What are the opening hours?

Monday 8am - 8pm Tuesday 8am - 8pm Wednesday 8am - 8pm Thursday 8am - 8pm Friday 8am - 5pm Saturday 8:30am - 1pm

https://link.content360.io/cclinks

A Counselling Concern, 114 Burrowye Crescent, Keilor (2026)

29/09/2026

The Infrastructure Behind the Infrastructure

The Beyond Blue report "The Future We Choose," launched earlier this month, identified five shifts Australia needs to make in mental health over the next decade. One of them is workforce. The report found that demand for mental health support continues to outpace supply. Workforce shortages, cost barriers, and access challenges persist. The system is strained, and the people working inside it are carrying the strain.

Supervision is the infrastructure behind the infrastructure. The support that supports the supporters. Every PACFA Registered Clinical Counsellor is required to maintain regular supervision — but supervision is not a bureaucratic requirement. It's the space where the counsellor brings the work that is weighing on them and unpacks it with a senior practitioner who has been there before. The client situations that are stuck. The ethical dilemmas. The countertransference — the feelings the counsellor is having about the client that are getting in the way of the work. The vicarious trauma that accumulates when you spend your days sitting with other people's pain. The supervision session is where the counsellor's blind spots become visible, where the stuck case gets unstuck, where the practitioner who is holding everyone else gets held themselves.

Mental Health Month starts in two days. The theme is "Together We Thrive." The theme is about connection — and the connection that matters in mental health is not only the connection between client and counsellor. It's the connection between counsellor and supervisor. The connection that keeps the workforce functioning, that prevents burnout, that catches the practitioner before they become the next person who needs a counsellor.

If you're a counsellor, an allied health professional, or a practitioner whose work involves holding other people's distress — when did you last bring your work to supervision? Not the administrative version. The clinical version. The one where you talk about the client you can't stop thinking about. The session that didn't go well. The pattern you can't see. The work that is starting to follow you home.

Paul Hammat OAM — PACFA Certified Supervisor. Clinical supervision for counsellors and allied health professionals in Keilor and via telehealth Australia-wide. counsellingconcern.au

29/09/2026

The Su***de Prevention Australia Community Tracker, released this month, found that fewer than 1 in 4 Australians — 22 per cent — feel very or extremely prepared to support someone who is showing signs of distress. 42 per cent feel not prepared at all, or only slightly prepared.

That means in your workplace, your family, your friendship group — the majority of people around you don't know what to do if someone is struggling. Not because they don't care. Because no one has ever taught them.

Mental Health First Aid training is what changes that number. It's the course that teaches you what to say, what to do, and what not to do when someone is in distress. How to recognise the signs. How to start the conversation. How to listen without trying to fix. How to connect someone to the right help. It's practical, evidence-based, and it works — the same way physical first aid training works. You hope you never need it. But when someone needs it, you're glad someone in the room has it.

National Safe Work Month starts in two days. World Mental Health Day is October 10, and this year's theme is "It is Time to Prioritize Mental Health in the Workplace." Mental health conditions account for 12 per cent of serious workers' compensation claims, with average time off work almost five times that of physical injuries. The workplace is where most adults spend most of their waking hours. It's the place where distress is most likely to be noticed — and the place where the right response matters most.

If your workplace doesn't have a Mental Health First Aid Officer, the question is not whether someone will need one. The question is whether someone will be ready when they do.

Paul Hammat OAM — PACFA Registered Clinical Counsellor and certified Mental Health First Aid Instructor. MHFA training delivered in-person and via telehealth for workplaces, teams, and community groups. counsellingconcern.au

To book a course or see upcoming dates follow this link:
https://sma.org.au/industry-recognised-course-details/?course_id=109798&course_type=w

28/09/2026

It's the last week of the school holidays. Term 4 starts next Monday. And if you have a school-aged child, you already know what's coming.

