating with older children and adults.

I work with children, youth, parents and families from diverse cultural backgrounds with many different “presenting problems” ranging from major mental illness to minor behavioural problems.

• I often work with children and youth struggling with anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD, school avoidance, relationship challenges and/or problems related to emotion regulation, anger management, school performance and/or executive functioning (such as attention and concentration or impulse control).
• I enjoy working with children and youth with complex profiles including neurodevelopmental concerns, sensory sensitivities, learning disabilities and gifted learning profiles.

I am a parent and appreciate that parenting is an ongoing opportunity to recognize and come to terms with our many strengths and limitations.

• I help parents to identify and use their strengths and to recognize and overcome or work around their limitations and challenges.
• I encourage parents to identify and change factors that are negatively affecting their own emotion regulation, well‑being and parenting. This often requires recognizing ways in which current or past experiences are influencing their parenting, attending to their own emotions and relationship needs and making practical changes in their day to day lives.
• I encourage parents to actively think about the strengths, challenges and needs of their children and youth. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by problems and miss the big picture and/or the actual child/teen.
• I support parents to develop their ability to provide emotional support, structure and/or “scaffolding” to support their children’s and youths’ needs and development.

As well as directly addressing the “presenting problems or concerns,” my interventions often support the development of each family member’s basic skills and capacities.

• The ability to establish and maintain secure relationships (which sometimes requires considering previous and/or ongoing insecure and/or traumatic experiences in relationships).
• The ability to experience, modulate and adaptively express a wide range of emotions.
• The development of self‑awareness and/or mindfulness.
• The development of kindness and compassion (for self and others).
• The development of personal boundaries and/or limits.
• The ability to communicate effectively with others about feelings, needs and ideas.
• The ability to actively make choices and consider consequences.
• The ability to notice and affirm strengths, successes and gains (in self and others).

I integrate ideas from many different theories and/or approaches including developmental, attachment, family/system, psychodynamic, environmental, cultural, mindfulness, self‑compassion, competence and resilience theories. I strive to include cultural and environmental/systemic factors in all my thinking.

• I was fortunate to have thorough training in infant and developmental theory and treatment at the Hincks‑Dellcrest Center in Toronto. An understanding of attachment relationships and childhood development strongly informs my work.
• I have worked for almost twenty years as a Child/Youth and Family Therapist in community mental health with diverse children and families with complex needs and goals. This work has strengthened my belief in the importance of creating collaborative therapeutic relationships and highly individualized treatment goals and plans. It has also taught me that children and families live in webs of relationships. It’s often effective to work with everyone in the family and create circles of care (that include school staff and other involved adults) with consistent support and expectations.
• My practice has also been profoundly impacted by my own history and cultural context and personal experience with relationships, parenting, my own therapy, meditation, self‑compassion practices and various forms of movement and dance.

In my free time, I enjoy walking, reading, hiking, kayaking, skiing, dancing and cooking and sharing meals.

Key Education and Training

• Master of Education in Counselling Psychology, University of Toronto
• Two year psychology internship at the Hinks‑Dellcrest Treatment Center in Toronto (which was an extraordinary opportunity to actively apply developmental and infant theory to clinical practice, apply the results of psychological testing to clinical practice and learn from masters in the field.)
• I completed the coursework, internships and comprehensive examinations for the doctorate in Counselling Psychology at the University of Toronto and did an extra year of intensive clinical training. I interrupted my studies to have a child and eventually returned to work rather than completing my doctorate.
• I am a Registered Clinical Counsellor with the B.C. Association of Clinical Counsellors

Other professional development

• Connect Parent Program, Group Facilitator
• Circle of Security Parenting Program, Group Facilitator
• Multiple courses and conferences on working with children, youth and adults who have experienced trauma and/or have other mental health challenges
• Multiple courses and conferences on working with children who are gifted and/or have learning disabilities
• CBT for Children and Youth
• Watch, Wait and Wonder
• Emotion Focused Family Therapy (Level One)
• Suicide Prevention and Risk Assessment
• Working with Immigrant Children, Youth and Families
• ARC (Attachment, Regulation and Competency)
• Gathering our Medicine: Healing and strengthening relationships between Indigenous youth and caregivers