Therapeutic Approaches in Work With Traumatised Children and Young People: Theory and Practice

This book gives extensive coverage to work by staff at the Cotswold Community, a therapeutic community of working with the psychodynamic principle, from 1994 to 2000.

It Covers every aspect of the therapeutic way of working in great detail and gives good examples of practice and theory. It also lays out the principles that underpin way of working within a therapeutic environment.’

- Children Now

’Trauma for many, is a fact of life. But is the right kind of human environment, so too is recovery.’

- Attributed to Paul van Heeswyck from the foreword

’The text draw on the author’s experience and wealth of material from staff discussions.

The therapeutic framework is applied to this client group and integrated into all aspects of their care. The additional material on child-adult, staff-dynamics, supervision and management, will be of great interest to a wide range of residential staff, social workers, foster carers, therapists and educationalists caring for or working with emotionally needy children and young people.’

- Community Care

Based on work carried out by staff at the Cotswold Community over a number of years, Therapeutic Approaches in Work with Traumatized Children and Young People provides a clear and comprehensive link between theory and practice. The author shows how practice in residential child care, fostering and other areas of work with children can be developed in a way that is thoughtful and underpinned by a sound theoretical base.

Meeting weekly to discuss and review their therapeutic practice in the light of relevant theoretical approaches, the staff at the Cotswold Community produced an invaluable record of working with emotionally traumatized children. The result, brought together here by Patrick Tomlinson, is an in-depth account of a ＂thinking culture＂ which provides continual opportunities to respond to children’s needs in innovative ways - these include useful suggestions on a range of key issues including education and play, primary provision, sexuality and aggression.

Patrick Tomlinson is Director of Development Practice at SACCS, an organization providing recovery for traumatized children, and has been working with emotionally traumatized children and young people for nearly 20 years. He was Assistant Principal at the Cotswold Community, a pioneering therapeutic community for emotionally traumatized boys, before becoming Head of Therapy with Young Options, developing new services for vulnerable children and young people.