“The intergenerational nature of poor attachment can be a unending cycle if there is no intervention to help bring understanding of it. Children whose educational attainment is low very often are avoidant of their teachers, as they are of parents with whom they do not have secure attachment, and so they pay little attention to the teacher or become disruptive which often leads to exclusion.”
“I think the most common problem I encounter with the students I work with is defiance – not doing what is asked of them in the classroom setting. However, after working with the student and finding out more about him, there are almost always other issues that are impacting the student and influencing his behavior. He may be behind his peers academically and feel embarrassed in the classroom… She may not have a consistent place to live or not know where her next meal is coming from each day. Arts-based activities provide students with a safe outlet to discuss these issues and allow the student and counselor to identify ways to handle them.”
“Through individual and group work we aim to get to know a child really well in order to identify their strengths as well as their weaknesses. We also work closely with parents and have an opportunity to see how family relationships work on a day-to-day basis. We use the information we gain from these close observations to establish a holistic, integrated understanding of all the important factors driving the child’s problems and then use this to plan interventions.”
“Although child protection professionals help keep many children safe – and it’s important to remember that the UK has one of the lowest rates of child homicide at the hands of their carers – nevertheless, they sometimes bring the wrong families into the system while missing others – not because they lack skill but as a result of gaps in our knowledge about what leads to maltreatment.”
“Parents felt that, with a few exceptions, social workers did not and could not understand what it was like for them as parents of children growing up in care. There was stigma to bear as well as the emotional loss. In contrast, social workers talked of being aware of the parents’ distress and loss, but often not having the time to see parents, because they were focussing on work with and for the child, or simply not knowing how to help parents.”
By Colby Pearce, author of A Short Introduction to Promoting Resilience in Children. Many children and adolescents are reluctant, at-least initially, to attend and be…
“True empathy is part of a very genuine understanding of the other person. And we learn this through dramatic playing which we can observe in the first few hours after a baby is born: they will try to imitate the expression on the mothers face…the baby is responding as if they are the mother; this ‘dramatic response’ continues to develop in those early weeks and months, like a life rehearsal for the development of empathy.”
We were thrilled to launch Reflective Practice in Mental Health last night at an event hosted by the book’s editors, Martin Webber (pictured) and Jack…
School is back in full swing this week, and with it come new challenges for students – especially those who have difficulty coping with change, stress…
“There are a variety of self-help techniques that the individual can use for their own sake…In addition to individual methods, there must be systems in place to secure good follow-up for personnel involved in critical incidents or in work with traumatized children over time.”