The sleep that gets harder as the week goes on. The child who is fine all day and falls apart at bedtime. The child who starts asking questions that are really the same question: "What if I don't like my teacher? What if my friends are in a different class? What if I can't do the work? What if something bad happens?" The child who has been relaxed and happy for two weeks of holidays and is now starting to tighten, to shorten, to snap at things that wouldn't have bothered them a week ago.

The questions are not about school. The questions are about the transition — the shift from the unstructured time that holidays provide to the structured environment where expectations, social dynamics, and performance return. For some children, the holidays are a relief — the absence of the social and academic demands that make term time hard. The return to school is the return of the demands. The anxiety is the body's response to that return.

And it's not only the child. The parent feels it too. The parent who is holding the child's anxiety and their own — the logistics of the new term, the schedule, the costs, the lunchboxes, the permission slips, the before-and-after school care, the question of whether this term will be better or worse than the last one. The parent who is carrying their own version of the transition anxiety and calling it "just stress" because the child's anxiety is the one that gets attention.

The SPA Community Tracker, released this month, found that 74 per cent of Australians are reporting higher distress than this time last year. The back-to-school transition is one of the moments where that underlying distress surfaces — not because school is the problem, but because transitions amplify whatever is already there. The child who is anxious about school returning is not being dramatic. The parent who is dreading the term is not being negative. The transition is real. The anxiety is real.

What helps is naming it. Not dismissing it — "You'll be fine" — and not amplifying it — "I know, it's so hard." Just naming it. "You're feeling nervous about going back. That makes sense. The holidays were good and going back is a big change." The naming does something — it tells the child that the feeling is real, that it's allowed, that the adult sees it. That the feeling is not theirs to carry alone.

And for the parent — the naming matters too. "I'm finding the transition hard. I'm carrying the logistics and the worry and the child's anxiety and my own." The naming is not a complaint. It's the first step in understanding what the anxiety is actually about — the specific thing, not the general overwhelm. When you know what the anxiety is about, you can address it. When you don't, it just sits there — the Sunday night sleeplessness, the short temper, the feeling of too much.

If the back-to-school transition is harder than it should be — if your child's anxiety is persistent, if it's affecting sleep, appetite, or mood for more than a few days — that's the point where talking to someone helps. Not because the anxiety is abnormal. Because the anxiety is real, and counselling can help you and your child understand it and move through it.

Paul Hammat OAM — PACFA Registered Clinical Counsellor. Anxiety counselling for children, adolescents, and parents in Keilor and via telehealth Australia-wide. No referral needed. counsellingconcern.au

28/09/2026

On Thursday, something changes for people living with psychosocial disability in Australia. From October 1, NDIS allocations for social, civic and community participation will be reduced by 50 per cent, and capacity-building daily activity allocations by 10 per cent. This happens progressively — at each participant's next plan reassessment over the coming year. But it starts on Thursday.

The Mental Health Coordinating Council has been sounding the alarm for months. Access rates for NDIS applicants with psychosocial disability have already fallen from around 66 per cent to around 25 per cent over the last five years. The Foundational Supports system designed to catch people who fall through the gaps is not yet operational. The National Mental Health and Su***de Prevention Agreement — which would determine who funds psychosocial support — has been deferred until December. The peak bodies are calling it a crisis. 220,000 people in NSW alone are estimated to be missing out on the psychosocial support they need.

This is a policy story. But it's also a grief story.

Grief is not only about death. Grief is the response to loss — any loss. The loss of a support system you relied on. The loss of the community access that gave your week structure. The loss of the capacity-building work that was helping you build a life outside of illness. The loss of certainty. The loss of the belief that the system would be there. For the person whose NDIS plan is about to be reassessed and who doesn't know what will survive the review, the experience is grief. The anticipation of loss. The bracing. The not-knowing.

