Handbook of Therapeutic Care for Children: Evidence-Informed Approaches to Working with Traumatized Children and Adolescents in Foster, Kinship and Adoptive Care

This innovative book brings together a wide range of therapeutic approaches, techniques and models to outline recent developments in the practice of supporting children in out-of-home care. It sheds light on the significance of schools, sports and peer relationships in the lives of traumatised children. It also draws particular attention to the vital importance of taking into account children's cultural heritage, and to the growing prevalence of relative care.

Each chapter is set out by acclaimed and world-renowned contributors' specific approach, such as Dan Hughes and his work on conceptual maps and Cathy Malchiodi and her research on creative interventions, and gives practical ways to support children and carers. It also includes contributions from Bruce Perry, Allan Schore and Martin Teicher. This comprehensive volume will open new avenues for understanding how the relationship between child and carer can create opportunities for change and healing.

Table of Contents

1. The Need for a New in the Care and Support of Children in Foster, Relative and Adoptive Care.
2. What are the Key Elements of Therapeutic Care?
3. Understanding the Needs of Vulnerable Children: The Importance of Type and Timing of Maltreatment on Brain Development and Risks (Martin Teicher and Orgilmaa Munkbaatar, Belmont MA).
4. The Fundamental Role of the Mother in the Interpersonal Neurobiological Origins of Mutual Love (Allan Schore, Northridge CA).
5. ""Support and love and all that stuff"": Evidence of impact in the Treatment and Care for Kids Program (Lynne McPherson and Kathomi Gatwiri, Coolangatta and Bilinga, Australia).
6. The Neurosequential Model: A developmentally-sensitive, neuroscience-informed approach to clinical problem solving (Bruce Perry, Chattanooga, TN).
7. Dabakan kooyliny - go slowly, walk slowly, go together: Culturally Strong Therapeutic Care for Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Children, Families and Communities (Glenda Kickett and Shaun Chandran, Perth, Australia).
8. Children in Kinship Care: Issues for Promoting their Mental Health (Elaine Farmer and Meredith Kiraly, Bristol, UK and Victoria, Australia).
9. Therapeutic Care Teams: Horizontal Teams in the Vertical World of Out of Home Care (Noel MacNamara, Banora Point, Australia).
10. Defining the conceptual maps that resource the day to day interactions between carers and children to become more therapeutic (Daniel Hughes and Jonathan Baylin, South Portland, US and Wilmington, US).
11. Resetting the fabric of love: Real life applications that promote emotional connection in the day to day experience of looked after and adopted children and their parents (Kim Golding, Malvern, UK).
12. Expressive Arts Therapy as Self-Regulatory and Relational Interventions with Children and Caregivers (Cathy Malchiodi, Louisville, US).
13. Therapeutic Care as it Evolves.

"Finally, a book that successfully addresses all of the complex bio-psycho-social-developmental consequences of early trauma! Therapeutic Care treats the embodied and encultured mind at each stage of life in a way that leverages the way the brain evolved to heal - in security and safety. Highly recommended."
- Louis Cozolino, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Author

"The Handbook of Therapeutic Care is a wonderfully practical and readable guide for all of us dedicated to creating pathways to health for children exposed to chronic trauma and abuse - children who are stuck in an inner world filled with helplessness, chaos and danger. Despite the multiplicity of voices of (outstanding) contributors, this handbook provides a unified synthesis of practices that help us understand the pressures from the past on current behavior, and presents a comprehensive and well-tested model to provide sensory, relational and emotional repair for children and young people who carry the legacy of danger, abandonment, and unpredictability. This is the integration we have been waiting for."
- Bessel A Van Der Kolk, MD, Medical Director, the Trauma Center, Professor of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine, Author