What is Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy

Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists make a distinctive contribution to children’s services and are most effective when they provide a specialist service as part of a multi-disciplinary team. Psychoanalytic child and adolescent psychotherapy, whether with individuals, families or groups, is based on the detailed observation and understanding of conscious and unconscious communication.

Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists are recognised by the Children's National Service Framework as core members of multi-disciplinary child and adolescent mental health teams. It is a graduate entry profession and applicants must already have substantial experience of working with children, adolescents or families. The pre-clinical training includes two years of close observation of infants and young children and the clinical training is based on one 4-year full-time training post in CAMHS. This enables the trainees to develop skills in a multi-disciplinary setting from the outset. As well as the core study of individual psychoanalytic work with children and young people, work is undertaken with parents, groups, families, and consultation and supervision of other professionals.

Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists are trained to provide high-level competencies in the assessment of children and their families and are specifically able to sustain long-term individual psychotherapy with children and young people when difficulties are severe, complex or chronic. Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists offer supervision, teaching and consultation across all agencies and professions and their skills can support workers with less specialist trainings who may be in contact with highly disturbed and disturbing children and adolescents.

At the same time the breadth and depth of their training gives them the ability to provide expertise in specialist areas of work and to extend their practice into new service areas where this is required to meet the needs of service users. Examples of specialist areas of work can include:

  • Brief work with adolescents
  • Brief work with families with very young children
  • Consultation to parents
  • Group work
  • Autistic spectrum disorders
  • Children with physical disabilities
  • Work with children in the care system
  • Foster care support and training
  • Post-adoption support
  • Family Court assessments
  • Forensic services
  • Learning disabilities
  • Eating disorders
  • School based therapeutic services
  • Therapy and consultation in hospitals including neo-natal units
  • Consultation to institutions
  • Practice based research

Document 2: This paper provides a brief outline of the role of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists, the types of work they undertake and the distinctive skills and knowledge they bring to the multi-disciplinary team.

Document 3: This report presents the results of a survey of the clinical work undertaken by the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists employed by Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Trust. The report gives an indication of the numbers and types of patients seen by the CAPts in one particular service and the length of treatment undertaken. It shows that the type of work CAPts undertake is multidisciplinary in nature and draws on evidence to adapt practice to work with families or parents, or with the individual child, where this best meets the presenting problem.

Document 4: This document provides examples of some of the many ways in which Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists across the country are responding to New Ways of Working and supporting the development of effective services focused on the needs of children, young people and their families. It is hoped that these examples will provide models for how commissioners and service providers can use Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists in ways that make best use of their distinctive contribution; within multi-disciplinary targeted and specialist CAMHS and working into universal services.

Document 5 : This brief list of books published by Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists demonstrates the scope of clinical and applied work undertaken and the extent of the research and practice development that continues to flourish within the profession.