And for the people who support them — the families, the carers, the community workers, the counsellors — there is a parallel grief. The grief of watching someone you care about lose the supports that were working. The grief of knowing that the 220,000 number is not abstract. It's the person you see on Tuesday. The person whose plan funded the transport to the community garden. The person whose capacity-building sessions were the reason they could hold a conversation this month. The person who is about to lose the scaffolding that made their life possible, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Grief counselling doesn't fix policy. But grief counselling does what policy can't — it sits with the person in the loss. It makes space for the anger, the fear, the sadness, the unfairness. It helps the person whose supports are being cut understand that their response is not disproportionate. It's human. It helps them find language for what they're losing, because unnamed grief becomes symptoms — the sleep that gets worse, the anxiety that ramps up, the withdrawal that looks like giving up. Named grief becomes a starting point. Not for acceptance — acceptance is not the goal when the loss is unjust. But for the capacity to continue. To advocate. To adapt. To find the next version of support, even when the system that was supposed to provide it is pulling back.

Mental Health Month starts in three days. The theme is "Together We Thrive." The theme is about connection. On Thursday, the connection that many people with psychosocial disability depend on is being reduced by half. The grief of that is real. If you or someone you support is experiencing this loss — if the plan reassessment letter has arrived and the fear is starting — you don't have to carry it unnamed.

Paul Hammat OAM — PACFA Registered Clinical Counsellor. Grief and loss counselling in Keilor and via telehealth Australia-wide. No referral needed. counsellingconcern.au

27/09/2026

It's Grand Final Day. The BBQ is happening. The marquee is up. The group chat has been active since Wednesday. And you're there — or you're about to go — and the version of you that is performing "fine“ is working harder than any version of you that's actually working.

The Grand Final BBQ is not rest. For the professional who is burnt out — the person who has been running on fumes since June, whose ”holiday“ in January was checking email from a different timezone, whose weekends have been recovery from work rather than life — the Grand Final BBQ is a performance. The social engagement that requires energy you don't have. The conversations that require you to be interested in things you can't focus on. The interactions that require you to appear relaxed when your nervous system is running on cortisol and habit.

Burnout doesn't look like collapse. That's the problem. Burnout looks like competence. The person who is functioning — showing up, performing, delivering, managing, holding it together — and who has been functioning for so long that the functioning itself is the problem. The energy required to maintain the appearance of ”fine“ is the energy that should be going to recovery, and the social weekend that's supposed to be rest becomes another performance in a different setting. The office version of you is replaced by the BBQ version of you, and neither version is the version that's actually okay.

The SPA Community Tracker, released this month, found that 42% of Australians in distress are managing independently. The professional version of ”managing independently“ is the person who is good at their job and is privately running on empty. The person whose performance review says ”exceeds expectations“ and whose body is saying something different — the sleep that doesn't restore, the weekends that don't recover, the Monday morning that arrives before Sunday evening ends, the flatness that has become so normal it doesn't register as a symptom anymore.

Here's the reframe. The Grand Final weekend is not your recovery plan. A BBQ is not rest. Social performance is not the same as social connection, and the difference matters. The person who is genuinely socially connected — who has people they can be unwell around — is the person who can say at the BBQ ”I'm not doing great“ and have the conversation change rather than end. The person who is socially performing — who has people they can be fine around — is the person who goes home from the BBQ more tired than they arrived.

Burnout counselling isn't about learning to relax. It's about understanding what's driving the performance — the identity that's tied to being the person who holds it together, the fear of what happens if you stop, the version of competence that doesn't include ”I need support.\" The Grand Final BBQ will end tonight. The pattern that made it exhausting will be there on Monday. That's the pattern worth addressing.

If the weekend that's supposed to be a break feels like work — if the social energy required to appear fine is the thing that's costing you the most — that's not a sign that you need a better weekend. It's a sign that the engine is running without fuel, and the fuel isn't a BBQ.

Paul Hammat OAM — PACFA Registered Clinical Counsellor. Burnout and work stress counselling in Keilor and via telehealth Australia-wide. counsellingconcern.au

26/09/2026

Fewer than 1 in 4 Australians — 22% — feel very or extremely prepared to support someone showing signs of suicidal thoughts. 42% report they are not prepared at all, or only slightly prepared. These numbers come from the Su***de Prevention Australia Community Tracker, released this month.

