Professional Experience
I started my career as a Secondary Teacher before taking maternity leave and then returning to a more flexible work environment of reproductive and sexual health education delivered to various age ranges.
After the birth of our second child I returned to study and accomplished gaining my Graduate Diploma in Psychology (Honours). While deciding if I wanted to progress my masters, I was lucky enough to secure a role at a local Family Relationship Centre as a Family Advisor; helping separated families with shared parenting and associated assistance. I was lucky enough to train and attain my qualification as a Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner at the same workplace.
I moved onto Coordinate Kingston Family Services between 2009 to 2013, allowing me to gain important experience in working with families who faced complex challenges; child protection, family violence, drug &alcohol and mental illnesses. It was during this time that my desire to a future career based in and around the well-being of families was consolidated.
My final role, prior to launching A Path To Follow as a small business, was as a Manager in Community Health; leading an awesome team of Paediatric Allied Health Professionals, Mental Health workforce members and a Health Promotion team. During my time, I was so lucky to lead a team who always had their clients’ best interests at heart; who managed to support complex mental well-being and related presentations, all while servicing their clients in their chosen professions. We did our best, within a system that was constantly under pressure, helping people who fell through the gaps of other government funded services.
Personal Journey
Prior to leaving Community Health I was privileged to be approached about Co-Chairing the innovative South Eastern Suicide Prevention Network . This was an important initiative for me to be involved in; as a parent, our son had lost 2 classmates to Suicide within a 12 month period and as a professional, with the rising incidence of managing such risks in our clients.
After the two aforementioned suicides, I got to experience, first hand, our mental health service system on a personal level. At best, the acute and sub-acute mental health system saved our son’s life. At worst, it has left him and all our family members traumatised by our journey through this system; all of us still participating in his and our recovery. This journey, although painful and a continuing challenge, has made me even more determined to support those families experiencing complex mental health challenges and invest in the prevention and early intervention so as to decrease the number of families entering the somewhat broken sub-acute and acute mental health system.
I am passionate about partnerships and sharing my professional and personal journey to progress our community’s capacity to deal openly with mental health challenges. As such, I welcome partnership opportunities and involvement in events as a facilitator and/or speaker.
The rest of the journey can be seen at our “About Us” page, where the conception of A Path To Follow is described.
A Path To Follow 