Information for Parents About Psychotherapy and Counselling
for You and Your Child

Your Psychotherapist

Ruth Schmidt Neven PhD has over 40 years experience of working with children parents and families in Australia and in the UK. She was previously inaugural Chief Psychotherapist at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne and has been director of the Centre since 1994. Ruth trained as a child psychotherapist at the internationally renowned Tavistock Clinic in London and was a pioneer in parent support in the UK. She is a member of the Australian Psychological Society and a registered psychologist. She writes and lectures extensively on all aspects of child and family development including to parent groups and organisations and is a trainer and consultant within Australia and overseas.

 

How Does Counselling And Therapy Work?

Aims of Therapy:

• Therapy and counselling aims to help children and parents understand that all behaviour – both good and bad - has meaning. It helps us to better manage children’s difficult behaviour if we know more about why they behave the way they do. Therapy and counselling is concerned with opening up communication to talk about the reasons for children’s annoying, difficult or challenging behaviour. These reasons may be connected with what is happening at home, with divorce or separation, loss, bereavement, school and learning difficulties, or social and emotional stress. For this reason all assessments and therapy take into account your child’s age and what impact their development has on their behaviour.

Parents' Involvement:

• Children are never seen on their own without parents’ involvement because you as parents are the most important people in your child’s life.
• Therapy and counselling focuses on relationships and on understanding and improving your child’s relationship with you, with siblings, extended family and in the school setting.
• Each session provides both child and parents with a confidential and open space to communicate issues to the therapist.

Long Term Solutions:

• Therapy and counselling is not simply strategy focused and does not provide a ‘quick fix’ so it is important that you are able to give appropriate time to the problem and its resolution. Short-term strategies will not be effective particularly when problems have been present for some time. The Clinic is committed to providing more than strategies and instead aims to empower parents to help their children and promote long-term resilience.
• Practical advice and support is always offered to parents. However this takes place  in relation to understanding the context of family and relationship issues so that the advice can be most effective
• Whilst some problems particularly for very young children in the Under Fives service can sometimes be resolved within several weeks, it is more realistic to consider that most treatment with older children will take several months or approximately 12 sessions of weekly or fortnightly visits.
• Where there have been longstanding problems some children may be resistant to making changes and may express negative feelings about attending for therapy. This is a very natural response and is a part of the therapeutic process. It should not be a reason to end treatment. In this situation joint sessions with parents and the child can be particularly helpful.

 

The Assessment Process

The assessment process at the Clinic takes place in two parts; the first with parents or a parent on their own and the second with both parents and the child.

 

What Happens at the Initial Assessment with
Parents Only?

An initial assessment is always conducted first with you the parent or parents without your child being present. The reason for this is that the Clinic has a policy of involving and working closely with parents as much as working with children. It is essential for both parents where present to be part of this process from the beginning, as both parents play an equally important role in their children’s lives. The initial assessment which may take up to just over an hour is an opportunity to understand how you view your child’s problem and the ways in which you have tried to deal with it. 

We will talk about your child’s history from the pregnancy and birth as well as their experience of child care, kinder and transition to school, as these early experiences may have an impact on your child’s behaviour. As part of the assessment it will also be helpful to hear about your own experiences of growing up in your family of origin, as how we were parented often influences the way we parent our children. The aim of the assessment is not to identify one reason for the difficulties you and your child may be experiencing or to place blame on anybody, but rather to get as broad a picture as possible of the context of the problem.

In the course of this initial meeting we will also discuss how to prepare your child for the next part of the assessment which they will attend. It is important for both parents to participate in the initial meeting with their child.

 

How to Talk About Counselling and Therapy with Your Child and Why You Are Seeking Help

It is important at all times to be open and honest with your child about why you are seeking help and why you are bringing them to the Clinic. They will be aware of the problem and may themselves be asking for help or they may be well aware of how annoying you find their particular behaviour or how concerned you are about them.  This first appointment and the reasons for attending need to be discussed with your child (including very young children) well before the date.

Children do better in new situations when they are well prepared. Children need to know that in the course of this first session some problems with their behaviour will be discussed without this meaning that they are in trouble or will be blamed. In the vast majority of cases, after some initial anxiety most children are relieved to talk about what is troubling them and why they may be behaving the way they do.  Therapy sessions can be a positive experience and children are also very pleased to have both parents present.

 

Ongoing Therapy and Counselling

Decisions regarding ongoing therapy and counselling will arise from the assessment and are made in consultation with parents. Some of the outcomes of assessment may be the following:

• Ongoing counselling and therapy in which your child is seen for individual sessions when only one parent needs to attend with them. Generally this includes some joint discussion with you and your child about how the week has gone either at the beginning or end of their sessions. When your child is seen for individual sessions, feedback sessions are always arranged for parents separately at another time. This gives us an opportunity to discuss how and why problems may occur within the family and home and different ways of understanding and managing these problems.
• Ongoing counselling and therapy just for parents to discuss how they can work together to understand and manage problems that arise for one particular child or within the family
• Joint counselling and therapy sessions in which parents and child or children meet together to work through problems
• Individual counselling or therapy with a parent where parents are divorced separated or widowed.

 

Ending Therapy

• The ending of therapy is best undertaken through the mutual agreement of parents and the therapist in which we jointly focus on what has been achieved and what is in the best interests of your child for the future.
• We ask that you do not make a decision to end the therapy for your child without giving them and us reasonable notice. It is important to take the opportunity to discuss why you have come to this decision so that the reasons for ending treatment can be more fully explored.

 

Other Services at the Centre

The Centre is fortunate in having the services of an experienced educational psychologist on site and where appropriate referrals can be made for educational testing and assessment.

 

Further Information

Please feel free to contact Dr. Ruth Schmidt Neven at any time.

Telephone +61 3 9830 0422 or ccfdau@ozemail.com.au