Our Team

Meet the team

Michèle Cohen

Family Therapist and Social Worker

Michèle is a registered social work practitioner with over 25 years’ experience in working with children and families in a variety of government and not-for-profit settings.

She has post graduate qualifications in social work and social science and is an accredited NMAS mediator and Mental Health First Aider.

She offers counselling, psychotherapy and assessments for children and families including culturally and linguistically diverse families.

Michèle offers confidential and culturally sensitive and responsive therapy. She provides her clients with a warm, safe and pragmatic therapeutic environment in which to resolve their issues. She works from a trauma informed and strengths-based perspective and works collaboratively with her clients to seek resolution to their problems.

Michèle is child focussed and acts in the best interests of children in relation to Children’s Court and Family Court matters. Michèle was the first co-located child protection consultant to be appointed to the family law jurisdiction in Australia in 2009. She spent 12 years at the Family Court WA working closely with judiciary and staff of the court, Independent Children’s Lawyers and Single Expert Witnesses to achieve the best outcomes for children in that jurisdiction.

She was frequently consulted by the office of the Federal Attorney General, Federal Circuit Courts and child protection authorities in other states and assisted them to develop similar roles in their jurisdictions.

She has presented a number of papers to family law conferences around Australia, including, to the National Judicial College of Australia and Australian Institute of Judicial Management, Family Pathways Networks WA and Tasmania, inter alia.

In 2019, Michèle addressed and made recommendations to the Federal Attorney General’s Committee on Family Violence. In 2020, the Federal Attorney General allocated three-year funding to embed child protection workers in all the family courts around Australia, based on Michèle’s work and role in WA. 

Michèle is a skilled mediator with experience in convening pre-conferences at the Perth Children’s Court and conciliation conferences at the Equal Opportunity Commission WA.

Key interest areas
  • Court reportable family therapy
  • Family separation
  • Parent capacity assessments
  • Child protection concerns
  • Therapy with children using art and play
  • Trauma, including PTSD assessment and treatment
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Stress
  • Panic attacks
  • Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) work, including migrant settlement stress and trauma
Key approaches to therapy

Meet the team

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