Therapeutic Practice in Schools: Working with the Child Within: A Clinical Workbook for Counsellors, Psychotherapists and Arts Therapists

This book is an indispensable guide to providing therapy services for children and adolescents in primary and secondary school settings. The contributors have extensive experience in the field and carefully examine every aspect of the work, ranging from developing an understanding of the school context in all its complexity, through to what to say and do in challenging therapy sessions and in meetings with school staff or parents and carers.

Therapeutic Practice in Schools opens with an overview of key psychoanalytic concepts informing therapy practice. This is followed by a detailed exploration of the hopes and anxieties raised by providing therapy in schools, the factors that either enable or impede the therapist’s work and how to manage expectations as well as measure outcomes. The practical aspects of delivering therapy sessions are also covered, from the initial assessment phase through recognising and working with anxieties, defences, transference and counter-transference to working with endings. An awareness of the impact of social identity, gender, race and culture on both the therapist and client is woven into the book and is also discussed in depth in a dedicated chapter.

The manual offers a comprehensive yet highly readable guide to the complex world of school-based therapy. It provides practical examples of how therapists translate theory into everyday language that can be understood by their young clients, ensuring that trainees starting a placement in schools, as well as therapists beginning work in the educational setting for the first time, are able to take up their role with confidence.

Lyn French is an art therapist, counsellor and psychoanalytic psychotherapist. As a Director of A Space for Creative Learning and Support, Hackney, East London, she supervises trainee and qualified therapists and manages school-based services. She also teaches on the MSc in counselling and psychotherapy with children and adolescents at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Reva Klein is a psychodynamic psychotherapist working with children and adolescents and is completing training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy with adults. She works as a counsellor with children, adolescents, parents and school staff at A Space for Creative Learning and Support, Hackney, East London and has written extensively on children’s mental health issues.