Read that again. In a country where 74% of people are reporting higher distress than last year, where 1 in 9 have experienced suicidal behaviour in the past twelve months, where the top source of distress is cost of living and the most acutely distressing experience is bullying and harassment — fewer than a quarter of the population feel equipped to respond to someone in their life who is struggling.

This is the preparedness gap. It's different from the help-seeking gap (people not reaching out for themselves) and the access gap (services not being available or affordable). The preparedness gap is about the colleague, the friend, the family member, the team member — the person who is right there when someone needs support and who doesn't know what to say, what to do, or how to help without making it worse.

National Safe Work Month starts on October 1st. The theme is about building safe and healthy workplaces — and psychosocial safety is now formally part of that conversation. Safe Work Australia's model Code of Practice on psychosocial hazards means workplaces are increasingly expected to have systems in place, not just posters on a wall. Mental Health First Aid training is one of the most concrete actions an organisation can take. You can find upcoming courses here: https://sma.org.au/safer-sport-courses/mental-health-first-aid/. It's the equivalent of physical first aid training — not therapy, not clinical intervention, but the skills to recognise, respond, and refer. The person who has done MHFA training is the person who knows the difference between “having a bad day” and “needing professional support,” and knows what to say in the moment that makes the difference between someone getting help and someone going home and carrying it alone.

The SPA Tracker tells us what happens without that training. The person in distress who doesn't get support from the people around them because those people don't feel prepared. The colleague who notices something is wrong but says nothing because they're afraid of saying the wrong thing. The team member who is struggling and whose manager doesn't recognise the signs because the signs look like underperformance, not distress. The friend who is asked “How are you?” and says “I'm fine” and the person asking doesn't know how to ask again.

Mental Health First Aid training closes the preparedness gap. It doesn't make people into counsellors. It makes people into the first response — the person who can have the conversation, ask the question, and connect someone to support before the situation becomes crisis. In a workplace, that means a team where people are more likely to be supported early, not just managed after the fact. In a community, it means more people getting help before the help becomes urgent.

The business case is straightforward. Beyond Blue's “The Future We Choose” report, released this month, identifies earlier support as one of five shifts Australia needs to make over the next decade. MHFA training is earlier support in practice. For organisations planning their National Safe Work Month initiatives, it's one of the most tangible commitments available — not a webinar, not a poster, but actual skills that change how a team responds to distress.

Paul Hammat OAM — PACFA Registered Clinical Counsellor, accredited Mental Health First Aid Instructor. MHFA training delivered in-person (Melbourne) and online (Australia-wide). counsellingconcern.au

25/09/2026

Grand Final weekend is a tradition. The same people, the same BBQ, the same chairs in the same backyard, the same argument about the same team. The rituals that don't change — that's the point of them. They're the things you can count on. The things that stay while everything else moves.

This year, one of the chairs is empty.

The first Grand Final without them. It might be the first Grand Final since your dad died. Since your mate passed. Since the separation. Since your mum moved into care. Since the friend who was always at the BBQ — always early, always with the same esky, always with the same opinion about the team selection — isn't there this year. The absence is specific. It has a shape. It's the shape of the person who sat in that chair, held that beer, made that joke, groaned at that umpire.

Grief on a celebration weekend is a particular kind of hard. The world is celebrating. Melbourne is in Grand Final mode. The energy is up, the music is on, the group chats are active. And you're carrying an absence that the celebration makes more visible, not less. The joy around you doesn't fix the grief. It highlights it. The contrast between the city's energy and your internal reality is stark. Everyone is talking about the game. You're thinking about the chair.

