Date: Thursday 10 July 2025
Location: Gestalt Centre, 622 Lygon Street, North Carlton
Duration: 6.00pm–7.30pm
Facilitators: Belinda Gibson (Manager, ConnectGround Clinic), Sally Coates (GTA Faculty Member) and Tony Jackson (Managing Director, Gestalt Centre)
Fee: Free
Ready to deepen your practice in a supportive clinic?
ConnectGround is now offering a 12-month Counselling & Psychotherapy Internship Program, tailored for counselling and psychotherapy graduates. This program offers real-world clinical experience in our Saturday clinic. No prior Gestalt training is required.
Come along to this in-person information session to learn everything you need to know about this unique opportunity to gain practical experience in working with clients.
During this session, we’ll cover:
- program structure, supervision, and clinical experience
- what it’s like to work with our diverse client base
- support available for interns, including training and reflective practice
- application process, eligibility, and selection criteria.
You’ll have the opportunity to meet some of the team, ask questions, and decide whether this internship is right for your next step.
What's included in the Internship Program?
- Saturday shifts
- Caseload of three ongoing clients per week
- 100+ client hours over 12 months
- 40+ hours of group and individual supervision
- Two dedicated training days + four in-house workshops
- PD discounts and ad hoc clinical support
- Grounded in relational Gestalt principles
Who should attend?
Counselling and psychotherapy graduates (from any modality or training background) who have achieved or are close to achieving professional membership.
No prior gestalt training is required.
Download the program guide for more information.
About your facilitators: Belinda Gibson, Sally Coates & Tony Jackson
Belinda Gibson, Manager of Clinical Services / Manager of ConnectGround Clinic
BPsych, Grad Dip (Psych), MPsych (Community), MAAPI
Belinda is a psychologist and Gestalt therapist working in private practice providing counselling to individuals and couples. Belinda works with individuals, couples and offers clinical supervision. She completed her Gestalt Training with the Gestalt Institute of Western Australia and has also trained with the Gestalt Associates Training Los Angeles (GATLA).
Sally Coates, GTA Faculty Member
BSc, Grad Dip (Psych), Adv Dip Gestalt Therapy, Cert IV Workplace Training & Assessment
Sally is a Gestalt psychotherapist, supervisor, and training facilitator, with over twenty years’ experience, who has worked across a variety of community, specialist, and workplace settings. Sally’s clinical experience has focused on providing therapy with people experiencing substance use, mental health difficulties, complex trauma, loss, grief, sexual assault and family violence. Sally has a keen interest in how the principles of Relational Gestalt Therapy enliven and support professional presence both within and beyond therapeutic encounters. As such, Sally is an experienced senior manager of multidisciplinary wellbeing teams in large and complex organisations, such as Victoria Police and The University of Melbourne. Sally has been a GTA faculty member since 2019, and absolutely loves the rich vitality of this experiential group training program. Sally has also taught the Diploma of Counselling, Diploma of Family Intake and Support Work, and Certificate IV in Alcohol and Other Drugs in Australia’s VET system. Sally was the Education and Training Manager for beyondblue where she managed the development, delivery and evaluation of mental health and wellbeing training nationally for a diverse range of audiences. As an independent consultant to the Qatar Supreme Council of Health, Sally developed, piloted, and evaluated Qatar’s inaugural workplace mental health and wellbeing training.
Tony Jackson, Managing Director, Gestalt Centre
B.Theol, BA.Psych, GradDip.Counselling, AdvDip.Gestalt Therapy, GradDip.Supervision, M.GANZ
Tony is a psychotherapist, facilitator and coach with over 20 years of experience. Tony works with people to support resilience and wellbeing and helps them develop a sense of vitality and choice in their lives. He provides supervision for psychotherapists which assists them to deepen their own personal and professional capacities. Tony also provides training for individuals and groups that focuses on building responsiveness to individual and group needs in emergent situations.
About ConnectGround
ConnectGround is our a community-based counselling and psychotherapy clinic. ConnectGround serves as both a training facility for psychotherapists and a provider of low-cost individual and group therapy for clients. The clinic emphasises the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist as a key support for building awareness and adaptability. Psychotherapy interns and volunteers gain valuable hands-on experience, enhancing their skills and professionalism through client work.
About Gestalt Centre
The Gestalt Centre is the heart of Melbourne’s Gestalt community. We offer a four-year psychotherapy training program through Gestalt Therapy Australia, staying true to the experiential roots of Gestalt while embracing cutting-edge developments in contemporary Gestalt thinking and practice worldwide.
