Kitty Saleh is a Social Worker and Counsellor who uses drama therapy techniques with individuals and groups to facilitate change, healing, strength and resilience. Engaging in drama therapy does not require participants to have skills or experience in drama. All participants need is motivation for positive change and the willingness to participate. Kitty also works with individuals online and in person, using client-centred and strengths-based counselling, motivational interviewing and narrative therapy.

Kitty has worked as an English and Drama teacher in schools in Canberra, Sydney and London, often working in an inclusive unit with students with additional needs and culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. She has run extra-curricular drama groups for students with additional needs, particularly students who are neurodiverse.

Kitty has extensive experience over twenty-five years of working in community service and education. Kitty spent four years working for the Attorney General’s Department in the Office of the Public Guardian in Sydney with clients who had a range of additional needs, from organic brain disorder, developmental disability and mental health issues. She then worked in the community sector in the Northern Rivers with individuals and families experiencing a range of issues from homelessness to family violence. She also worked in an aged care program and initiated using drama therapy in groups at various aged-care facilities in the Northern Rivers. Most recently Kitty worked from 2015 to 2018 in the Educational Support Service at UNSW in Sydney and at the ANU College in Canberra in student support from 2019 to 2020.

Kitty is now in private practice at Compass Counselling seeing clients in person in the Northern Rivers and online. Kitty is passionate about working with women and children in trauma recovery, grief and loss, mental health and with victims of crime.

Kitty is a member of the AASW (Memb. No. 432241), a Reg. Recertified Practicing member of PACFA (Reg. No. 29031), and a provisional member (tier 4) of ANZACATA (Memb. No. 54596097). She works according to the Code of Ethics and Practice Standards of the AASW, which can be found at https://www.aasw.asn.au, the Code of Ethics of PACFA which can be found at http.www.pacfa.org.au, and ANZACATA which can be found at https://www.anzacata.org/ethics-and-standards. She has a current Working with Children Check Clearance (number WWC0504666E) and a National AFP Criminal Check Certificate.

Training and Qualifications

Kitty initially trained as an English and Drama teacher, doing her undergraduate degree at the ANU in Canberra, with honours in Drama, and teaching qualification at Murdoch University in Perth. She then continued her studies in English and Theatre and went to London to do an MA at King’s College, London University. On returning to Australia, she decided to pursue working in a therapeutic context and continued on to do a master’s degree in social work at Griffith University, Queensland. Kitty then combined her love of drama with working therapeutically, by completing a Graduate Diploma in Drama Therapy from IKON College, Brisbane, graduating in July 2018. Most recently Kitty completed a Master of Counselling degree at the University of Canberra in 2022.