Banu Moloney first became aware of family therapy in the early 70s as a student of social work. “At that time there were very few places where you could learn about what family therapy was,” she says. “The Bouverie Centre was the only place where you actually had the opportunity to work with families and not just read about it.”
Arriving at Bouverie initially on a student placement, Banu would spend the next 50 years developing a dynamic professional legacy there – as a practicing family therapist, teacher, advocate and mentor.
“I wanted to kind of have a good understanding of the way the mind worked,” she chuckles. “Naively, not realising how much work was involved in unpacking that curiosity.”
Although technically retired as of 2023 – Banu's relationship with the Bouverie Centre continues to endure, as does the mark she made on family therapy as a profession.
Bouverie Centre as a pioneering institute
As a post-war discipline, family therapy opened up new ways of understanding psychotherapy for both counsellors and patients. As opposed to individual counselling, family therapy works with the whole family unit to understand and repair relationships between them. It also involves therapists working together in teams – providing support but also the opportunity for peer observation and critique. This process is called co-therapy.
“One of the really celebratory things about Bouverie is the generosity that people feel about sharing their work with each other,” says Banu. “I learned a lot from my colleagues watching me work. We must be open and curious with each other the same way we’re expecting people in family systems to be.”
At Bouverie, Banu helped to establish the first formal training program for Family Therapy in Australia and was an early contributor to the field’s ethical and practice guidelines. With a colleague, she wrote the first article on co-therapy in the first edition of the Australian Journal of Family Therapy. There are very few Bouverie staff, past or present, that Banu has not taught or supervised.
“That has always been a passion of mine. How do I, as a teacher, create a safe space, a non-shaming space, an engaging space, an exciting space where students can make a mistake and feel that this is part of the learning process,” she says. “You know something now that you didn't know yesterday and isn't that exciting?”
The changing nature of family
Embedded in family therapy practice for over 50 years, Banu has been a witness to many changes in the field – many of which are exemplified in her work with First Nations families.
"When family therapy began,” she says, “it was mostly written about by white psychiatrists, usually male, usually European, and it tended to describe a family as the nuclear family – mum and dad and the kids,” she says.
But for First Nations families in Australia, the Western concept of the nuclear family isn’t always applicable. While blood ties are important, family and kinship relations are often defined far more broadly.
“When I started working with the community, I thought I was going to teach First Nations. What I realised was – I was learning,” says Banu. “The gift to me from First Nations people is to question my own mindset, and I feel an enormous sense of gratitude for that.”
She worked for 15 years alongside communities at the Rumbalara Aboriginal Co-operative in Shepparton, developing a shared unit of knowledge that would become La Trobe’s Graduate Certificate in Family Therapy for First Nations students. The course emphasises cultural sensitivity and a willingness to incorporate Indigenous wisdoms into the teaching process – and as a result has very high retention rates for Indigenous students.
The success of this course was in no small measure linked to Banu’s true willingness to learn from her First Nations students, and to engage with First Nations controlled organisations to seek cultural endorsement.
“To be given the permission to apply this knowledge and help other non-First Nations people to learn from it – that was a very humbling and exciting time for me,” she says. “I wasn't born here. My ancestors are not from here. But in connecting with First Nations people I have felt so much more grounded.”
“As a migrant, to be told by one of the Elders – Banu, you are welcome in my Country – that was a very, very powerful moment for me.”
Read more about The Bouverie Centre
Read more about La Trobe’s Graduate Certificate in Family Therapy: First Nations
