Meet Kate Bailey

For more than 36 years, Kate Bailey has worked with children, families and professionals, always asking one important question:What is this child telling us?Kate believes that behaviour is communication. Rather than putting a child in a box based on a diagnosis or a behaviour, she encourages us to stay curious and look beneath the iceberg.What are we seeing on the surface, and what is happening underneath?What does this child need from us?How can we connect before we correct?Kate's approach begins with connection.Connect. Listen. Co regulate. Scaffold.Before we can expect a child to learn, we need to understand where they are and join them there. Kate believes that relationships are the key to child development and growth. She supports parents and professionals to create the conditions for development to happen.This philosophy has shaped more than three decades of clinical practice as an occupational therapist working with babies, toddlers and children with developmental differences, sensory and regulatory challenges, neuromotor difficulties and autism.Kate qualified at University of Cape Town, completed her MSc at The University of the Witwatersrand, and holds advanced diplomas in perception and neuroscience. She founded Therapy Connect in George in 2019, following more than 20 years in paediatric private practice in Johannesburg.From practitioner to teacherTeaching has always been at the heart of Kate's work.She completed the full DIR® certification pathway through Profectum Academy in New Jersey and is an Associate Faculty Member and course facilitator. She has facilitated Profectum training internationally and has been the lead lecturer for DIR/Floortime™ workshops through SPOTlight Trust in South Africa since 2014.Kate brings the same philosophy into her teaching.She encourages them to become curious about why.To look beneath the iceberg.To understand the individual child.To recognise the role of relationships in development.And to think about what we can change in ourselves and in the environment before asking a child to change.Know to growKate believes that understanding comes before intervention.When we truly know a child, their strengths, their individual differences, their communication and their way of experiencing the world, we are better able to support them.That is at the heart of Kate's clinical work and her teaching.Bringing Profectum Certificate Training to South AfricaKate is now bringing Profectum Certificate Training to South Africa, creating an opportunity for therapists, teachers and professionals to move beyond an introduction to the DIR® model and develop a deeper understanding it.It is an invitation to keep learning, keep questioning and keep looking differently.Because sometimes the most important shift is not changing what the child is doing.It is changing how we see them.A deep commitment to children, families and the professionals who walk alongside them.