Core Ideas of Family & Systemic Therapy - 4 Day Intensive

Sarah is an accredited Mental Health Social Worker and Clinical Family Therapist with a deep commitment to supporting children, adolescents, and families through evidence-based, trauma-informed practice. With extensive experience across various mental health settings - including her senior clinical work in the Early in Life Mental Health Service (ELMHS) - Sarah brings a strong foundation in systemic thinking, risk assessment, complex case formulation, and therapeutic intervention. Her practice integrates a range of modalities such as CBT, DBT-informed strategies, motivational interviewing, and attachment-focused approaches.

In parallel with her clinical work, Sarah has contributed to family therapy education as a guest lecturer at Williams Road Family Therapy Centre, where she presents within the Master of Family and Systemic Therapy programme in partnership with Australian Catholic University. She has also served as a group supervision facilitator and student placement supervisor, and continues to build on her professional training in Attachment Narrative Therapy, ABFT, and relational formulation. Her work reflects a strong interest in developing clinical thinking across complex family systems and supporting inclusive, family-focused care models.

As a Presenter at Williams Road Family Therapy - Learning, Sarah combines her rich practical knowledge with a thoughtful, structured approach to teaching. She is passionate about mentoring the next generation of therapists, helping them translate theoretical models into effective clinical practice. Her teaching style is grounded, accessible, and collaborative - giving students the confidence to engage with complex relational systems and the tools to navigate real-world therapeutic challenges with clarity and care.

Dr Sophie Holmes is a specialist in Family and Systemic Therapy,  which she has integrated into her practice as a Counselling, Educational and Developmental Psychologist. With four decades of experience in clinical practice, research, training and supervision, she is the Director of Williamsroad Family Therapy - Learning, and  provides clinical-intellectual leadership, playing a pivotal role in advancing the practical implementation of Family & Systemic Therapy.  With a deep immersion in the field and many international collaborations, she promotes life-long  learning, the importance of  frontline clinicians being  culturally aware, open minded, curious, compassionate and seeking deeper understanding of how families change and the best uses of evidence-based approaches to family and relational dynamics. Dr. Holmes has a distinguished career including a flourishing clinical practice, leadership in professional associations, clinical teaching and supervision, and she is widely recognised for her contributions to family and systemic therapy education and innovation in case-based research.

Sophie’s clinical expertise lies in working with complex  individuals and their relational systems, utilising deep knowledge of psychological practice integrated with Family and Systemic ideas and practices, current research  in Psychotherapy, Attachment, Affective Neuroscience, Traumatology, Stress & Coping  and Advanced Complex Systems theory. Her learning-teaching focus is to broadly educate on implementing family and systemic clinical knowledge, building an appreciation for  tracking outcomes, taking feedback and attending to the precision and quality of  interventions. Sophie mentors therapists who have a deep desire  to be effective and to steadily improve their clinical decision-making within a broad range of clinical presentations and contexts. 

In 2003 Sophie designed and gathered a team to teach the  Master of Family Therapy. Under her leadership, Williamsroad Family Therapy Centre grew to become the only accredited  third-party to provide postgraduate clinical training in family therapy in the university sector. In 2016, in partnership with the  Australian Catholic University, she completely redesigned this postgraduate clinical training program, implementing  leading edge pedagogy and psychotherapy research  into the Masters of Family and Systemic Therapy. The findings from her  award winning research “On The Nature of Expertise in Family Therapy”  have shaped supervision.

As a presenter at Williamsroad Family Therapy - Learning, Sophie brings a relational, individualised, yet structured pedagogy, ensuring that practitioners develop their personal identities as therapists, are feedback-outcome focused, with rich  theoretical knowledge and practical expertise to confidently navigate complex family systems. Her teaching style blends rigorous academic insight with compassionate real-world clinical application, equipping therapists with the skills and confidence to create meaningful change for the families they support.