Deborah Jepsen Information

At Melbourne Child Psychology we are a family-centred practice, which means that we work in partnership with parents and children to reach individual (child) and global (family) goals. Instead of just telling parents what to do, we help them to make their own decisions. We believe this is a better approach for parents to develop confidence so they can make their own plans and decisions in the future. We encourage parent's involvement and suggestions on how to best work with their child. Based on our experience, we provide parents with strategies to help them help their child at home. We work together to adapt those strategies to the family's specific characteristics. Parents are also our greatest resource! All families and all children are different. By working with parents, we can get "insider" information about what strategies have been tried before, which ones have and haven't worked in the past, and the family's resource availability. Parents are experts in their child and family, so with their information we can learn more about the child's (and family's) interests and strengths to design a more effective counselling plan. In cases where the main goal is a behavioural change, parental involvement is crucial to achieve success. For example, if in counselling we are focusing on increasing anger management, parents need to back up the work done during the counselling session. They may also need to implement a home-plan, such as the introduction of time-out and reward charts. In some cases we can also provide strategies that can be implemented at school, so parents can pass on the information to their child's teacher. In general, the more consistent the behaviour change plan is across settings (e.g. home, school, after-school activities), the more effective the plan will be. If you have any questions on how we can work with you as a partnership to help your child overcome their personal challenges, please get in touch.