BA(Hons)(Murd) GradDipEd(UWA) PhD(UWA) MBPS

Anne brings 20 years of psychology experience to the School. She completed a PhD at the University of Western Australia on the development and validation of an instrument that measures the risk of self-harm in school-age children, and also has extensive teaching experience under her belt, including 10 years in Japan.

Anne works four days a week at Christ Church and spends the rest of her time working at UWA and the WA Defence Force. Her role at Christ Church follows 10 years with the Swan District Education Office, which involved working with extremely “hard-core” schools in psychological assessments and individual profiling, behaviour management and mental health issues.

At Christ Church, Anne is essentially responsible for psychological assessments and profiling of students. She said it was a similar role to the one she had at Swan District, except here there was not the same severity of social and emotional disorders, behavioural problems and mental health issues.

Aside from the assessments, Anne said much of the work was about providing a service to the boys as well as the teachers. “It depends what service they want,” she said. “They might want help with their academic performance, in which case we will provide the boys with information they can go away and think about and hopefully use. And what we usually do is provide teachers with information that can help guide them with their teaching instruction for certain individuals.

“We are information gatherers, often gathering information that the teachers may not have had,” Anne said. “Often we can provide a perspective that the teachers might not have, but which can be instrumental in the way they interact with the student.”

Anne said her role encompassed a bit of everything and her door was open for boys to come and see her no matter what the issue. She said her main aim was to see the boys perform to their potential. “To be able to identify the need an individual has and being able to provide appropriate intervention is probably the essence of what we do as psychologists.”

Aside from her work at Christ Church, Anne is the Principal Psychologist at UWA’s Centre for Child and Adolescent Related Disorders and works along side Professor Stephen Houghton, the Director of the Center and one of the world’s leading researchers in ADHD, Learning Disabilities, Anxiety and Childhood and Adolescent Psychopathology. At the Defence Force she interviews candidates who want to join and determines their psychological suitability.