There is a specialist Child Psychotherapy team who work predominantly in a Psychodynamic way. In addition other professional staff use a variety of approaches including Behavioural Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Hypnotherapy, EMDR and other play oriented therapies.
The Child Psychotherapy team offers a range of interventions including assessments, consultations, work with parents and infants, and long-term individual psychotherapy with children and young people. Where long-term individual work with a child seems appropriate, this is generally once a week for at least one year. There are circumstances where the needs of the child or younger person are such that more intensive work is required. The involvement of parents and carers in both the assessment and treatment phase is considered essential to the success of the intervention. With the focus very much on the individual child, the task may be seen as trying to understand and influence the child’s inner experience of the world – what the child makes of his/her experience. The child’s play and behaviour is closely observed by the receptive mind of the clinician, who is trained to be finely attuned to the fluctuations in the child’s thoughts and feeling states. By establishing emotional contact, the therapist aims to sustain a relationship of trust which will foster the child’s development by offering a thinking space to enable integration of conflicts, and hence change.