FWT+DP - Trainers

Trainers Bio's

For Your interest - not exhaustive.

Alphabetical by surname.

Cherie Appleton	Tracey Hassan
Judi Apte	Sigrid Herring
Lane Blume	Colleen Hirst
Robyn Bradey	Andrew King
Sue Buratti	Maria Losurdo
Dr Robyn Dolby	Carolyn Quinn
Aunty Beverley Eaton	David Scheerhoorn
Bronwen Elliott	Erica Tang
Miriam Giugni	Leonie Webb
Patricia Kiely	Nicki Weld

Cherie Appleton – Director CNZN

Cherie brings to CNZN 30 years of learning and experience within the human services sector, both in Aotearoa NZ and Overseas. Cherie has worked for and with community groups, educational institutions, and statutory organizations building and delivering successful social and youth work services including court-work, care and protection, residential, training, facilitation, research, supervision, consultancy and management.

Cherie’s qualifications include raising a family, CQSW in Social Work, Diploma Training and Development, Diploma management, and she is currently completing her Masters in Social Work. Cherie is a registered social worker.

Cherie is passionate about working with people to enhance their learning and growth. Cherie sees herself as a global connector of people, ideas, knowledge and resources in order to enable positive and mutually rewarding relationships to flourish.

Judi Apte

Judi Apte works as a consultant to human service organisations in NSW. She specialises in the design of courses and professional development strategies, especially those that involve workplace learning and accredited training.

Workshops are in the areas of leadership, collaboration, supervision, coaching and mentoring, adult learning and training, facilitating change and leading teams. Her qualifications are in social work and adult education.

Her work has included projects to plan cross-professional interagency training, develop national competency standards, advise on assessment systems, establish mentor programs, conduct consultation forums, and design and facilitate best practice forums. Judi also works with organisations around changes in structures, practices and management.

Lane Blume

Lane has extensive experience in marketing, management, training and organisational development in private industry, Government, community sector and adult & tertiary education. Her experience covers areas as diverse as influence skills, lobbying & submission writing, competency-based course & curriculum design, interpersonal communication, change management, grievance & harassment management, negotiation & mediation skills, supervision & management, training & presentation skills, cross-cultural issues, writing skills, and program & service planning & evaluation.

Lane also facilitates meetings and conferences; conducts research and project evaluations; and consults across a range of EEO, management and HR areas. She is a trained mediator; a nationally accredited Myer-Briggs Type practitioner; and a nationally–accredited Certificate IV Workplace Trainer & Assessor.

Robyn Bradey

Robyn Bradey is a Mental Health Accredited Social Worker with 28 years experience, 16 of those in private practice. She has been a youth worker, a hospital social worker, and an administrator. She offers professional supervision to a wide range of health, welfare and legal workers. She is a counsellor, specialising in loss, grief, trauma, work related stress and injury. She has taught at TAFE, the Australian College of Applied Psychology, and has trained for the Community Centre for Welfare Training, for 14 years. She is currently working as a consultant and trainer for Sydney Hospital/ Sydney Eye Hospital, Legal Aid, NSW Women’s Legal Services, The Bar Association of NSW (Last year was a panellist at a forum on Lawyers & Depression at UTS Law School), St Vincent de Paul, Mission Australia Court Support, Sexual Assault Unit RPA, NSW Carer’s, and a large number of other agencies and organisations. She has written 3 books and numerous professional papers and was part of the Motor Accident Authority Working Party, which produced guidelines for the treatment of PTSD following MVAs.

Sue Buratti

Sue is a Child and Family therapist who specialises in working in a creative and experiential way to support behavioural and emotional challenges. Sue also was part of the focus group in Hope studies and has been incorporating the Hope Focussed Approach into her work and is excited to share this style with other workers. She has worked in NGO, community and Private sectors working with a diverse range of clients. Sue’s qualifications are to Masters level.

Dr Robyn Dolby

Dr Robyn Dolby is a psychologist who has worked in the field of Infant Mental Health for thirty years. She co-ordinates a relationship-based intervention that supports staff, parents and children at preschool and she runs child observation seminars for child psychiatry trainees at the New South Wales Institute of Psychiatry, a unique collaboration between child psychiatry and early childhood. She has written the booklet, “The Circle of Security: Roadmap to Building Supportive Relationships” for the Research into Practice series published by Early Childhood Australia.

Aunty Beverley Eaton

Aunty Beverley is an Indigenous woman whose people come from Coonabarabran. She has over 16 years experience in the community sector working in a mainstream service with a great commitment to the Aboriginal community. Beverley is Chairperson of the Blue Mountains Aboriginal Culture and Resource Centre at Katoomba. Beverley has traveled around NSW running training sessions for community sector workers in relation to working with Aboriginal people. As part of her consultant role, Beverley also provides supervision and support services to Aboriginal workers in a range of different service settings.

