Also known as Doctorbertie
My name is Dr Alberto Veloso. I am a child psychiatrist and paediatrician, and I have spent my career sitting with families at some of the hardest moments of their lives.
I am the founder of Relational Minds, a child and family mental health service with clinics in Mildura, Sunbury, and Bendigo, and telehealth reach across Australia. I hold dual fellowships with the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. I chair the Victorian Department of Health’s Clinical Advisory Group for Integrated Health Care for children in out-of-home care.
Those are the credentials. Here is what actually matters.
I believe that behaviour makes sense. That when a child is struggling, there is always a reason, and that reason lives somewhere in their relationships, their development, and their experience of the world so far. I believe that parents and carers are the most powerful agents of healing a child will ever have, and that our job as clinicians is to work through them, not around them.
My clinical work is grounded in Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy and the PACE framework: Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity, Empathy. These are not techniques I apply. They are the lens through which I understand children, families, and the systems that surround them.
I started this blog because I wanted a place to think out loud. Not the polished, referenced, carefully structured writing of a clinical journal. Something closer to the conversations I have after the consulting room door closes. The things I notice. The patterns I keep seeing. The questions I sit with.
Some of what I write here will be about child mental health, developmental trauma, attachment, and the neuroscience that connects them. Some of it will be about the systems we have built around vulnerable children and whether those systems are actually helping. And some of it will be personal, because I do not think you can do this work honestly without letting it shape you.
I am a father of four. My two eldest daughters are approaching adulthood, which means I have had the privilege of watching two human beings become themselves, and the humbling experience of realising how much of that happened despite my best plans. My two youngest boys are about to start school, which means I am living through the very transitions I talk to parents about every week. The gap between what I know as a psychiatrist and what I feel as a parent at the school gate is where some of my most honest thinking happens.
If you are a parent trying to make sense of your child’s world, I hope you find something here that steadies you. If you are a professional working in schools, child protection, or mental health, I hope you find ideas worth testing. If you are someone who shapes policy or systems, I hope you find an argument worth considering.
I write because I think we can do better for children. Not by doing more, but by understanding more clearly what they actually need.
Welcome to Doctor Bertie.
