Jacqui Barfoot

Jacqui is an experienced occupational therapist, early career researcher and consultant with a strong track record relative to opportunity. To date, she has attracted >$160,000 funding to improve services for children and families ($100,000 for therapy services in a remote indigenous community in the NT). She is also a CI on an MRFF Grant to evaluate the effectiveness of a parenting intervention PACT Online. In 2022 she delivered a TedxUQ talk titled “The Seesaw Effect: building children’s resilience by emotional regulation” that has had more than 3300 views to date.

Jacqui currently works 0.6FTE as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Child Health Research Centre, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland. She receives supervision from Dr Whittingham and Professor Boyd and is involved in four research studies: Early PACT, ENACT, PACT Online and LEAP-CP. The central focus for each of these projects is to provide support to parents who have a young child with developmental difficulties and help strengthen parent-child interactions to promote optimal child development and family functioning.

In addition to this role, Jacqui is employed as a consultant for the Benevolent Society in Brisbane. As part of this role she is responsible for evaluating current practices in the Early Supports Approach and supporting multidisciplinary team members to use a relationship-focused approach with families who are seeking to access the NDIS or supports for their child. She has developed a training package for early childhood clinicans to support effective implementation of a relationship-focused approach. This training is available online and face to face. She also provides clinical supervision to clinicians working with this appraoch.

Jacqui has a strong emerging research, training and engagement profile. She has significant knowledge in translation experience, having applied her work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, families of children with cerebral palsy and a range of other developmental concerns or disabilities. She is committed to actively contributing to a paradigm shift in early childhood services with my work in developing and testing parenting-child approaches, parent support programs, and a culturally sensitive peer to peer model with local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community change agents. She currently supervises RHD students and Honours students through the University of Qld, and has strong partnerships with a number of organisations across Queensland and Australia, including BushKids, the Benevolent Society, Next Challenge and the Indigenous Urban Health Institute.