Stephen Cohen

Stephen is a highly experienced Clinical Psychologist interested in working with adults, across lifespan, experiencing a range of mental health concerns including trauma, depression, and anxiety, death, loss, family issues, child protection, eating disorders, life adjustment issues and borderline personality disorder. He also has extensive experience in working with self-harming and suicidal clients. Stephen is trained in a range of evidence-based treatments, including Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing, and is available for consultation in Fremantle.

Stephen commenced his career at Graylands Hospital, in clinical care and the then North Metro Psychiatric Service which required the organizational establishment of all outpatient and community service following the devolution of Heathcote Hospital and a reduction in patient beds at Graylands Hospital.

 From there moving into private practice he provided one of the first private clinical psychology practices in the South West. There, he commenced forensic work providing reports for the Perth Children’s Court, the Family Court of Western Australia, Workers Compensation and the Criminal Compensation Scheme. Later in Perth, he focused on the preparation of court reports for FCWA and the Perth Children’s Court appearing over 500 times as a single expert witness. It was during this time that he commenced providing training to the Legal Aid Commission of WA in staff mental wellbeing and Independent Childrens Lawyers training in interviewing children.

 In 2011 Stephen commenced with the then Department for Child Protection providing psychological evidenced based rationale for staff selection in Child Protection along with research-based rationale for programming and delivery of residential child care across WA.  He then moved to the Kath French Centre in 2012 as the Senior Psychologist and conducted a systemic review of all child care practices and established a new organizational structure and a rewriting of practice manuals and protocols for the care of children.

In 2014 Stephen was appointed Chief Psychologist for Child Protection which required governance over all psychology personnel, platforms, and policies. This included revision of employment practice protocols and re-organization of psychology services to meet changing statewide demands. Management of child protection frequently called on Stephen’s services input for tender selection, staff recruitment and an array of clinical and legal matters, as well as the development of statewide training standardisations for psychologists performing Parenting Capacity Assessments. Stephen’s career has been a balance of clinical and organizational challenges which he believes are highly interconnected as any workplace changes effect individuals and tests their coping and resilience mechanisms.