Helping Children and Young people (and some adults...)
The Workshop is designed to help participants think about current theory
and practice in working with children and young people. Emphasis will be placed
on innovations in the last 20 years, such as short-term therapy (especially
cognitive therapy) and distance therapies such as telephone helplines. A key
question to be addressed is ¹How and why do children and young people
feel able to make a working relationship with helping professionals; is this
necessarily long term or can it be a one off?® Participants are invited to
bring their own material for discussion in a closed/confidential session.
Note: this will focus on work with children and young people over the age
of 10
The Adult and the Child; what is happening in their relationship?
This session will focus on the many factors that influence the course of a
relationship between a child and an adult psychotherapist. It is well known
from research in psychotherapy with children that the outcome of any psychotherapeutic
endeavour is determined by the interaction of numerous variables, not
least the personality and orientation of the psychotherapist and the developmental
levels and particular difficulties of the child. So much depends on the changing
nature of this interaction and on the ability of both to make sense of
what is happening. A number of basic questions will be addressed:
The psychotherapeutic relationship. What are the basic elements of psychotherapy?
Is psychotherapy possible without a readiness on the part of both psychotherapist
and client to enter into an experience in which a conversation of some sort
can take place?
The psychotherapist's contribution. What is that the
psychotherapist brings into his or her work? What aspirations? What are
the needs of the psychotherapist?
The client's contribution. To what extent is the relationship with the
psychotherapist influenced by the client's search for a new object or by
transference requirements and expectations?
The child's experience with the adult psychotherapist. How
does this differ from the child's experience with his or her parent or relative
or
teacher?
Relationships involve two voices at many different levels-that of the young
client and the therapist. In a commitment to be person centred, there is also
a struggle to be congruent. In a therapeutic encounter what happens to the
counsellor's own judgments, what blocks the tracks of empathy and what if unconditional
positive regard traps young people into false illusions of continuing support?
This interactive study will consider the role of the counsellor in therapeutic
consultations drawing on experiences from a national consultation project to
consider the views of young people with experience of mental health problems
in service development.
It will consider:
To what extent is counselling a transferable process beyond the counselling
room into other therapeutic roles?
How does the inner psyche of the counsellor affect the relationship?
How do young people experience the core conditions in a therapeutic encounter?
What happens if the macrocosm (the organisation/culture) cannot support
the microcosm (therapy/counsellor/client relationship)?
Participants will be given the opportunity to explore how our own voices can
be heard and interpreted by clients and how clients can alter our perceptions
of the world around us. Do such encounters place both the clients and ourselves
at risk or develop our resilience?
Biographies
Hereward Harrison
Hereward Harrison works with children, teenagers
and adults at the London Child and Family Consultation Service.
He helped to set up ChildLine in 1986, where he
worked from 1988 to 2002 as Director of Children's Services and, latterly,
as Director of Policy, Research and Development. He retains his interest in
Telephone Helplines for children in his role as Special Advisor to Child Helpline
International. He trained as a psychiatric social worker and psychotherapist,
and has 33 years of experience in the helping professions, working with a wide
range of people including children and families, the mentally ill, hospital
patients and the elderly. He has specialised in clinical work and the supervision
and training of mental health professionals. His work experience, clinically
and at a senior management level, has been in a variety of voluntary and public
agencies – especially children and families – in the UK and USA; before joining ChildLine, he was Principal
Social Worker (Teaching) at Guy's Hospital.
Peter Wilson
Peter Wilson graduated from university with a degree
in Industrial Economics. He then moved into youth work and later graduated
as a Social Worker at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
He worked for three years in New York as a Social Worker
in a residential treatment centre for emotionally disturbed children, Hawthorne Cedar Knowles School. In 1967 he returned to England to train for four years at the Anna Freud
Clinic as a child psychoanalyst. Following qualification, he spent several
years in London. He continued to work at the Anna Freud Clinic, and had a variety
of sessional posts in Brixton, Hoxton and Camberwell Child Guidance Units and
at the Brent Consultation Centre. He became Principal Child Psychotherapist
in Camberwell Health Authority and Senior Clinical Tutor in the Institute of Psychiatry, Maudsley Hospital Children's Department. Later, he became
Consultant Psychotherapist at the Peper Harow therapeutic community and Director
of the Brandon Centre, a psychotherapy and counselling centre for young people
in London.
From April 1992 until his retirement in February 2004, he was the Director
of YoungMinds, the children's mental health charity, and has served on several
committees and enquiries in relation to national developments in child and
adolescent mental health service provision. He is currently Clinical Adviser
to The Place to Be and also has a practice as an consultant in child and adolescent
mental health services and psychotherapy.
Marilyn McGowan
Marilyn McGowan is the Strategy Development Officer for APSA, the Association
for Professionals in Services for Adolescents, the multi-disciplinary organisation
offering training, research and networking opportunities to all professionals
working with young people.
A former Chair of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy's
division, Counselling in Education, she chaired the working party which produced
the first edition of Guidelines for Counsellors in Schools. She has also co-written
the training manual Interpersonal Skills for Working with Young People and
Setting Up Peer Support Projects, both published by the Trust for the Study
of Adolescence.
She has also worked as a consultant in piloting counselling based supervision
for key workers supporting the most vulnerable client groups in Career Scotland.
