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Dear Editors,
I was interested and delighted to see an article by Frances Thomson-Salo (Vol 26, No. 2 2000) in this journal concerning developments in child psychotherapy in Australia. Having worked in Sydney as a clinical psychologist since 1971 and a child psychotherapist since 1984, I wish to add some further comments, for the situation in Sydney is different from that in Melbourne.
Previous correspondence in the journal (Vol. 25, No. 3 1999) has noted the history of child psychotherapy in Sydney and its difficulties in surviving within a hostile environment. While Sydney is Australia's largest city, with a population of three million people, there are still no designated child psychotherapist positions in the public sector. Moreover there is no psychoanalytic orientation in any undergraduate or postgraduate clinical training in Sydney or the state of New South Wales.
Against this deteriorating trend the Australian Association of Child Psychotherapists was formed in 1985. It consisted of all members of the Association of Child Psychotherapists (UK) who were now living in Australia as well as a small number of child psychoanalysts who were also trained in London. Ms Eve Steel, Dr Averil Earnshaw, Ms Valli Kohon, and myself were on the executive, with five members in Melbourne, five in Sydney, two in Brisbane, and one in Perth and Adelaide. Annual general meetings and national study days were held over the next five years. However the lack of public service positions in child psychotherapy meant that most members were working privately. To survive financially this required seeing more adults and less children. Hence the energy and enthusiasm needed to hold together a federal association was lacking, and while the Australian Association of Child Psychotherapists still exists as a legal entity it has not been functioning since the early 1990s.