Our People
Behind Neufeld Aotearoa is a dedicated and diverse team of individuals who bring the Neufeld Approach to life across Aotearoa New Zealand. From our faculty and facilitators to parent consultants and community leaders, each person plays a vital role in helping whānau make sense of children through a developmental and attachment-based lens.
Sandy Hitchens
Team Leader: Neufeld Aotearoa
Sandy is a counsellor, parent consultant, course facilitator and presenter. In her counselling practise, Doors of Hope, she works with children, teens and/or their parents. She enjoys the opportunity to spend time with parents so that together they can make sense of what is happening underneath their child's struggles and gain insight into what is needed for a way forward. Sandy is passionate about facilitating the Neufeld Institute courses and providing training and seminars for both professionals and parents.
Adrienne Wood
Adrienne is a speaker, a writer and a consultant to parents and professionals. She combines extensive learning through the Neufeld Institute and a diverse High School teaching background with postgraduate research to make sense of complex child and adolescent behaviours. Contact Adrienne for one on one consulting, for professional training, for speaking engagements and for free online articles through her practice Heartsync.
Ruth Lawson-McConnell
Ruth is a counsellor, supervisor, educator, writer, and speaker. In her private practice she offers counselling and specialist supervision on attachment issues, anxiety, depression and trauma with adults and parent consulting on childrens emotional and behavioural issues. Her training includes a PhD in Counselling Psychology as well as specialist training as a neuropsychotherapy practitioner and a trauma specialist working with partners of sex addicts. She has been a Professional Associate of the Neufeld Institute for 16 years since training with Gordon Neufeld in Vancouver, Canada.
Kaye McKean
Kaye McKean (MSW) is a family therapist, Head of Department at a secondary school and also runs an attachment rich early childhood centre, Kakapo Creek, in Mairangi Bay, Auckland. Kaye and her husband Ian also run parentspartner.com offering workshops, consulting and small group work, alongside attachment rich parenting and teaching resources. Inspired by the book, Hold Onto Your Kids, by Dr Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate, Kaye became the first Neufeld trained specialist here in New Zealand. Kaye loves to work with both teachers and families to help find attachment rich solutions to the challenges that children present us with.
Rosie Griffiths
Rosie Griffiths has a background in Education including Primary teaching, adult English language teaching (Unitec) and running a Home Tutor programme for refugees. In addition she has homeschooled her own five children through the primary and intermediate years. More recently she has become involved in parent education through the Neufeld Institute. While still a student at the Institute, Rosie facilitates courses: The Vital Connection and Helping Children Grow Up from the Power to Parent series.
Sue Grant
Sue lives in Christchurch. She's a parent, grandparent, counsellor and counsellor educator. Discovering Gordon Neufeld's courses has informed and inspired her counselling work with children, teens and/or their parents. She values the understanding, purposefulness and warmth his teaching brings to her and others as we make sense of the children/young people in their lives.
Marriene Langton
Marriene is a primary school Principal in Ōtautahi, Christchurch. She completed her first Neufeld Institute Intensive in Montreal 2013 with, her then Board Chair, Duane who was a Youth Pastor at the local church. It was like a homecoming for their thinking. So much made sense and it also made sense of the uneasiness she had felt for years when dealing with children's behaviour. The behaviour based reactions simply did not cut the mustard. "Since our school has changed its practice to attachment psychology we have seen miracles and transformation in the grown ups and the children." Over the past 13 years Marriene has had many opportunities to study with Gordon. Answering the question before it is asked, "Does attachment theory work in a school?" ABSOLUTELY YES!
colette Murphy
Colette is a speech and language therapist, parent educator, mother and problem-solver. In her private practice, Not Only Words, she supports children and families with communication, relationship, behaviour and feeding challenges. She embeds the Neufeld framework in her practice, ensuring natural development and innate potential are honoured, relationships come first and children are supported in a caring culture.
