PAnzA

presents

A professional development workshop

with

Sarah Calvert (PhD)

Counsellors and Psychotherapists operate in professional and statutory contexts which promote transparency and accountability.

The right of clients to raise concerns about the service they have received is provided for through a range of complaint processes.

According to the Health and Disability Commission, the number and complexity of consumer complaints received by them has increased by 36% since 2021.

Sarah Calvert will provide an overview of the current complaint ‘landscape’, and highlight useful aspects for us as we navigate therapeutic relating and formal mechanisms of accountability. She welcomes questions in advance (see link below).

Having set-the-scene for us, Sarah will open the floor for discussion and respond to any additional questions.

Please join us for a foray into these important and nuanced dimensions of our practice. We could not have a more qualified and experienced expert available to us.

Please send questions in advance to admin@panza.org.nz. They will be passed to Sarah in anonymous form.

About Sarah

Sarah Calvert, PHD, Clinical Psychologist, has been a member of NZAP since the early 1990’s and had a long and warm association with the Institute of Psychosynthesis. She has been involved with the development of regulatory processes. Since she appeared as an expert witness at the Cartwright commission which itself led to the setting up of the HDC and the legislation which supports it. Sarah has worked for the New Zealand Family Court since its inception. She has also worked for many years in various roles for Oranga Tamariki (NZ’s statutory child welfare organisation). She was an expert witness for the NZ Royal Commission into Abuse in State Care (2022). She has worked in private practice and as an internationally recognised researcher in areas such as Child Development and women’s mental health. In 2018 she was made a Distinguished Scholar of Waikato University in recognition of her research and her clinical work. She authored a chapter on the value of psychology in Family Court cases (Research Handbook on International Child Abduction, Freeman and Taylor, 2023) and has a chapter in press, co-authored with her colleague Trudy Ake MSW, Cultural Identity: ‘Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au’ – I am the river and the river is me’ on the importance of identity for child development which will appear in Children and Young People’s Identities in International Law: Life Events, Law and Selfhood. Freeman and Taylor (2025). She is a member of the AFCC/OFW Committee preparing a Bench Book for the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (USA) on the use of ACES in working in Family Courts. She is currently involved with The Hague Secretariat addressing the intersection of international law and child abduction and the role played by Domestic Violence in such issues and in researching how care plans for children in post separated families work for children.

Attendance

Registrations are welcome from PAnzA members and from Psychosynthesis-trained members of the community.

Fees

• PAnzA members – FREE
• Non-members – $20

Recording

The workshop will be recorded and available via the website to PAnzA members.

Format

• Online – by Zoom