FAQ for New and Existing Members

As child psychologists who have been working with families and professionals for 20 years, we have designed our videos and resources very carefully to make sure they are useful, reassuring and helpful.  But if you disagree – that’s completely fine.  We have a 30 day money back guarantee.  Just email our director Kirrilie at kirriliesmout@developingminds.net.au or our admin support officer Kaleisha at kaleishacondello@developingminds.net.au within 30 days of signing up and let us know you haven’t found the resources helpful and we will refund your money, no questions asked.

All you have to do is go to the Member Dashboard, select My Account, scroll down and click on the word ‘cancel’ next to the words ‘membership level’. Once you cancel your membership, your credit card/paypal account will NOT be charged for the next month/year. You will still have access to the site up until your next billing cycle.

If you have trouble with this, you can email our admin support officer Kaleisha at kaleishacondello@developingminds.net.au who will cancel your membership for you instead.

You pay using either your credit card or a PayPal account. Every 30 days (or once a year, if you sign up for the annual membership), we let you know when you’ve paid so that you don’t continue to pay for a service you don’t want just because you’ve forgotten about it (I hate it when that happens!). If you sign up annually, we will check with you whether you want another year before we continue to charge you.

It’s always hard to know what to spend money on when you have a child with emotional challenges.  We think, given the cost of an individual counselling session (usually $150 – $250 per session) and other appointments, and time spent trying to support children – the cost of Calm Kid Central, which provides unlimited answers to your questions – is easily outweighed by the benefits of the program.  But keep in mind, you can ask us for a refund within 30 days if you don’t think so.

If you have funding provided by the NDIA and your plan is self-managed or plan-managed, you can use your funding for Calm Kid Central (CKC) as long as it is seen to be working on the goals for your child as included in their NDIS plan.  In other words, if your child has goals related to social communication, managing peers or relationships, becoming more independent at home and/or managing conflict, CKC will assist them in working towards these goals.
Please note if your NDIS plan is NDIA-managed, you cannot use your funding for CKC as the program is not registered with the NDIS. 

You can get a code for a year of free membership if you have HCF private health membership by emailing HCF directly with your name and HCF member number:  wellbeing@hcf.com.au

Yes! If your NDIS plan is self-managed or plan-managed, you can use your funding for Calm Kid Central (CKC) as long as your child has goals related to social communication, managing peers or relationships, becoming more independent at home and/or managing conflict (which is what CKC helps children with).

However, please note that if your NDIS plan is NDIA-managed, you cannot use your funding for CKC as the program is not registered with the NDIS. If this is the case, you can use the code NDISFAMILY to get 15% off the annual membership.

Yes. Calm Kid Central is specifically FOR children with diagnoses like those listed, or who have big feelings and find life tough.  We work with hundreds of children each year with these diagnoses.  For instance, around 20% of the children we work with in the clinic have Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme funding for ASD or early intervention. We are very familiar with the particular issues that these children have and are conscious of making sure our adult and child resources have information that applies directly to this group of families.  We do not specifically list content for children with particular diagnoses inside CKC, as we work from a “symptom based” rather than “diagnosis based” perspective.  But all of the content is designed with these children in mind.  Remember however, Calm Kid Central is NOT therapy, so your child might benefit from both face to face therapy AND using Calm Kid Central.

It depends!

It’s important to know that Calm Kid Central is NOT therapy and it’s not a health service. We don’t have you or your child in the room, we haven’t conducted an assessment and can’t talk with you in real time so we can’t provide individualised help. In addition, if there is a safety issue for your child, getting help over the internet is never a good idea and we recommend you see someone in person as soon as possible. Understanding this is part of the conditions for accessing this site.

However, Calm Kid Central does provide training in important psycho-social skills and so it can potentially be an extremely useful way to support and help children and parents. We can provide ideas, information and reassurance. Often families see a therapist in person as well as belong to Calm Kid Central.

If you are a teacher, psychologist, youth worker, allied health professional, or other education or health professional working with families – we have a program especially for you – click here to find out more about Calm Kid Pro.

Excellent question.  We are committed to protecting privacy and confidentially.  Here’s how we do this.

Firstly, Calm Kid Central is not open to the public – only signed up members who have signed a disclaimer and been provided with education about confidentiality.  No information on Calm Kid Central is accessible via a public google search.

