Emma Langham, our founding Director, began The Jacaranda Centre in 2013 with a vision of providing high quality and personalised clinical services to children and their families throughout the Hunter in a warm, inviting environment that lets you know we care. The Jacaranda Centre is a family focused centre located in Cardiff, and is a group of like-minded clinicians committed to applying the most current, high quality and evidence based methods to improving the wellbeing of children and their families.
We are a group of passionate Psychologists dedicated to supporting the developmental, psychological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioural wellbeing of your child and the togetherness of your family.
Our Aims
At The Jacaranda Centre we are committed to providing effective, evidence based, and comprehensive opinion and management for a broad range of clinical presentations, maintaining a child focus within the family context.
Having worked in systems with long waiting lists, with exclusion criteria that turned children away, or with policies that prevented flexible service delivery, the team at The Jacaranda Centre work hard to ensure we provide accessible services to families. In order to achieve this, we work hard to meet children and their families in a timely manner, with an open and inclusive attitude and with flexible appointment times, negotiable location for services when needed, and creative use of our skilled team such that more than one psychologist may be involved with your family to provide the best possible outcomes.
How can a Psychologist help my child or me?
Here at The Jacaranda Centre, our Psychologists have all undertaken additional and advanced training in addition to our mandatory university qualifications and work experience to understand the uniqueness of childhood problems to better assist your family.
Psychologists who work with children understand a broad range of biological, social, and psychological factors that contribute to childhood challenges and can apply this knowledge to skillfully determine the likely cause of your child’s difficulty. This knowledge can then be composed into detailed diagnostic reports when relevant to assist others in understanding how to support your child (that is, schools, doctors, other therapists and for purposes of applying for funding).
Once a clear framework for understanding your child’s concerns is established this can then be used to formulate intervention plans and therapy goals aimed at improving your child’s situation through:
- Educating the child, their family or broader systems (such as teacher),
- Applying therapeutic strategies to improve the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of the child and family,
- Development of personalised resources to support therapeutic gaols, and
- Working with the child and/or key people in their life to enhance their relationships.
Psychologists can work with children (always with some level of parent involvement), parents or whole families to effect the necessary change.
At The Jacaranda Centre we will generally want to visit your child at school at least on one occasion to assess broader issues and consider their support network as well as advocate for your child’s needs if relevant.
All Psychologists at The Jacaranda Centre are available to consult with other professionals involved in your child’s care and will attend or even coordinate collaborative meetings at schools or agencies when required.
Why Choose our Service
Here at The Jacaranda Centre we value experience, best practice methods and have high ethical standards. We are committed to ongoing professional development and training to keep up with new developments and continue to expand our repertoire of skills.
While our people are all skilled in working with young people and their families, we all have particular areas of expertise and interest. Something that sets us aside from most, if not all, other private practices in this area is that when you, your GP or other agency on your behalf contact our Centre for an appointment, we pay careful attention to your child and family’s needs so that we can match you with the most suitable Psychologist available. So rather than simply offering you the next available appointment, our team consider each and every referral to ensure the most compatible services are provided.
At The Jacaranda Centre we are diligent to implement ‘gold standards’ of practice and follow published guidelines from internationally and nationally recognised agencies (such as the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia) to ensure our methods are current and evidence based. We also utilise a range of formal, standardised assessment tools when required to support working with your child.
Our Charity Partners
Here at The Jacaranda Centre, of course we care about our clients and referrers. We also care about the wider community, the environment and our animal friends. It is our philosophy that it s important to instill values of respect and care for the broader environment in our children, and involving our clients in supporting charities is one way we encourage caring and thinking of others.
Every time you visit the Centre for an appointment, a portion of your fee is donated to one of our charity partners. We are proud to report that we have made donations to a range of charities from local to international, including:
Hunter Dog Rescue
RSPCA
Humane Society International
The Devil Ark
FAME (The Foundation for Australia’s Most Endangered Species)
We plan to add other charities in the future and would love to hear from you if you know of a Charity we can support.
