C.CET Leadership Group formed
The C.CET Leadership Group currently consists of 8 PACFA members from the creative and experiential therapy disciplines. The Leadership Group has developed C.CET's membership criteria, which can be found here.
Contact the C.CET Leadership Group: [email protected]
Meet C.CET’s Leadership Group
Convenor – Dr Carla van Laar (Master Creative Arts Therapy, Doctor Therapeutic Arts Practice)
Carla is a Clinical PACFA member and accredited supervisor. She is an Artist and Creative Arts Therapist based in Boon Wurrung Country, Inverloch, Victoria. She brings decades of experience working with people and the arts for well-being in community, justice, health, education and private practice contexts.
Experiential ways of knowing underpin Carla’s therapeutic work, including embodied attunement and arts-based responding, informed by trauma-centred, strengths-based, existential and narrative approaches. She loves to share creative practices as ways of knowing and being.
Carla’s book Bereaved Mother’s Heart (2007) broke social taboos about maternal grief. Seeing her Stories (2020) presents Carla’s research into making Women’s stories visible through art. Her most recent publication is “Art Therapy First Aid: Growing Capacity with Art Therapists in Communities Affected by Australian Bushfires” (in Scarce, J. (Ed.) 2022).
An educator in the field of Creative Art Therapy since 2001, Carla received an Artist Fellowship at RMIT’s creative research lab, “Creative Agency” in 2018. She is a lead campaigner in the ACTivate Arts Therapy collective and Founding Director of the Creative Mental Health Forum. Carla insists on being part of a creative revolution in which art re-embodies lived experience, brings us to our senses, makes us aware of the interconnectedness of all life and is an agent of social change.
Deputy Convenor - Tara Harriden (B. Ed., Dip. Ed., Master of Mental Health, (Art Therapy), PhD Candidate)
Tara belongs to Wiradjuri Mob from down Wagga Wagga way and also has some Irish and Scottish Ancestors. She currently runs Whole Hearts and Minds Services – a private Arts Therapy practice in Brisbane that also offers a range of disability support services including counselling, psychosocial recovery coaching, and support coordination. Tara also offers clinical supervision (traditional and therapeutic arts-based) to health professionals, teachers, disability support workers and others in the human services sectors.
Tara is the Pastoral Care representative on the National Human Research Ethics Committee at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) and is also undertaking her own research investigating the benefits of cultural safety-centred, arts-based clinical supervision for mental health workers.
Dr Kevin Franklin (BA, DipEd; B.Psych, PhD)
Kevin Franklin lives in Perth on Whadjuk Country. Kevin is a PACFA Registered Clinical Psychotherapist / Clinical Registrant, a Fellow of the APS College of Clinical Psychologists, and Member Psychodramatist, and Trainer-Educator-Practitioner with AANZPA, a founding group-member of PACFA.
Kevin first qualified (BA, DipEd) as a schoolteacher, then a Senior Teacher of Science and Biological Sciences. He resigned in 1982 to complete a B.Psych (UWA), then a PhD at UTas, awarded 1990. It included Kevin's doctoral research-thesis on the origin and nature of sexual preference. His book (in-press), Humanity and Human Sexuality: The Origin and Nature of Sexual Preference was accepted by a London publisher.
From 1976 Kevin participated in experiential Psychodrama, then trained in Psychodrama theory and practice, at Perth’s Wasley Centre. Kevin was an elected Member of AANZPA’s Executive (8-years), then nominated Member of the Board of Examiners (7-years). Since 1995 he has been a Clinical Psychologist in private practice and the Director of Training for the Perth Campus of Psychodrama Australia which seeks to awaken and strengthen the abilities of people in many settings to express themselves relevantly, responsively, and creatively in the ordinary here and now situations in which they live and work.
Loren Weber (Master of Art Therapy, Master of Psychotherapy and Counselling, Master of Media Arts, Film and Television)
Loren is an Art Therapist and Counsellor from the Blue Mountains in Greater Sydney, New South Wales. Since qualifying as an Art Therapist in 2017, she has accumulated experience in variety of contexts including public and private hospitals, school settings, the government sector, not-for-profit organisation working within the Aboriginal community and in private practice working with NDIS clients.
Having a background in Media Arts in Film, Loren values the healing aspects of sound, story, symbols, play and creative expression and uses this in her therapeutic work. She is especially interested in de-pathologizing human distress, inclusive care and providing support to persons with lived experience of unusual perceptions. Loren looks forward to the opportunity to support and contribute to the growth and recognition of Creative and Expressive Therapies throughout Australia as a part of the C.CET Leadership Team.
