Consultation · Sydney & online
Professional consultation.
Understand the situation. Draw only the conclusions the evidence supports.
A separate perspective for practitioners considering controlling relationships, high-control groups or harmful uses of authority. We agree a specific question and clarify where our contribution is useful.
A useful understanding of the situation should help you decide what to do, not simply give it a label.
Start with a question, not a verdict.
You may be working with a client whose difficulties involve a partner, community, belief-based community or relationship with a helping professional. You may need to distinguish the person’s distress from the available evidence about how that arrangement operates.
Consultation can help separate evidence from assumptions, assess what can reasonably be concluded and consider what remains uncertain. It is not a route to securing a predetermined description of a person or group.
What consultation can contribute.
Clarify the formulation
Consider the person’s priorities alongside authority, relationships, access to information, practical dependence and available alternatives.
Examine competing explanations
Distinguish direct observations, reported experiences and inferences. Consider the person’s circumstances, other people’s actions, wider conditions and how these may combine.
Consider the next step
Explore how support might increase the options the person can actually use without becoming another source of pressure. Identify questions for the treating team, supervisor or other specialist.
An agreed role, with limits.
The treating practitioner retains responsibility for clinical decisions, safeguarding, risk management and any required reporting. Consultation does not transfer those responsibilities to TEC.
This is not clinical supervision, formal violence-risk assessment, forensic assessment, expert testimony, legal advice or an organisational investigation. A general discussion cannot certify that a group is safe or establish that misconduct occurred.
We do not currently advertise a separate organisational audit or training programme. For questions from an organisation, journalist or legal professional, we separately check what we can help with and any conflicts of interest; we may decline or suggest another service.
Leave identifying details out of your first enquiry.
Briefly describe your role, the question and the intended use of any discussion. Do not send names, case files, private messages or other identifying material through the public form.
Before further information is shared, we agree who the work is for, what permission or legal basis allows information to be shared, confidentiality limits, documentation and conflicts of interest. Avoid assuming that changing a name makes a case unidentifiable.
Common questions.
Is this clinical supervision?
No. We contribute to an agreed question or case discussion. This does not replace your supervision or professional responsibilities.
Can you provide a report for court or a public allegation?
That is not an advertised service. A consultation should not be presented as an expert report, formal investigation or endorsement of an allegation.
Can I discuss a client without sending their records?
Yes. Leave identifying details out of your first enquiry. We consider whether more information is needed, and whether it can be shared, only after agreeing that we can help and what the consultation will cover.
Further information.
- NSW Health — practitioner and health organisation codes of conduct
External conduct requirements; not accreditation or endorsement of TEC.
- 1800RESPECT — coercive control
Public information on coercive control in domestic, family and sexual violence contexts.
Service information from The Exit Clinic. These pages are not an assessment of you, another person or a group. External resources offer other perspectives; they do not establish the facts of your situation.
The Exit Clinic
Founded by JT Kua, Counsellor, and Isabel Pham, Social Worker.