Mr Chris Gostelow
Significant Contribution to Psychology in the Public Sector Award

Award type: Showcase

Chris Gostelow started his career as a psychologist with WA public schools in 1982. Working in regional and metropolitan positions, he progressed to a suicide prevention consultant role before taking on the leadership of student services and regional psychologist teams.

Since 2009, he has led the Department of Education’s School Psychology Service, in the role now known as Chief Psychologist. With significant government investment in student wellbeing over this time, the school psychologist workforce has grown to almost 600 in number.

Chris has driven significant workforce reform, established professional practice standards and QA processes, changed the model of service delivery and leadership structures, developed and implemented an evidence-based model to allocate school psychologist FTE to all public schools and instigated processes to gauge service satisfaction and emerging issues. He has provided leadership at a state and national level in school psychology, critical incident management, suicide prevention, countering violent extremism and built significant inter-agency relationships. Under his leadership, the School Psychology Service has become highly regarded as one of the most strategic and effective public sector psychology services in Australia.

In 1993, Chris was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to investigate USA and Canadian approaches to suicide prevention and crisis management. He developed and facilitated a suicide prevention training program that has been enhanced and adapted over time and continues to flourish today, 33 years later. In 2023 the School Psychologists’ Association of WA established and awarded Chris the Gostelow Excellence in Leadership Award.

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