Life has a way of pulling us under when we least expect it.
Riptide Therapeutic Services was built on this idea: that sometimes children, young people and families find themselves caught in a metaphorical riptide. Strong, fast and difficult to spot, riptides are currents that drag even the strongest swimmers away from shore. Surf Life Saving Australia’s advice when caught in one is simple: put your hand up and ask for help.
That’s what we’re here for.
At Riptide, we sit with children, young people and families exactly where they are (in the thick of it) and walk alongside them back to safety. Through Child and Adolescent Counselling, Play Therapy and Creative Therapy, we support children and young people aged 2–25 to move through the things that feel hard, confusing and overwhelming.
We also know that when a child is struggling, the whole family feels it. Riptide offers parent consultation, capacity building and support for the adults in a child’s life, because carers need care too.
And once the storm has passed, our work doesn’t stop. We help children, young people and families build the skills, knowledge and confidence to navigate whatever riptides life brings next.
Riptide Therapeutic Services is based at the Surf Coast Family Hub in Jan Juc (Fridays) and The Exchange in Winchelsea (Wednesdays and Thursdays).
Amy’s path to founding Riptide Therapeutic Services began in the most confronting of places, working alongside the Victorian prosecution team, sitting with children caught in the justice system and feeling the weight of not being able to support them.
That experience changed everything. Amy returned to study, determined to become someone who could actually support children and young people who had experienced trauma, not just witness their pain from the sidelines. It was the beginning of a career built entirely around showing up for the children and families who needed it most.
After completing her Masters in Social Work, Amy moved into schools across the Surf Coast and Colac-Otway region, and it was here that the seeds of Riptide were planted. She saw children who had experienced trauma without adequate support, and neurodivergent children and young people whose experiences (and their families’ experiences) weren’t always being understood or honoured. Amy recognised that what these young people needed was a safe, specialist space for individual therapy, and that locally, it simply didn’t exist. So she went and built it, training as a Registered Play Therapist and becoming an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker to make that possible.
Along the way, Amy developed a deep and genuine understanding of neurodivergence, one that goes beyond accommodation to something truly affirming. Combined with her trauma expertise and her understanding of how local systems work, Amy is able to support not just the child in the therapy room, but the whole family navigating the world around them.
Amy is the only Accredited Mental Health Social Worker specialising in children and young people, and the only Registered Play Therapist (APTA), in the Surf Coast and Colac-Otway region, meaning families in this area finally have access to genuinely specialist support, close to home.
She brings more than six years of experience across the Victorian prosecution service, family and domestic violence, child and adolescent mental health, youth diversion and schools. Amy is a member of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) and the Australian Play Therapists Association (APTA), and regularly accesses clinical supervision to ensure her practice remains reflective, grounded and current.
What sessions feel like
Amy’s sessions are warm, unhurried and led entirely by the child or young person. There are no worksheets to complete, no right answers and no pressure to talk. Children and young people are free to play, create, move and simply be, while Amy sits alongside them, fully present and genuinely curious about their world. Parents often notice a quiet shift after sessions, a child or young person who seems lighter, or who starts to find words for things they couldn’t name before. For neurodivergent children and young people especially, Amy’s room is frequently the first place they’ve felt truly accepted rather than managed. Amy brings a steadiness to her work that children and young people feel immediately, the kind that comes not from training alone, but from having sat with real pain and chosen, again and again, to stay.
Medicare rebates are available for eligible clients with a Mental Health Care Plan from their GP.