Relationality | Play & Creativity | Voice

What is the most surprising thing about your career?

The most surprising thing is how deeply I’ve been transformed by working with infants and their families. At first, the idea of working with babies felt daunting — how do you do therapy with humans who don’t use words? I quickly learned that talking is only one way of being with someone.

I taught myself to become playful and to listen in ways beyond language. That work turned me inside out: it made me re-examine my own experiences of being parented and clarified what it means to be a safe, attuned, and responsive caregiver. The learning — and unlearning — continues, and I’m endlessly grateful to the infants who have trusted me with their inner worlds during frightening times.

I love everything about working with and alongside infants. Their capacity for connection, curiosity, and creativity is extraordinary. Observing how they explore people, places, and objects continually reminds me why creativity and play are essential — not only for their development, but for our own wellbeing as caregivers and practitioners.

The arts and play provide ways for infants to express complex experiences that words cannot capture. These modes of expression are universal: they build connection, strengthen parent–infant relationships, and create a sense of belonging across cultures and settings.

Why did you set up the centre?

Two interwoven reasons pushed me to start the centre. First, although more parents and infants are struggling with mental health, our system’s response hasn’t changed enough. Too often we act like an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff — vital, but reactive. Infants are frequently invisible in these responses.

Second, I wanted to create a place that responds earlier and differently: one that centres the infant’s experience, supports caregivers and communities, and pays attention to the environments that shape caregiving — housing, early learning, country, and hospitals.

What’s missing are compassionate, preventive, and infant-centred supports that show up early and work across relationships and environments. When we prioritise infants’ voices and their connections to kin, communities, educators, and country, interventions become more meaningful and more likely to sustain wellbeing.

My experience working in services that often centre adults made me question prevailing paradigms. I began to ask: how can interventions be truly meaningful if they overlook infants and the everyday contexts that shape their lives?

Where does your passion come from?

My passion grew from the moral and ethical tensions I encountered working in family violence services and child protection systems — places that often fail to centre young children’s voices. I saw adults making decisions that overlooked infants’ needs and the relationships that matter most to them.

I believe that responding to early life trauma doesn’t always require complex interventions. What’s often missing is space for love, care, curiosity, and attuned relationships. My work aims to return care to caregiving: supporting parents and infants together, and using creative, playful approaches that are practical, culturally embedded, and easy to weave into everyday life.

Too often trauma work focuses on fixing harm after systems have already failed infants. I set out to do something different: to be an adult who listens, learns, and builds spaces where infants and families can flourish through creativity, play, and meaningful connection.

“I wanted to make a difference and be an adult who would listen, learn, and create spaces.”