Guest editorial

Citation

Diamond, J. (2013), "Guest editorial", Therapeutic Communities: The International Journal of Therapeutic Communities, Vol. 34 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/TC-09-2013-0028

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Therapeutic Communities: The International Journal of Therapeutic Communities, Volume 34, Issue 4.

Welcome to this issue of Therapeutic Communities (TC) on “current TC work with children and young people”. Central to this work is the provision of a “lived experience” of safe and meaningful relationships within structured day-to-day group experiences. These relationships are consciously created by robust, caring and emotionally attuned adults.

The degrees of difference from adult TC work are in the modification, adaptation and expectation of the concepts of the levels of shared responsibility and negotiated authority. Staff acting “in loco parentis” are responsible for the safety and welfare of children. This is a serious responsibility as due to persistent early trauma, the children referred to such specialist services often lack a coherent sense of self, and a reliable sense of “agency” for their actions and behaviours. TC's for children and young people are also legally responsible for the delivery of each child's educational entitlement through appropriate schooling.

TC work is a constantly evolving model of practice, and in this issue the themes of innovation, adaptation and change, alongside new international influences are evident. The papers explore how new ideas and techniques are complementing the core “lived experience”, to enhance opportunities for emotional growth.

The paper from the USA by Dr Barbara Burns et al. “Strengthening children's resilience through parenting: a pilot study” raises the issue of how TC principles can be applied to the wider community. The “resilient families project” works with homeless mothers and their children through community engagement. She describes how extreme disadvantage creates distress and depression in mothers, and increases risk factors for the healthy development of children. Burns et al. describe the aims of the project which is informed by models of resilience, attachment theory and delivered through “mindful parenting” techniques. The project was piloted across 50 small and large group sessions and the design finalised into six, 90 minute sessions, which aim to strengthen resilience and promote deeper attachments with mothers and children who are experiencing chronic poverty.

My own paper “the Mulberry Bush School and UK Therapeutic Community practice for children and young people” is based on a presentation to an Italian conference, and aims to give an overview of the main features of the evolution of the Mulberry Bush School as a TC since its founding in 1948 by Barbara Dockar-Drysdale. This sets the historical scene for an introduction to the next two authors, both from the Mulberry Bush, who give accounts of current explorations into new theories and practices which are influencing the evolution of our primary task.

This theme of complementing the “lived experience” is continued in the paper “Making meaningful connections” by Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist, Caryn Onions. She explains some of the dilemmas, and emergence of new ideas for working with children placed at the school who have experienced pre-verbal and complex trauma, especially those children who manifest high levels of violence and struggle with their capacity to think and reflect. The paper debates the limitations of psychoanalytic psychotherapy for those children who are not yet ready to respond to the use of spoken language and direct interpretation.

She explains how the School's multi-disciplinary “Therapies and Networks Team” have incorporated music and drama therapy (with an emphasis on group work) alongside child psychotherapy within the overall therapeutic milieu, to enable sound, tempo, rhythm and repetition to be used to help children start to regulate their emotional states and give expression to pre-verbal feelings and experiences.

Onions describes how she began to reconsider working individually with such children, and links this with the ideas from different traditions and practitioners; Anna Freud, Herbert Rosenfeld Anne Alvarez and Bruce Perry. From this work, she explains how a model of assessment which identifies interventions that are sensitive to the child's current state of mind and developmental level is emerging. This aims to enable each child to make better use of the overall environmental provision of the school.

The theme of complementary work and broader (international) influences is continued in the paper on the use of “Autogenic Training” by Oliver Klott, a Deputy Household Manager at the school who is also of German nationality. His paper explains another addition to the range of interventions that are being offered to meet the needs of children placed at the school, and how this is integrated into the overall treatment and educational ethos.

Klott brings “Autogenic Training” from his own cultural heritage, reminding us that it was developed in the 1920s by German neurologist and psychiatrist Dr Johannes Schultz and based on his research into the calming and regenerative aspects of sleep and hypnosis. The word autogenic means “self-generating” or “generated from within”, hence its fit within a broader psychodynamic TC framework. Klott points out that current German legislation requires the consideration and support for developing personal resources and self-help techniques before other forms of therapy are considered.

The final papers in this issue by Melvyn Rose and Craig Fees are obituaries to the work of Maurice Bridgeland the author of the influential and seminal book “Pioneer work with maladjusted children” (Bridgeland, 1971), which remains the unsurpassed authoritative text on the growth of the British alternative therapeutic school and community movement. I am very pleased to be able to include these as a tribute to his life, which was dedicated to meeting the needs of emotionally troubled children and young people.

John Diamond
CEO, based at The Mulberry Bush Organisation, Standlake, UK.

Reference

Bridgeland, M. (1971), Pioneer Work with Maladjusted Children, Staples Press, London