Photo: JKP author Jeni Hooper

How Positive Psychology can help children be happy, confident and successful – An Interview with Jeni Hooper

“Professionals and parents want the best for children and need to know how to guide them through childhood. Positive Psychology provides the evidence on which to base decisions. For example, we know that optimism is invaluable to mental health because it encourages people to be hopeful and take good care of themselves. It helps people stave off depression by reframing challenging experiences and it increases people’s overall happiness.”

Book cover: Making Partnerships with Service Users and Advocacy Groups Work

‘Growing spaces’ as a way of understanding and developing genuine partnerships – An Interview with Jackie Martin and Julie Gosling

“I think that service users can give a perspective which can be lost without their inclusion. Service users can help to cut through some of the professional ‘jargon’ which excludes people, even other professionals sometimes. Professionals are often under considerable pressures to meet targets or stay within budgets, and even with the best will in the world they can start to lose sight of why they came into the profession in the first place. Service users can help to keep that perspective and keep values sharp.”

Photo: JKP author Rachel Fearnley

Supporting children when a parent is at the end of life – An Interview with Rachel Fearnley

“The news that a parent has a terminal illness generally presents the family with a huge crisis. Everything about family life is catapulted into a maelstrom, routines change and nothing appears to be predictable anymore. If children are not included in conversations about their parent’s illness and possible imminent death they are going to witness all the changes without having any ‘concrete’ knowledge to use as a marker. They will be aware of the changes and know that something is very different but will not be able to form a consistent narrative. As a result they are in danger of piecing together the information they have gleaned and making erroneous conclusions.”

Illustration from 'A Manual of Dynamic Play Therapy' - a child's monster drawing.

Dynamic Play Therapy in Action – An Interview with Dennis McCarthy (Part 3)

” I hope readers will become less afraid of rocking the boat of authority that urges us to make the child talk in adult terms about what the adult world deems important to them. Rather than having children be obedient patients, I want to encourage us to attempt in our work to foster true self-possession, knowing how very hard it is to achieve. I urge us all to fight the tendency to negate emotion, to negate aggression, to negate anything and everything that pulsates with life and therefore stirs things up.”