The “Original Couple”: Enabling Mothers and Infants to Think about What Destroys as Well as Engenders Love, When There Has Been Intimate Partner Violence

Psychotherapist/mental health social worker in Private Practice in Melbourne, as an individual, couple, and infant-parent psychotherapist. She worked at the Royal Children's Hospital for fifteen years and remains a consultant to a number of specialist departments including the Peek a Boo Club™: a therapeutic intervention for infants and mothers exposed to intimate partner violence with the RCH/Addressing Family Violence Program. Previously she worked at the Royal Free Hospital, London, and trained at the Tavistock Clinic. She has a special interest in palliative care, perinatal, and infant mental health, working clinically and as consultant and trainer.

Senior clinical social worker with a Masters in Family Therapy and further post graduate qualifications in Organisational Dynamics and Infant Mental Health. She is manager of the multi-award winning Addressing Family Violence Programs in the Integrated Mental Health Program of Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital. She has published work in the area of child protection, childhood trauma, child/adolescent sex offending, family violence, and group work. Wendy has developed specialist group work programmes for children and parents affected by family violence, “PARKAS”, the “Peek-A-Boo Club™” for infants and mothers, and more recently “Dads on Board™” for men who have successfully completed a men's behaviour change programme, and their infants. Her latest publication is Refuge for Babies in Crisis written with Robyn Sketchley.