Kerry, a registered art therapist with ANZACATA, is not just a professional but also a mother and a proud grandmother. This personal experience enriches her empathetic approach to therapy, making her a unique and compassionate therapist. Her passion for child wellbeing is evident in her advocacy efforts, ensuring that children’s developmental and emotional needs are always a focal point of her work. Kerry’s blend of personal experience, artistic talent, and professional expertise is dedicated to fostering healthy, creative, and fulfilling lives, inspiring hope in her clients.
Kerry has worked with children and adolescents for more than a decade. Her professional career includes practice in educational, family services and clinical settings. Kerry’s therapeutic approach is dynamic and integrative to accommodate the individual needs for her young clients. She can build trusting relationships with children and support their caregivers throughout their journey. She uses play, expressive arts, and music as tools for communication and healing. Creativity is a powerful tool for integrating and healing trauma; it is effective for understanding and building strengths in neurodiverse populations.
Children find the creative therapeutic process engaging and less stressful than traditional talk therapy because it requires and invites expressive action and movement instead of language skills, providing young children a space to feel safe and supported while working in their internal processes. Children usually express themselves through play, toys, and art, and these become a healing vehicle that ensures the children have an avenue to express their feelings and work out their problems in a symbolic way, achieving resolution and learning to make meaning of their internal conflicts.
Kerry’s formal education includes a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Deakin University), a Master of Art Therapy (Faculty of Behavioural Sciences—La Trobe University), and studies in psychology (University of Melbourne). She continued her postgraduate training in trauma-informed practices, autism spectrum, speech-language and communication needs, disabilities, Auslan, and special needs education. She has studied play therapy and offers services to children.