Developments in Child Psychotherapy in Australia: An Introduction

The child psychotherapy scene in Australia, a continent the size of Europe with a population of 18 million, is a challenging but exciting one, with clinical work and thinking that is deeply sensitive and original at its best. Child and adolescent mental health services have developed to meet the specific needs of the Australian milieu, and there is much that is innovative. Where clinicians once worked in a climate of isolation from developments in other countries, which have a stronger tradition of child psychotherapy, now with advances in communication technology there is a greater sense of connection with developments elsewhere. The two papers in this section have been written by clinicians who work in the two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, and who both write with clinical experience of more than twenty years. Before discussing the papers, I will briefly set them in a historical context and outline some developments in child psychotherapy training and service development. What follows is a personal view which I hope my colleagues here will feel represents developments in the field well enough.

Child psychotherapy in Australia would probably be thought of as beginning in 1936 when Ruth Drake, a nursery teacher and speech therapist, was appointed to run a Child Guidance Nursery in the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, Victoria. She was subsequently appointed as the first child psychotherapist in the Department of Psychiatry of the Royal Children's Hospital. To date there are virtually no established child