Narelle Simmons, AASW

Narelle Simmons is an experienced social worker with 18 years working across clinical and community settings. She combines a commitment to social justice with a practical focus on resilience and wellbeing, drawing on an understanding of how systems, power and oppression shape people’s lives. Narelle is an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker and holds AASW, the professional association for social workers in Australia, which reflects her professional standing and focus in mental health.

She takes a collaborative, person-centred approach, working alongside people to devise strategies that are realistic, meaningful and tailored to each individual’s history, lived experience and goals. Narelle believes people are the experts in their own lives and emphasises building practical connections and supports that help sustain change over time. Her practice emphasises clear, achievable steps and respect for each person’s context.

Narelle has particular experience supporting people with stress and anxiety, relationship difficulties, trauma and abuse, parenting challenges and depression. She also works with issues such as abandonment and attachment, communication problems, guilt and shame, mood and panic disorders, post-traumatic stress, pregnancy and childbirth concerns, social anxiety and women’s issues. She aims to create an open, non-judgemental space where thoughts and feelings can be explored, and she encourages and supports people through the often-difficult first steps of starting therapy.

Evidence-informed approaches for online support

Many of Narelle's ways of working draw on trauma-informed practice, which focuses on understanding how past harm and stress affect current responses and helps people feel understood while building safer coping strategies. This approach is useful for people recovering from abuse or post-traumatic stress.

She also works from a systems-informed social work perspective, recognising how family, community and broader social forces influence behaviour and relationships, and helping clients identify practical changes within those systems. In parallel, her person-centred collaborative planning emphasises the client as the expert in their own life, with the therapist and client co-designing realistic, goal-oriented strategies to address issues like anxiety, low mood and relationship strain.

Finding the right therapeutic approach is part of the process and Narelle works collaboratively with each person to identify the best fit based on their needs, goals and preferences. She helps clients explore options and adapt techniques so therapy feels useful and manageable.

Online therapy through video calls, phone sessions, live chat or text-based messaging offers flexibility for people juggling work, family or geographical constraints. These options make it easier to access appropriately qualified or registered professionals from home or other convenient locations, allow scheduling around daily life and support continuity of care when in-person sessions are not possible.