Alison began her social work career 20 years ago in Sydney working in the hospital setting before settling into the NSW Sexual Assault Services in counselling roles. Alison worked with people across the lifespan recovering from interpersonal trauma in a counselling capacity. This work included responding to crisis situations, working with adults who were harmed as children, working with people in Out of Home care, working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people , supporting people through court processes, navigating the criminal justice and child protection systems and providing complex safety assessments.

 

Through this important work, Alison developed a profound and nuanced understanding of the broad impact of abuse on children, adults and families. Alison has guided many people to recovery and healing from a harmful event or events in their life. Alison provides counselling based on the understanding that trauma can impact people in a variety of ways, including impacts on how we feel, on daily functioning and future/current relationships. 

 

Alison has also worked for over a decade with young people who have displayed problematic and harmful sexual behaviour and their families, carers and care teams. Alison is well known in this specialised field for providing assessment, counselling, consultation and training. Alison holds the highest accreditation possible in the state (CSOCAS Accreditation - Supervisor level) in this area of work and consults with families, Dept Communities and Justice, Out of Home Care Agencies and police around young people who have used sexually harmful behaviour.

 

Alison has a commitment to ongoing professional development in trauma recovery, harmful behaviour, mental health and general counselling theory and intervention. Alison is now in private practice in Belmont, Lake Macquarie providing counselling, consultation and supervision. Alison's specialty areas are trauma recovery (in particular sexual assault, domestic violence and violence against women and children), sibling sexual assault and young people who have used problematic or harmful sexual behaviour and their families, as well as consultation in relation to these areas.​​