Assessments
Our assessments are based on our therapeutic skills and knowledge and use a range of art and play based activities to gain an insight of the child's functioning. The range of assessments could include:
Included in our assessment process may be the completion of standardised questionnaires about the impact of trauma and dissociation on children (Briere's Trauma Symptom Checklist and CDEC Dissociation Checklist).
Play Therapy
Sometimes children can feel sad, angry, worried etc. Play Therapy gives them a space to think and play to help them make sense of what they are feeling. Play is a child’s language and toys are their words (Garry Landreth 1992). Play involves the child’s physical, mental and emotional self in creative expression and can involve social interaction.
Play Therapists receive extensive training in subjects such as child development and attachment (the bonding process). They are also trained to use play, a child’s natural form of expression, as a means for understanding and communicating with children about feelings, thoughts and behaviour.
Music Therapy
Music therapy can meet and reflect awful experiences and mirror painful emotions safely. It can enable processing and assimilation of the emotional impact of traumatic experience. By musically relating with a therapist, a child might engage in a new ‘dance’ of attunement, where early intuitive emotional communication can be made evident. In this experience of being held in the minds and hearts of new carers, reparation may begin.
Art Therapy
Art therapy offers children and young people the opportunity, through art and other creative material, to explore and express experiences and feelings which can be too difficult and painful to put into words. Art therapy is not about being "good" at art nor is it about being taught art. The art therapist remains alongside the child or young person as they work through their experiences and facilitates them in making sense of their worries and helps them to find more manageable ways of coping.
Young Person’s Counselling
About Children offers a counselling service for young people between the ages of 16 to 25 who are interested in committing to weekly sessions of therapy to help come to terms with underlying issues from their past. Counselling provides a safe space to talk about troubling situations, feelings and behaviour. It gives an opportunity to begin to make sense of painful past experiences, traumatic memories and/or abusive relationships. Counselling can help to find ways to grow in compassion towards yourself and to begin to find new ways of coping.
Dramatherapy
Dramatherapy is a type of psychotherapy that uses objects, stories, artwork, movement, music and creative techniques to help them to share, explore and learn from their own inner world. This means that personal issues can be explored at a safe distance and addressed and resolved. Dramatherapy is not about acting or being put on the spot. It is not acting lessons and clients are not expected to perform.
Parenting Support
Therapeutic Parenting Support provides a space to express concerns, frustrations or confusion and to discuss things a parent might feel about themselves or their young person. We work together to better understand the young person's emotional development and how this affects their behavior. The parent is the young person's best resource and we can bring our specialist knowledge of trauma and attachment. We can develop a "working toolbox of strategies" to support parents in your caring for their young person.
Training
We can provide training in the following areas:
Supervision of Therapists
We can provide regular supervision to other therapists.