Second, all members when they sign up are asked to choose their own username – an alias.  We have the details of people’s names “behind” the site (for safety reasons) but no real names are used within the Calm Kid Central program.

Third, we also ask parents to NOT use the name of their child, and to disguise any identifying details of their children.  If we see any identifiable details on the site, we remove them as quickly as possible.  This way families don’t accidentally identify themselves – and you can feel free to ask any questions without feeling worried that about being judged negatively in some way.

One final note – it is important to know that like all professionals, we are mandated notifiers of child abuse. This means that if we receive information on this site that a child is being abused, then we are legally obliged to report this (which we will do using the details members give us when signing up for the site). This happens very rarely, but it is important to know upfront.

My name is Kirrilie Smout. I’m a child psychologist from Adelaide, Australia. I’ve spent more than 20 years working with families and now direct the Developing Minds team. Our team consists of 20 child psychologists (many of whom also provide resources and answer questions here at Calm Kid Central) who see more than 250 families each week, and provide training and supervision to other professionals who work with kids.

I’ve also presented seminars and training to more than 50 thousand students (and their teachers and parents) in schools across Australia to help them learn to manage their difficult emotions and challenges in life. All these experiences have been a privilege for me. I’ve learnt an amazing amount about families, and this has helped me write several books about and for children.

The Calm Kid Central Team is made up of a six person child psychologist panel, and our admin and technical support team. 

Our clinical child psychologists all have Masters degrees in psychology, have worked exclusively with children and families for between 8 and 22 years and are fully registered and accredited by APHRA. We are also passionate about children’s well being.

We use a “third wave” cognitive-behavioural, systems and attachment approach to children’s mental and emotional health. For more information about each of our team, please visit our information page, here.

No, there is no downloading of programs or software. Provided you have an internet connection, everything is streamed directly to your phone or computer. Everything is optimised for mobile phones too – so you can watch/listen while you are out of the house.

In mid 2015, I worked with a family in a rural area via Skype. We discovered that private health cover didn’t allow them to claim their sessions and I was really disappointed for them. I started thinking that there must be a better way – and the idea of Calm Kid Central was born. I was hoping that we could start to help families and professionals who not only live in rural areas; but those who can’t afford to make an appointment; work full time and are time poor; work fly in/fly out jobs – or for whatever reason can’t attend our clinics in an ongoing basis. This means we can provide support, answers, supervision and education to many more people.

Our team of psychologists really do care about the young people they work with, and I have all my fingers and toes crossed that Calm Kid Central helps us ultimately reach and support hundreds of kids to feel calmer, more confident and act in more positive ways.

We are real people here and answer our phone and emails! If you have any questions about Calm Kid Central, then you can contact our admin support officer Kaleisha anytime at kaleishacondello@developingminds.net.au

You can also call us during business hours 9-5pm AEST on 08 8357 1711.

This program is specifically designed for families with children with “big feelings”, social/emotional challenges and dealing with tough life circumstances.  All the resources and questions are designed to help these children learn to manage stress and worry, feel and act more confidently and co-operatively.  If your child doesn’t have any challenges in these area, you are still welcome to join the program but it may be more useful for you to get more general “parenting education”.

We believe all families and our staff should be treated with respect and dignity at all times. We don’t discriminate on the basis of gender, sexuality, cultural background or appearance.  We do not tolerate bullying or harassment in any form.

We also want to work with families to hear about ideas, problems or concerns they have about the Calm Kid Central program.  Anyone is welcome to email our director Kirrilie (kirriliesmout@developingminds.net.au) at any point to provide feedback, or ask for help in accessing the service in a way which suits them.

We take privacy and confidentiality very seriously and as you can see above, spend time and effort making sure your data is safe and information is not accessed by people you haven’t provided consent too (unless there is a critical safety issue which needs to be managed).

Finally, we believe in being kind, non-judgemental and caring – to the families we interact with here on Calm Kid Central, and to each other as staff members.  Sometimes mistakes are made – by us all – but we work to fix and repair these as soon as possible.

As stated, please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns at any time.

Developing Minds have supported Save the Children for the last 8 years by donating $5 for every new client they see in their clinics. We also have a program to provide one year of free membership to Calm Kid Central to a small number of families each year who do not qualify for other funding (NDIS or HCF).

If this is you, please ask a health or educational professional to nominate you by sending an email to our director Kirrilie at kirriliesmout@developingminds.net.au