A History of the Bouverie Centre

The Bouverie Centre, Victoria's Family Institute, was developed from the Bouverie Clinic, a public Child Guidance Clinic at 233 Bouverie Street, Carlton. Dr. Geoff Goding, its (Psychiatric) Superintendent from 1956 to 1980, initiated and led its transformation into a creative and innovative specialist Family Therapy Centre. The visit of Rudolf Dreikurs, an Adlerian family counsellor, in 1966 was nominated by Dr. Goding as a turning point for Bouverie, which led the Clinic to work more with families and groups of parents in addition to working with individuals. During the 1970s, the arrival of overseas trained family therapy staff, visits by internationally renowned family therapists such as Salvador Minuchin (1976) and growing professional interest in viewing the family as an important unit to address treatment, laid the foundation for Bouverie's development into Victoria's only public specialist family therapy agency. By the time Dr. Goding retired in 1980, several hundred of Melbourne's social workers, psychologists, doctors and others had already been trained at Bouverie in family therapy, and the Clinic was known throughout Australia for its research in this area.

Under the stewardship of his successor, Dr. Andrew Firestone, the Clinic was in due course re-named the Bouverie Family Therapy Centre and its clinical work was reclassified from child guidance to family work for all ages. Its now specialised service was organized under the banners of training, consultation, external teaching and direct clinical services . A formal and certified two-year course, the Mental Health Division Training Program in Family Therapy, was designed and delivered. Staff continued to research in family therapy as before, but in 1983 became involved in a highly publicized battle to retain the integrity of the service and the homely streetfront address. However, following complex industrial and political negotiations, the service was relocated to the Parkville Centre.

The training program was the subject of an extensive research project commenced in the late 1970's, which shaped the curriculum and teaching methodology. Under the leadership of the next director, Dr Barbara Knothe, a relationship was established with the Lincoln Institute and the first professional development course was created. In the late 1980's, the tradition of clinical research and model development was formalised into specialist teams; this began with the Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) team soon followed by the HIV/ AIDS group. This association created the path for the formal accreditation of the training course as a Graduate Diploma within the School of Occupational Therapy, in the then Lincoln School of Health Sciences, La Trobe University (1989). Tom Paterson was appointed as the first Senior Lecturer in Family Therapy.

The current Director, Dr. Colin Riess joined The Bouverie Centre at the beginning of that same year and finalised the agreements with the University. During the early nineties the centre strengthened its role as a service provider to Adult Mental Health communities and services. The hosting of the 'Us and Them' group, the 'Family as part of the Team' workshops in collaboration with the OPS Staff Training Team and CATS (Changing Attitudes to Schizophrenia) and the 'Schizophrenia and Family Work' forums heralded the shift of the Centre's service philosophy from a traditional 'therapy' emphasis to a more collaborative one. The term Family Sensitive Practice was coined at this time.

In 1992, the Schizophrenia Fellowship of Victoria invited the Centre to contribute to a pilot project to promote greater awareness of the potential role of the family in the provision of mental health services. This pilot was designed to involve the whole North Eastern Metropolitan Psychiatric Sector (NEMPS-pilot). The 12 week training course evolved to directly involve family members and workers as well as the whole management structure of the sector. This pilot became the template for the development of the Centre's FaST (Family Sensitive Training) services, including the FaST video series and led directly to the state-wide Get Together FaST initiative (1997/98).