Our Team
The way we show up for our clients cuts through the noise of legal jargon and therapeutic platitudes.
They don’t want a lawyer to be the first professional they engage with after separation - someone who isn’t trained in family violence or child development and may be driven by outdated ideology and concepts of ‘fairness’.
They want someone who’s walked through the fire and gets it - someone who will actually name the bullshit and not sugar-coat it. They want a strategy partner who understands family law processes, reports, and court expectations so that, if needed, they can engage with the system more clearly, confidently, and strategically.
And, that’s exactly what we deliver.
Danielle Black
Principal Coach & Director
Since 2020 I have established myself as a respected child-focused and strategic thought-leader and authority in the post-separation space.
Having navigated my own complex separation, and guided hundreds of clients to successful outcomes, I utilise the solid foundation of my evidence-based Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™ to provide support and strategies that prioritise children's safety and development over outdated ideology and assumptions about adult concepts of “fairness”. I specialise in helping protective parents to optimise the outcome for themselves and their children, and support clients to navigate situations that other professionals don't properly address. This includes supporting parents to prepare for meetings with report writers and single expert witnesses.
I work with parents navigating the most complex, high-conflict, and strategically demanding situations.
This includes supervised or no-contact arrangements, relocation, sole parental responsibility, and child refusal dynamics.
I also support clients navigating the financial and property aspects of separation - with or without parenting matters. This can include helping you understand your options, work effectively alongside your lawyer, and carefully weigh the potential benefits, risks and real-world costs of negotiation or court proceedings.
I have tertiary and other qualifications in education, parenting coaching, psychotherapy, counselling, trauma-informed coaching, paralegal training, and specialist high-conflict coach training and certification with Tina Swithin (One Mom’s Battle). This has included specialist education with clinicians and legal educators in the high-conflict/coercive-control space including Dr Ramani Durvasula and Rebecca Zung.
My approach to coaching is holistic and capacity-building. I don’t just focus on parenting or financial arrangements - I support parents to regulate intrusive thoughts, interrupt rumination patterns, and rebuild a grounded, confident sense of identity so they can make clear, strategic, defensible decisions for themselves and their children.
I am a mother of four children, including two neurodivergent children, happily (re)married, and love spending time with my family when I’m not helping clients to protect theirs. …I know what’s it’s like to spend a lot of time being conflict-avoidant instead of protective, and I’m here to help ensure that my clients don’t have to live with versions of “Why the fuck did I agree to that?!” in the years to come.
Trudie Hargrave
Senior Coach
My approach to coaching is both strategic and holistic, using the Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™ as the foundation that underpins my 1:1 coaching work.
I provide clients with guidance, direct them to resources and tools in the Blueprint, and walk beside them every step of the way as they navigate what is one of the hardest things they will ever experience.
I’m here to help you understand the options open to you on your journey, and I specialise in helping clients understand the realities of the court system and post-separation co-parenting - including the realities of co-parenting after achieving parenting orders. I am also passionate about supporting families with neurodivergent or additional-needs children, and with preparation for trial-related processes including cross-examination.
I am deeply passionate about helping parents maintain strong, secure bonds with their children post-separation - particularly in complex situations where the parent-child relationship may be vulnerable to pressure, manipulation, or exclusion. I support parents to build parental capacity, emotional steadiness, and approaches to parenting that keep children at the centre.
I am a mother of three children, and I have extensive lived experience of high-conflict separation, divorce and co-parenting. This includes lived experience of the court system, legal aid, and optimising my court outcome. I’m here to help you - and to help you to help your children. I’d love to connect with you.
Brigid Morgan
Senior Coach
My coaching approach is trauma-informed, neuro-affirming, and nervous-system aware, with a focus that is both empathetic and fiercely purposeful. I work holistically and strategically, supporting clients to stay connected to their values and wellbeing while navigating complex parenting dynamics - and to build genuine, lasting capacity under sustained stress.
I specialise in supporting parents navigating shared parenting without formal court orders, who want to prioritise their child's developmental needs in informed, intentional, and sustainable ways. My work centres on helping clients challenge the systems, narratives, and expectations that prioritise adult fairness over child wellbeing - and to make informed, protective decisions within those realities. This includes supporting parents to parent protectively, maintain appropriate boundaries, and make defensible, evidence-based, genuinely child-first decisions, while minimising unnecessary conflict and protecting their own emotional and mental health.
I bring warmth, directness, and deep empathy to this work — and I will also, at times, gently challenge you to help you locate the strength and clarity you may have been conditioned to doubt.
My work is further informed by lived experience as the primary caregiver to a neurodivergent child, and by over eight years of lived addiction recovery. I support clients navigating their own relationship with substances or habits, or who are managing addiction or dysregulation in the other parent - with a strong focus on boundaries, honest insight, and self-protection.
If you are navigating shared parenting without court orders, parenting without a local support network, or simply looking for a coach who will meet you with both heart and fire - I would love to work with you. Reach out and let's talk.
From early separation, through to final outcomes, and life after separation - the team at Danielle Black Coaching has been there, and done that. Our aim is to support our clients in feeling steadier, less alone, better informed, and more capable of making grounded decisions that prioritise the wellbeing of both their children and themselves.
We’ve helped hundreds of Australian protective parents, just like you, to optimise their outcomes - protecting themselves and their children - with holistic ‘in the trenches’ support, and the kind of insight and strategy that only comes from having experienced separation, and ‘the system’, firsthand.
We’d love to help you too.
Want to fast track?
The Blueprint is the foundation for all of our 1:1 coaching work.
Starting here first (either before booking a 1:1 call, or after booking while you’re waiting for your first session) means:
Immediate access to frameworks and tools (available now)
Work at your own pace through relevant modules
Book a 1:1 coaching session if/when you need personalised guidance
Arrive at your first session with your coach with increased clarity and specific questions