Meet the Dauntless team
We’re a regional NSW team working across the Clarence Valley, Richmond River and Coffs Coast. We bring together occupational therapy, behaviour support, social work and psychology. Depending on what you need, you might work with one clinician or with a team that brings a few disciplines together.
Occupational Therapy
Casey Schmidt · Lead Clinician, Occupational Therapy
Coffs Coast team
Casey spent a decade in public mental health before moving into disability services. She works with adults to understand how disability, mental health or changes in memory and planning affect what they can manage day to day. Her work includes functional capacity assessments, equipment assessments and recommendations for home modifications. She gets down to the practical detail: how someone gets ready in the morning, makes a meal or moves around the house, and what would help them do more for themselves.
Behaviour Support
Josh Jones · Managing Director and Lead Clinician, Behaviour Support
Clarence Valley team
Josh came to behaviour support through special education and school leadership. He’s worked with young people with autism, ADHD and intellectual disability, and with the families and staff trying to work out why a routine or a school day keeps coming unstuck. As Dauntless’s Behaviour Support lead, he helps practitioners and support teams look at what’s driving a behaviour, agree on what needs to change and put a plan into practice.
Chloe Langfield · Behaviour Support Practitioner
Richmond River team
Chloe was born and raised in Casino and has worked with children and families at home, at school and out in the community. Her experience includes supporting young people who find big emotions, changes in routine or joining in with peers hard to manage. She works with families and educators to understand what’s happening across settings and find strategies they can use on a busy morning or in the middle of a classroom.
Gavin Standard · Behaviour Support Practitioner
Clarence Valley team
Gavin spent more than a decade working in education and community settings across the Mid North Coast and Northern Rivers, including several years as a Head of Senior School. He’s worked with young people who’ve had a tough time staying engaged at school, managing strong emotions or finding their feet socially. He brings young people, families and staff together to work out what’s making participation harder and what each person can do to help.
Kadie Vignes · Behaviour Support Practitioner
Coffs Coast team
Kadie spent five years working in supported independent living and community access before moving into behaviour support. She’s supported people with acquired brain injury, dementia and complex mental health needs. Having worked alongside people through their daily routines, she pays attention to what can make a day harder or easier, from a change of plans to how support is offered. That experience informs the strategies she develops with participants and their teams.
Nick Taylor · Behaviour Support Practitioner
Clarence Valley team
Nick came to behaviour support through education and counselling. He works with children and adults with complex behaviour support needs, helping them and the people around them work out what to do when things start to escalate and how to respond in a crisis. He brings families, carers, schools and other providers together so everyone knows what’s been agreed and can follow through. Outside work, Nick likes being close to family, pitching in locally and getting out for the odd game of soccer.
Karen Munro · Behaviour Support Practitioner
Coffs Coast team
Karen brings more than 30 years of frontline and leadership experience across disability, youth justice, mental health and community services. Her clinical work includes functional behaviour assessment, crisis prevention and reducing the use of restrictive practices. She helps teams understand how difficult situations develop, spot opportunities to act earlier and agree on responses that improve safety while giving the person more say in their day.
Elizabeth Black · Senior Behaviour Support Practitioner
Coffs Coast team
Elizabeth brings a counselling background to behaviour support and has worked with people of all ages. Her experience includes acquired brain injury, out-of-home care and situations where several services share responsibility for someone’s support. She gets down to the questions that matter on a difficult day. What happens just before things get hard? What helps the person settle? What can the people around them do consistently, whether they’re at home, at school or out in the community?
Callum Jones · Behaviour Support Practitioner
Clarence Valley team
Callum has worked in early childhood, disability support and allied health, and has supported people living with schizophrenia, intellectual disability and progressive neurological conditions. His work includes functional behaviour assessments, interim and comprehensive behaviour support plans, and training the people who put those plans into practice. Having worked shifts as a support worker himself, he knows what a plan needs to spell out when there’s a lot going on.
Henriett Sorosi · Behaviour Support Practitioner
Clarence Valley team
Henriett brings training in psychology and counselling and years of experience as a trainer and assessor. She’s worked with school-aged children, adults and families on things like managing distress, building everyday skills and getting through difficult routines. Her training background comes in handy when a family or support team needs to understand why a strategy is in the plan and practise what it looks like. The Clarence Valley has been home for more than 20 years.
Steve Nemeth · Behaviour Support Practitioner
Clarence Valley team
Steve came to behaviour support through disability support and allied health assistance. He’s worked with children, adults and families in regional NSW, including in Aboriginal communities, and has supported people with a range of developmental and mental health needs. He looks at what a person might be communicating through their behaviour and what could change around them, whether that’s the way a request is made, how a routine is set up or what support is available when things get difficult.
