About

Clinical psychologist, supervisor and trainer

I help psychologists do better, safer work. These days that mostly means supporting psychologists through Board complaints, providing supervision, and training the next generation of supervisors and clinical psychologists.

I also write and make videos about what's happening in the profession: regulation, training reform, ethics, privacy and the evidence for what we do. See how I work with people, or read on for how I got here.

Making the work visible

Almost everything I've done for more than twenty years comes back to one question: how do we know therapy is working, and what do we do when it isn't?

I started out measuring whether hospital mental health services actually worked. After my PhD at Griffith University, I spent most of the 2000s at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, evaluating services and running a national study of early psychosis care. It taught me the thing I've built on ever since: data only improves care when clinicians can see it and trust what it's for.

Private practice was a shock. We all saw our clients, wrote our notes and went home, and nobody really knew whose clients were getting better. So I trained in feedback-informed therapy (including a week-long intensive with Scott Miller in Chicago) and started tracking every client, every session. In 2013, Rebecca and I started Benchmark Psychology: a practice built on outcome data, where every psychologist could see their results and use deliberate practice to improve them. That work produced the DASS-10, a brief outcome measure developed with Professor Kim Halford and free for every psychologist. We sold the practice in 2024.

Training the people who train

Training is the part of the work I love most. Since 2011 I've led STAP, the Supervisor Training & Approval Program, and trained thousands of Australian psychologists to become supervisors. PREP, the Psychology Registrar Endorsement Program, was Rebecca's idea: a finishing school for clinical psychology registrars. PractAus supports practice owners, and Find a Supervisor helps psychologists find a good one. In 2024 I was named Educator of the Year at the Allied Health Awards.

Speaking up for the profession

I get louder when the politics get ugly. I set up the QLD Clinical Psychology Facebook group in 2010 as a rallying point for the profession, served a three-year term as a member-elected director of the Australian Psychological Society, gave expert advice to the Productivity Commission's mental health inquiry, and pushed hard in early 2020 for psychologists to be funded to work by telehealth. Right now I'm campaigning against the proposed cut to psychology training standards.

You'll find the results in my writing and on YouTube.

Outside work

Outside work, I'm based in Brisbane with Rebecca and our kids. I was the first in my family to go to university, I've been a metal fan for longer than I've been a psychologist, and I still mourn the books I lost in the 2011 floods.