The first time is the hardest. The first Grand Final. The first Christmas. The first birthday. The first anniversary. The calendar comes around and the tradition continues and the person doesn't, and the collision between "this is what we do" and "this is who's missing" is the thing that breaks you. Not the event itself. The absence within the event. The space where they were, that the tradition keeps outlining, like a chalk outline at a crime scene. The ritual that was designed to include them and now doesn't.

Here's what nobody tells you about the first one. You don't have to go. You don't have to host. You don't have to sit in the chair next to the empty one and perform normal. You can skip the BBQ. You can go for a walk instead. You can watch the game alone. You can not watch the game at all. The tradition will survive your absence. The people who love you will understand. And if they don't — if the response is "but it's Grand Final weekend, you have to come" — that's about their discomfort with your grief, not your obligation to the tradition.

You can also go. You can sit in the chair next to the empty one and let the grief be there alongside the celebration. You can laugh at the game and cry in the kitchen and both of those things can be real at the same time. Grief doesn't require you to stop living. It requires you to carry the absence while living, and that carrying is different for everyone, on every weekend, at every Grand Final.

The first Grand Final without them is today. The empty chair is real. The grief is real. And both of those things can be true while the siren goes and the crowd roars and the city celebrates, and you're holding a beer you don't feel like drinking, in a backyard that's one person short, on a weekend that doesn't feel like it used to.

Paul Hammat OAM — PACFA Registered Clinical Counsellor. Grief and loss counselling in Keilor and via telehealth Australia-wide. counsellingconcern.au

25/09/2026

The Su***de Prevention Australia Community Tracker asked Australians what causes them distress. Cost of living came first — no surprise there. Social isolation second. Family breakdown third. Housing fourth. Unemployment fifth. These are the things that make the headlines, the things that get the policy attention, the things that feel too big to solve.

Then the Tracker asked a different question: of all the things causing you distress, which ones are causing the most acute distress? Not the most widespread — the most intense. The things that, when they hit, hit hardest.

The answer wasn't cost of living. It wasn't housing. It wasn't isolation. It was bullying and harassment. Two in three Australians affected by bullying and harassment — 67% — rated it as causing very or extremely high levels of distress. More than any other factor. More than unemployment. More than family breakdown. More than addiction. The thing that affects fewer people overall is the thing that causes the most intense distress in the people it does affect.

This doesn't surprise anyone who's been through it. Workplace bullying is not the version people think it is — the cartoonish boss, the overt insults, the stuff that makes HR investigations straightforward. Workplace bullying is usually quieter. It's the manager who freezes you out of meetings that used to include you. The colleague who takes credit for your work in front of others and apologises privately. The team culture where one person is consistently the butt of the joke and everyone laughs because not laughing would make it weird. The performance review that references "attitude" without examples. The schedule that always gives you the worst shifts and calls it rotation. The exclusion that's deniable — "I forgot to CC you" — and relentless.

The distress is acute because it's inescapable in a way that other stressors aren't. You can't just leave. Your income depends on being there. Your professional identity is tied to the workplace. Your colleagues are witnesses, and most of them look away. The person doing the bullying often has structural power — they're your manager, your supervisor, the person who controls your roster or your performance review. You can't avoid them. You can't confront them without risk. You can't report them without it becoming a formal process that changes how everyone sees you. So you carry it. You performance-manage your own distress so you can keep performing your job. And the distress compounds because the environment that's causing it is the environment you can't leave — or feel you can't leave — without cost.

The Tracker data says something important: the distress from bullying is not proportional to how many people experience it. It's intense, concentrated, and corrosive. The person being bullied at work is not having a bad day. They are in a sustained state of psychological threat, five days a week, with no clear endpoint. That takes a toll that doesn't show up on a payslip or a performance review — sleep disruption, anxiety that spills into weekends, the Sunday night dread that starts at 4pm Sunday, the identity erosion that happens when you start believing the narrative the bully is constructing about you.

