Children and young people in care who have been traumatized need a therapeutic environment where they can heal and which meets their emotional and developmental needs. This book provides a model of care for traumatized children and young people, based on theory and practice experience pioneered at the Lighthouse Foundation, Australia. The authors explain the impact of trauma on child development, drawing on psychodynamic, attachment and neurobiological trauma theories. The practical aspects of undertaking therapeutic care are then outlined, covering everything from forming therapeutic relationships to the importance of the home environment and daily routines. The book considers the totality of the child's experience at the individual, group, organization and community levels and argues that attention to all of these is essential if the child is to achieve wellness. Case material from both children and carers are used throughout to illustrate both the impact of trauma and how children have been helped to recovery through therapeutic care. This book will provide anyone caring for traumatized children and young people in a residential setting with both the understanding and the practical knowledge to help children recover. It will be essential reading for managers and decision-makers responsible for looked after children, child care workers such as residential and foster carers, youth workers, social workers, mental health workers and child welfare academics.

This book shows how carefully planned and assessed treatment can help traumatized children. It outlines how to set up a process for measuring a child's progress towards recovery. Uniquely, the book describes a practical outcomes-based approach that can be provided by an integrated multi-disciplinary team. Particular themes addressed include the conflict between the child's chronological and emotional ages, the need to work at the child's pace, the importance of the whole-team approach, and the challenges involved in measuring progress. The authors describe clearly defined outcomes for recovery, how children are assessed and how recovery plans are made, and show how progress can be closely monitored and responded to through the continuing process of assessment. An in-depth case study is used to show how this works in practice. This book forms part of an integrated approach and is an ideal accompaniment to existing titles in the SACCS `Delivering Recovery' series.

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.