Bronwen Elliott

Bronwen has over 20 years experience working with children and families. Since 1991 Bronwen has worked as a consultant to a range of government and non government agencies, providing training, consultation and program support. Bronwen keeps developing her own practice skills through undertaking family assessments and voluntary involvement with playgroups in a culturally diverse community. Bronwen is co-author of ‘Promoting Family Change: the Optimism Factor’, and has presented workshops at conferences in Australia and the USA.

Miriam Giugni

Tracey Hassan

Tracey Hassan has been a Psychologist for over 15 years and works from a strengths based family-centred practice model. Tracey has worked as a Family Counsellor at Learning Links, in early childhood intervention with children with a disability, has presented Learning Links’ Program and has her own private practice.

Colleen Hirst

Colleen is a registered Psychologist, couple and family therapist, supervisor and trainer who has been practicing for over 20 years. Colleen has presented many workshops for Family Worker Training and Development Programme, including Solution Focused Brief Therapy, Strategic Questioning and Advanced Counselling Skills. She is currently in private practice.

Sigrid Herring

Sigrid has worked in the community services industry managing and delivering Family Support and group work programs for more than 15years. She has taught aboriginal Studies and Community Services/Welfare modules at TAFE, both face to face and through distance education for more than 10 years.

Sigrid has produced reports for a number of research projects including Aboriginal health needs and access issues, educational access issues and management & service delivery issues of small nongovernment organisations.

She has organised and assisted with the delivery of community management training programs from Local Aboriginal Land Councils across NSW. Sigrid has written a number of learning and teaching packages in the areas of Aboriginal Studies, Drug& Alcohol, Child Protection and Family Violence.

Patricia Kiely

Patricia Kiely has a Masters of Clinical Psychology and a Cert IV in Workplace Training and Assessment. She is the Senior Manager, Psychology at Marist Youth Centre and has a private clinical psychology practice at Eastwood.

She has extensive experience (over 38 years) working with children and families, adults and couples and also groups. She has developed and delivered professional training and provided clinical supervision for many years. She introduced Family Group Conferencing (FGC) in NSW in 1996 and has developed and delivers and accredited training course in FGC facilitation.

Andrew King

Andrew King is the Men’s Services Manager for Mensline Australia (Crisis Support Services). He is also a consultant trainer for group work, working with men and program development for various organisations. He is the Chairperson for the Institute of Group Leaders and a specialist trainer in group work and trains professionals throughout Australia in ‘working with men’.

Maria Losurdo

Maria has over 20 years experience in the community sector in the areas of Family Day Care, Family Support, Women’s Refuges and community development projects. Maria is deeply committed to social justice and access & equity practice and principles, and has worked closely with the Aboriginal Community, the Deaf Community and with the Lesbian /Gay Communities. In addition, Maria has taught at TAFE and run community sector in-service workshops. Maria is the Organisational Development Officer for Family Worker Training + Development Programme Inc. and also runs a private practice providing management support and other services to the community sector.

Carolyn Quinn

Carolyn has over 25 years experience in the child & family services field in varied roles including direct service, supervision and management, learning and development, research and evaluation, policy development, change management, and results accountability. She has specialty skills and experience in prevention and early intervention services to support families, child protection and family violence and disability issues. She is the principal consultant in C. Quinn Consultancy Pty Ltd, with 18 years experience delivering consultancy services to a wide range of government and NGO agencies. This has included supporting large and small organisations in developing relevant and practical evaluation systems, conducting research projects as well as numerous program evaluation projects and, developing and delivering training on a range of topics. Carolyn is an approved Results Based Accountability trainer and coach.

David Scheerhoorn

Dave began working with young people in the western suburbs of Sydney in 1986 as a volunteer in a drop in centre run by Fusion Australia. He was with Fusion for 11 years spending many years in Geraldton before coming back to the western suburbs to work with Anglicare in one of their group homes. In 2002 he joined SHINE for KIDS and began to specialise in group work for children and young people who had a parent in prison.

Erica Tang

Erica Tang is a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist and works with a team of Early Childhood Educators and Speech Pathologists to provide Early Intervention support in Fairfield, one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse LGAs in Sydney.

Leonie Webb

Leonie is a social worker. She has worked with individuals and families experiencing complex issues in a range of settings such as community mental health, corrective services, child protection, hospitals and the community sector. She has facilitated numerous programs in parenting, communication, anger management and relationships.
Leonie initiated the ‘On The Run Counselling’ workshops and has had significant input into the manual.

Nicki Weld- Director CNZN

Nicki has experience in a variety of roles including senior social worker, supervisor, acting team leader, senior trainer, learning and development advisor and national advisor to social workers in schools. Nicki has designed and delivered a range of innovative training packages and tools, including the Three Houses information gathering tool used in New Zealand and overseas. Nicki has had involvement in key capacity building initiatives particularly within the New Zealand Statutory Child Protection Agency.

Nicki's qualifications include a Masters (Applied) in Social Work and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. She has had further training in a range of areas including clinical supervision and counselling. Nicki presents at conferences in both New Zealand and overseas. She is a registered social worker.

Nicki believes in the application of creativity and innovation in social service work to both connect and inspire people to reach their full potential.