Director’s Notes

What if they can hear me? The sanctity and privacy of the therapeutic conversation has been an underpinning principal to the extent that it is enshrined in ethical guidelines that protect clients from breaches of confidentiality by practitioners. More difficult is managing the curiosity of family members when sessions are… Read more

With heightened focus on the mental health consequences of the pandemic and government resources directed to addressing this, it is interesting to read a research paper exploring parenting stress and the socioeconomic and environmental risk factors and implications for children’s emotion regulation. Spinelli et al (2020) collected data in the… Read more

The easing of lockdown restrictions is generally anticipated with enthusiasm, but it appears not everyone is happy. Writing in The New York Times, Alex Williams reports on the difficulty some children are experiencing leaving the safety of home coining the phrase ‘generation agoraphobia’. Early this year we had to frighten… Read more

Keeping Training Alive Through Lockdown Practitioners faced multiple challenges when the pandemic hit, and the world went into lock down. The question of how to provide confidential, effective services to clients already struggling with multiple demands was universal but for training organisations working directly with clients there was an additional… Read more

Ritual, Evan Imber Black writes, ‘hold us, shape us, sustain us, and connect us’. Through the pandemic many of our traditions and ways of marking time have become impossible. No leaving the house, no gatherings of more than 10 people, no hugging, no singing, no way to mark the annual… Read more

Who Helps the Helpers? Every night our televisions share footage of distressed families whose members are gravely ill or died and the stoic, angry or sometimes humorous responses of those entrusted to care. Recognising the enormous emotional cost to health workers Weingarten (2020) has adapted ‘The Witness to Witness Program… Read more

For most of us the world we entered and grew up in has been relatively safe and stable with our challenges and tragedies confined to our family and community. This has all changed and now we, as a world, have been confronted with a global and relational disaster with a… Read more

ADHD – Mismatch or Illness? At 6, Lilly was in lots of trouble.  She and her family had been referred to family therapy by the school who had become exhausted by her inattention, distractibility, and violence towards other children. In the first session attended by the whole family it became… Read more

In 1998 a paper was published in the prestigious English medical journal the Lancet, which changed the course of the lives of many children. Some would argue for the worst, but a significant and highly vocal minority would disagree. The paper, by Dr Andrew Wakefield claimed his research demonstrated that… Read more