Sandy Buchanan
Sandy finds her abilities lay in relationship and holding a meaningful, safe space for people in both the group context and also one on one connection.
This has informed the direction her career has taken through the fashion industry into training and education and small business management, with experience gained coordinating and facilitating group activities, community events, TAFE courses, writing and managing compliant tertiary programs to the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Framework (VRQA). Over the last ten years Sandy has turned her attention to the therapeutic benefits of creative process, as an Expressive Arts Therapist, Counsellor and Mentor. Her therapeutic workshops, groups programs and one on one support are all tailored to suit the client, their mental health needs and well-being.
Sandy's areas of special interest are: Women experiencing cancer and their families; Autism and partners of Autistic adults; Melbourne's homeless community, palliative Care and End of Life; our elderly, living in aged care & in the community. This includes dementia specific programs, behavioural and recreational therapies, and carer support. All the while Sandy's creative energies continue to flourish with a personal arts practise exploring a wide variety of visual arts and activities.
Dr Lisa Moseley (PhD)
Dr Lisa Moseley is an arts therapist/counsellor with over 20 years professional experience, working with individuals and families, through all stages of life, across various socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds. Lisa has previously worked and created projects in education settings with children living with diverse physiological, sensory and learning challenges and youth at risk of AOD and homelessness issues, and adults transitioning from in-patient mental health facilities, living in the community with chronic mental illness.
Lisa’s PhD and professional roles since 2005, focus on creative approaches for mental health recovery, and the progressive leadership that creative arts and experiential therapy contribute to multidisciplinary systems of health and community services. Her focus since 2016 has been working with clients of refugee backgrounds, integrating creative arts and experiential therapies with trauma-informed, somatic experience theories and practices.
Lisa is an accredited PACFA supervisor with clinical and art-based supervision training. She has sat on committees with ACATA, DMTAA, and on working groups for a successful mental health accreditation process (2020-21) and contributed to professional development for The Victorian Foundation for Torture Inc. where she is employed fulltime, currently working on primary prevention for family violence programs for the diverse communities involved.
Janeen Cameron
Janeen is a Sensorimotor Psychotherapist (Trauma L2) and Art Psychotherapist and Counsellor in private practice in Perth. Originally a registered nurse (mental health) and occupational health and rehabilitation consultant in industrial and health arenas, Janeen brings transferrable skills into her full-time private practice in Perth. She predominantly works with clients experiencing complex trauma and bereavement histories. In the last two years, Janeen has been fortunate to be the English-speaking assistant in South Korea for Sensorimotor Psychotherapy level 1 Trauma trainees (the work of Pat Ogden and facilitated by Kekuni Minton (Trauma and the Body).
Janeen’s other activities include: Facilitator - Master of Counselling (accelerated) Edith Cowan University; Lecturer at the Ikon Institute Australia (12 years), facilitation of Domestic Family Violence Indigenous Stream Workshops and Violence in the Workplace courses for LifelineWA in organisations and for front line workers in communities across WA; NDIS Registered Provider working with complex NDIA clients; Clinical supervision for integrated creative arts therapists and professionals who use trauma-informed & creativity models in their practice; EAP programs; life coaching and health practice business mentoring for individuals, teams and corporate; online courses & workshops.
Having worked therapeutically via e-therapy for 12 years, Janeen is passionate about the opportunities this provides for communities and professionals alike. She uses an integrated approach - behaviouralist, humanist and predominantly psychodynamic, with a special interest in active imagination, dreamwork, hypnotherapy, and NLP.
Diana Sands (PhD)
Diana is a postvention and prevention clinician, researcher and educator. Diana provides counselling following sudden, violent and traumatic death, and in particular individual, couple and family counseling and group programs, for those who have lost a loved one through suicide. Her counseling and group programs draw on a range of theoretical perspectives including narrative and family systems theory and incorporate expressive artwork. She is a Clinical member of PACFA, and the Deputy Chair of Postvention Australia, and the Honorary Advisor to the Wings of Hope Charity. Diana has served on the NSW Executive Committee, National Association Loss and Grief, and as the NSW representative with Suicide Prevention Australia. Diana is a Member of the International Work Group Death, Dying and Bereavement, and a recipient of the Vice Chancellor Post Graduate Research Grant, Australian Government Research Scholarship. Diana has presented seminars and workshops in Australia and Internationally drawing on her clinical experience and research. She has published a number of peer reviewed academic articles and book chapters and is the author of a book and DVD resource Red Chocolate Elephants: For Children Bereaved by Suicide.