APRIL PEARMAN
April Pearman is a Psychologist who has worked with survivors of extreme violence since 1996 in Australia, the U.K. and Sierra Leone. Since 2002 she has worked exclusively with survivors of torture having worked with ASeTTS (Western Australia’s torture treatment rehabilitation service) and CVT (The Centre for Victims of Torture) Sierra Leone. More recently she has been working for VSO-UK (Voluntary Service Overseas), aiding development work in 34 of the world’s poorest countries.
In 2008 she graduated from Harvard Medical School, having completed a post-graduate qualification in global mental health via the Harvard Programme in Refugee Trauma (HPRT). Her work has focussed largely on the coordination of psychosocial mental health services to refugees/asylum seekers and in post-conflict communities.
She has a particular interest in combining western and local/traditional approaches to achieve maximum healing potential whilst empowering and rebuilding traumatised communities. In February 2009 she rejoined ASeTTS, and now works as a Coordinator in the Training and Research Team.
LOUISE FORD
Louise has worked with refugees and humanitarian entrants from sub-Saharan Africa since 1989. She has a BA (Double Major) (which includes Anthropology and Sociology) as well as a Grad Dip Ed (Secondary) and TESOL. Areas of work have included education, employment, teaching English to newly arrived people, coordinating a CRIO project funded by the Office of Multicultural Interests and coordinating a Settlement Grants Program which included developing a women’s group. She is currently a Training and Research Coordinator.
Interests include the way in which the English language is taught to newly arrived people and the way in which service provision is delivered in Australia – does it inhibit and impede some people’s ability to survive well here? She has spent brief periods of time in Nigeria which has assisted her to see some things from a very different perspective…