Katherine Burke

Katherine began her social work career working regionally in a generalist counselling setting. Katherine has worked with people across the lifespan dealing with a range of life struggles and this has provided the foundation for Katherine’s career long pursuit to understand the role that the family emotional process, the broader environment and experiences of structural and systemic oppression all play in a person’s presenting struggles.

Over the last 17 years Katherine has worked as a counsellor and therapist, Katherine has paralleled her development as a therapist with the development of her own functioning outside of work. This dual focus and effort to “walk the talk” kept her searching for a way of working with people professionally that was able to encapsulate the diverse variables that influence a persons struggles. Bowen’s focus on an inductive process of understanding family functioning aligned with Katherine’s pursuit to find a way of working that was able to capture the complexity of real world struggles and not reduce a clients experience down to the scope of specific interventions or practice frameworks. Katherine has worked for 10 years with families struggling with child abuse and family violence and has found BFST provides a way of conceptualising families experiencing abuse and violence that can open up opportunities for unlocking generational patterns and stuck points in relationships. Katherine currently works with people who have experienced polyvictimisation, those intersecting with the Family Law Court System and those seeking couple and family therapy all within the scope of her private practice in Newcastle. Katherine also provides supervision in a wide range of Government funded services.

Katherine’s formal training has included completing a Bachelor of Social Work, graduate certificate in international development, double masters in public health and health management and advanced cert in couple and family therapy through the FSI.  Katherine’s interest in learning about BFST has included engagement in BFST led learning opportunities internationally.

Katherine has published an article with the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy titled Intimate partner violence and Bowen family systems theory: promoting safety and expanding capacity of families.

Katherine is registered with AAFT as a clinical family therapist. Katherine has recently stepped into FSI faculty holding responsibilities for the FSI Post Graduate program.

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