Our Founders

FR. PETER QUIN S.J.

Father Peter Quin SJ is the in co-founder of the Parent Infant Foundation of Australia (PIFA).This came about through his interest and role in preparing young couples for married life, which was carried out in addition to his many ‘official’ roles over time such as Headmaster of St. Ignatius College Riverview and Parish Priest for the Jesuit churches of the lower north shore in Sydney, for example.

Father Peter has worked with over 1600 couples in preparation for marriage and maintains contact with them in their married lives. As a result he became aware that in many cases difficulties arose for parents in raising their new families, usually associated with the superimposition of parenting responsibilities onto the demands of modern lifestyle.

In responding to what was emerging as a call for help he engaged with a professional Psychotherapist, Norma Tracey, in order to offer counselling and direction to the young parents in attending to their infants. Together they founded PIFA with view to providing professional assistance to those who otherwise would not seek, nor could afford such assistance.

NORMA TRACEY Dip. Soc. Stds. (Syd. Uni.)
MAASW, NSWIPP

Norma is a senior member of the NSW Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. Norma’s background training is in Social Work.

Norma’s special area of expertise has always been work with mothers, fathers and infants. As assistant to the Professor of Child Health at Sydney University, Institute of Child Health she worked for five years tutoring 5th year medical students in parent infant relationships and leading seminars on community based medicine.

Norma became the Senior Psychiatric Social Worker in the Department of Child and Family Psychiatry at the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital Camperdown where she became the first person ever employed as a Child Psychotherapist. She worked in and designed the first Therapeutic Community Ward team at the Hospital, the first interdisciplinary teams for both PKU and Coeliac disease, established the first the Burns ward and Neonatal Intensive Care team. She founded the first Migrant Interpreting Service in an Australian Hospital and this continues to be used as the model for setting up services in all Hospitals. Norma has been in private practice for many years and has published many respected papers, books and booklets and is the editor of the book Parents of Premature Infants.