Counselling for workplace bullying isn't about learning to toughen up. It's about understanding what's happening — naming it, because naming it is the first thing the bullying takes from you. It's about separating the bully's narrative from your own. It's about deciding whether to stay, how to stay, and how to stay without losing yourself. It's about the anger that's justified and the grief of the workplace you thought this was going to be. And sometimes it's about the exit — not running, but planning, with clarity about what you need and what you're walking away from.

If this is your workplace — the daily erosion, the dread, the version of yourself that shrinks at 8:45am and expands at 5:15pm — the distress you're carrying is real. The Tracker just put a number on it. 67% very or extremely distressing. You're not overreacting. You're responding accurately to a situation that is, by measurement, the most distressing thing Australians experience.

Paul Hammat OAM — PACFA Registered Clinical Counsellor. Workplace bullying and harassment counselling in Keilor and via telehealth Australia-wide. counsellingconcern.au

25/09/2026

It's Grand Final Eve. The parade is this afternoon. The game is tomorrow. And somewhere in Melbourne, a couple is having a conversation they should have had last week.

Who's hosting. Who's bringing what. Whether your brother is actually coming or is he going to say he's coming and then not show up again. Whether we're going to your parents' place or mine. Whether we're staying for the whole game or leaving at half time because the kids need to go to bed. Whether you're drinking or you're not. Whether we're spending money we don't have on a BBQ we didn't plan. Whether the conversation about the conversation is going to become the argument about the argument.

Grand Final weekend is a negotiation. Every long weekend is a negotiation, but this one is specific — it has a schedule, a social script, an expected format. The BBQ. The gathering. The game. The recovery. The traditions that each person brings from their own family and assumes the other person shares. The assumption that "what we do on Grand Final weekend" is obvious. It's not obvious. It's negotiated — badly, in most cases, because the negotiation happens at the last minute, under time pressure, with the social expectations of other people closing in.

The couple who hasn't talked about the weekend until Friday morning is the couple who argues on Friday afternoon. The argument that looks like it's about the BBQ — what time, who's coming, whether to get more ice — but is actually about the pattern. The pattern of one person assuming and the other person accommodating. The pattern of plans being made and the other person being informed rather than consulted. The pattern of "it's just the Grand Final, relax" meeting "you made plans for our house without asking me" and neither side being wrong, exactly, but neither side feeling heard.

The conversation you should have had last week is the one about how decisions get made. Not just this weekend — every weekend. Every social obligation. Every tradition that one person inherited and the other person is expected to adopt. The Grand Final is the trigger, but the pattern is year-round. The person who decides and the person who gets told. The person who plans and the person who comes along. The person whose family traditions become "what we do" and the person whose family traditions become "maybe next year."

If you're having this conversation now — Friday morning, with the parade a few hours away and the BBQ already being organised by someone who didn't ask you — the first thing to know is that the conversation is still worth having. It's late, but it's not too late. The weekend hasn't started. The patterns haven't activated yet. The conversation will be harder because the time pressure is real, but the alternative is the argument at the BBQ, the silent Sunday, the Monday where you both pretend it didn't happen and agree to do it all again next year.

The second thing to know is that the BBQ isn't the problem. The pattern is the problem. And the pattern is what couples counselling addresses — not the Grand Final, not the ice, not your brother. The pattern of how decisions get made in your relationship. Who decides. Who accommodates. Who speaks and who doesn't. The Grand Final weekend will end on Sunday night. The pattern will be there on Monday.

Paul Hammat OAM — PACFA Registered Clinical Counsellor. Couples counselling in Keilor and via telehealth Australia-wide. counsellingconcern.au

A Counselling Concern

29/09/2026

29/09/2026

28/09/2026

28/09/2026

27/09/2026

26/09/2026

25/09/2026

25/09/2026

25/09/2026

Address

Opening Hours

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Listing takedown request

Monday	8am - 8pm
Tuesday	8am - 8pm
Wednesday	8am - 8pm
Thursday	8am - 8pm
Friday	8am - 5pm
Saturday	8:30am - 1pm