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Practitioners today are confronted by a bewildering array of therapies as ‘cure alls.’ This book provides an integrated approach to working with children, parents and families that can be applied by all professionals in a variety of settings. Informed by a psychodynamic perspective, it identifies how we can avoid pathologising the behaviour of children by instead considering: the meaning of behaviour as an important source of communication the commonality of all experience for children, parents and families the emotional milestones of development the core principles of assessment and therapeutic communication and how they are applied Through the presentation of sound clinical evidence and research Core Principles of Assessment and Therapeutic Communication with Children, Parents and Families creates connections between clinical practice and community action and, as such, is essential reading for anyone working to promote child and family wellbeing. Ruth Schmidt Neven is a child psychotherapist, psychologist and researcher. She trained at the Tavistock Clinic in London and has worked with children, parents and families over four decades in the United Kingdom and Australia. She writes and lectures extensively on all aspects of child and family development and is currently director of the Centre for Child and Family Development in Melbourne. \"This is a book that above all is subversive in its intent, but subversive in the most healthy and creative meaning of the term. It contains clinically sound convictions, but also an impassioned social and political awareness about how psychoanalytic thinking can function as a refuge in mental health services and as a resource to combat the dominant and depersonalising culture which so undermines attention to complexity... undoubtedly this book is an important resource for professionals who are inundated with information and guidelines, which run counter to their natural inclinations, to listen to the often inter-generational story their clients bring to the consulting room.\" – Joan Herrmann, Journal of Child Psychotherapy, Vol. 37, Iss. 1, 2011 \"Using her experience as a psychologist and psychotherapist1 Schmidt Neven has written a book that provides guidance for those working with children on how to place children's behaviour within a social and relational context in order to 'hear' what that behaviour may be communicating. By seeking to do this Schmidt Neven argues that ' professionals are acting as powerful advocates for the rights of children... Schmidt Neven's book... provokes us to think what lies behind behaviours, to wonder and be curious and thereby develop practices that promote children's mental health and wellbeing.\" - Anne Farrelly, International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood , Vol 9, No 1, 2011 Part I: Point of Departure. The rationale for the book: A return to core principles. Finding the meaning in communication: Setting the scene for work with children, young people and their parents – How the child ‘speaks’ the family. Providing a developmental scaffold for effective practice: Understanding emotional milestones. Part II: The Clinical Core . Practicalities of the assessment process: How to begin. Practicalities of therapeutic communication: How to continue. Part III: Application of Core Principles of Assessment and Therapeutic Communication. Applying core principles of assessment and therapeutic communication in schools, early childhood and health settings. Assessment and therapeutic communication in working with separation loss and trauma. Towards an organisational understanding of assessment and therapeutic communication: how the professional ‘speaks’ their organisation. Toward the promotion of child and family wellbeing: Identifying the commonality of all experience for children, parents and families. Bibliography.

The concept of the core developmental task, which is fundamental to assessment and therapeutic communication, is of particular importance when we work with children who have experienced separation, loss and trauma. This is because development is malleable and in¯uenced by the relational and social context. In the course of our assessment, we may ask ourselves what may reasonably be expected from a child and young person at their particular age and stage, and what developmental and behavoural milestones would be considered to be appropriate. Where there is a lack of ®t between the age and stage of the child and their behaviour, we may go on to ask ourselves what factors in the child's experience and relationships have impeded or undermined the developmental task. In other words, we recognize that these differences or gaps are of a quantitative, not a qualitative, nature. In this respect, the evidence on the impact of separation loss and trauma from research and clinical practice is unequivocal in asserting the importance of good early attachments and the provision of a secure relational base to the development of the child.

This chapter focuses on the organizational settings in which professionals concerned with supporting children, parents and families ®nd themselves, and to which they are accountable. The organizational setting is one of signi®cant power and in¯uence, and shapes the way in which assessment and therapeutic communication is carried out with all clients and patients. The organizational setting also has an impact on professionals in terms of promoting or undermining their skills, their health and their wellbeing. This chapter will demonstrate, therefore, that in order to be effective, an organization concerned with child and family mental health must carry out a process of assessment on itself, and evaluate its capacity to promote a therapeutic environment to ful®l its primary task of supporting children, parents and families. The organizational theorist Harold Bridger (1990) has called this process `the double task'. Bridger puts forward the view that all organizations, not just those associated with the helping professions, are faced with two tasks; one is to carry out their work, and the other is to take time out to review their work. The process of review is essential to assessing the continued relevance of the task, to assessing what changes need to take place and, above all, to give those involved a sense that their concerns can be both aired and responded to. Regrettably, carrying out this task of organizational self-examination tends to be a rare occurrence. It must also be pointed out that the dynamic process of organizational selfassessment bears no relation to current managerial directives with respect to identifying output, throughput and benchmarks. In the absence of a sense of organizational awareness, many professionals ®nd themselves concentrating on their individual work with clients or patients whilst attempting to ignore the `noise' of the organization, or in some cases trying to work around the organization or to mitigate what they may perceive as the negative impact of the organization on their clients, their patients and themselves.