Toby Gill · Provisional Psychologist and Behaviour Support Practitioner
Clarence Valley and Richmond River teams
Toby grew up in the Northern Rivers. His experience includes supported independent living, volunteer crisis support and work in a child and adolescent mental health service during his training. At Dauntless he works across psychology and behaviour support. His direct support background comes through in the details he pays attention to, like how someone communicates that they need a break and how the people around them can recognise and respond to it.
Social Work
Bronte Dwyer · Social Worker and Behaviour Support Practitioner
Clarence Valley and Richmond River teams
Bronte’s social work training took her into a children’s hospital and a specialist education setting. At Dauntless she works with children, teenagers and adults across counselling, behaviour support and NDIS capacity building. The work might start with a goal like getting out into the community more often. Bronte helps the person work out what’s getting in the way, what skills or support would help and what family or carers can do between sessions.
Lydia McWilliams · Accredited Mental Health Social Worker
Clarence Valley team
Lydia came to Dauntless from child protection and has worked with people from childhood through to older age. Her experience includes trauma, mental health, disability and supporting children and carers in out-of-home care. In counselling, she helps people make sense of what they’ve been through and how it affects them now. When working with parents and carers, she brings the conversation back to what they can do at home when a child is distressed or a routine is hard to get through.
Bill Spicer · Accredited Mental Health Social Worker and Behaviour Support Practitioner
Clarence Valley team
Bill started in public health, policy and hospitals before moving into mental health and community work. He brings together counselling, social work and behaviour support, paying attention to how trauma, relationships and the services around someone shape what’s happening. He might work with someone on how they respond when overwhelmed, or with a family on patterns they keep getting caught in. Bill grew up in regional Victoria, and how people here stay connected to their community reminds him of home.
Psychology
Zach Jones · Founder and CEO, Psychologist and Allied Health Lead
Clarence Valley team
Zach founded Dauntless and leads its allied health team. He came to psychology through the arts and education and has worked in schools, universities, and private practice. His therapy experience includes anxiety, trauma, relationship difficulties and family violence, and his assessment work spans developmental, forensic and functional capacity questions. He likes an assessment to answer the question the person or family actually came in with and give them something they can use afterwards. As a Board-approved supervisor, he also mentors early-career psychologists in the region.
Courtney Belz · Psychologist
Clarence Valley team
Courtney has worked in community services, aged care and private practice across regional NSW, from the Northern Rivers to the Clarence Valley. She’s supported people dealing with trauma, grief, chronic pain and difficult relationships. In therapy, she helps people work out what’s keeping a difficulty going, try a manageable change between sessions and use what they notice to decide what to do next. Away from work, she’s often with her dogs, reading or making something.
Jane Hosking · Provisional Psychologist
Coffs Coast team
Jane spent 25 years teaching in early childhood settings across NSW before moving into psychology. She’s also worked in crisis support and with children and families affected by domestic and family violence. In therapy and assessment, that background shapes the questions she asks about where a person is finding things hard and what already helps. A child might manage well in one setting and struggle in another. Jane pays attention to those differences because they can help show what support would make a difference.
Dr Gabrielle King · Senior Clinical Psychologist
Clarence Valley team
Gabrielle brings more than a decade of experience and postgraduate training in clinical psychology and neuropsychology. She’s worked with children and adults across anxiety, trauma, learning difficulties, brain injury and changes in memory and thinking. Her work spans therapy and assessment. When an assessment points to a difficulty with attention, learning or memory, she helps people understand how that shows up in daily life and what support might help at school, at work or at home. She also supervises other psychologists.
Caitlin Smith · Provisional Psychologist
Richmond River team
Caitlin has provided psychological support in residential aged care and worked with people displaced by the 2022 floods. She’s seen what anxiety, low mood and major life changes can look like when someone is also trying to find somewhere to live or settle into a new routine. She brings that perspective to her psychology work, taking time to understand what’s happening around a person as well as how they’re feeling, so the work fits what they’re dealing with that week.
John Featherstone · Provisional Psychologist
Coffs Coast and Clarence Valley teams
John has a Master of Professional Psychology and a background in information technology. His work at Dauntless includes counselling and psychological assessment. He likes to start with a clear question, whether someone wants help managing stress and getting back into a routine or is trying to understand difficulties with learning, attention or memory. That question gives the work a focus and helps him explain what they’ve found in terms the person can use. Outside work, he enjoys the slower pace here and a chance to get out fishing.