Trauma in Children and Young People: Reaching the Heart of the Matter

This book offers a unique combination of an in-depth examination of attachment, a refined and tested model of Needs Assessment and Therapeutic Treatment plans and applies it to specific contexts including those of children in residential/foster care, young offenders, and unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors.

Trauma in Children and Young People, the culmination of 40 years of experience in the field, focuses on the lives of children and young people who have experienced and live with the repercussion of early trauma. Accompanied with case studies, it examines how therapeutic intervention can enable children and young people to connect with their inner world of fragmented feelings and emotions and to develop a sense of ’self’ that is real and has meaning.

This book is intended for professionals working therapeutically with traumatised children, such as therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health workers, social pedagogues, child and youth care workers, social workers, residential care workers and foster carers, teachers, youth justice workers, and child refugee agencies.

Christine Bradley has worked with vulnerable children for over 40 years. She was senior officer for LB of Wandsworth and Director of the Caldecott College in Kent and is a consultant for organizations in residential care, therapeutic communities and adoption/fostering agencies. She is a Fellow of Dartington Social Policy Research Unit and has lectured internationally.

Francia Kinchington is an education consultant, analyst and editor with extensive international experience and publications and in leadership, psychology and leading change in Higher Education and schools. Formally a Principal Lecturer at the University of Greenwich for 25 years, she is an experienced doctoral supervisor and examiner and a Graduate Member of the British Psychological Society.