Therapeutic Residential Care for Children and Young People: An Attachment and Trauma-Informed Model for Practice - Paperback

by Susan Barton (Author), Rudy Gonzalez (Author), Patrick Tomlinson (Author)

Children and young people in care who have been traumatized need a therapeutic environment where they can heal and which meets their emotional and developmental needs.

This book provides a model of care for traumatized children and young people, based on theory and practice experience pioneered at the Lighthouse Foundation, Australia. The authors explain the impact of trauma on child development, drawing on psychodynamic, attachment and neurobiological trauma theories. The practical aspects of undertaking therapeutic care are then outlined, covering everything from forming therapeutic relationships to the importance of the home environment and daily routines. The book considers the totality of the child's experience at the individual, group, organization and community levels and argues that attention to all of these is essential if the child is to achieve wellness. Case material from both children and carers are used throughout to illustrate both the impact of trauma and how children have been helped to recovery through therapeutic care.

This book will provide anyone caring for traumatized children and young people in a residential setting with both the understanding and the practical knowledge to help children recover. It will be essential reading for managers and decision-makers responsible for looked after children, child care workers such as residential and foster carers, youth workers, social workers, mental health workers and child welfare academics.

Author Biography

Susan Barton is founder of the Lighthouse Foundation, Australia, which provides therapeutic residential care for traumatized and homeless children. After fostering children for several years, she founded the charity in 1991 in order to extend to more children in need the therapeutic family model of care that she had started to develop. She has won numerous awards for her work with homeless and traumatized children. Rudy Gonzalez is Director of Care Service at the Lighthouse Foundation. He has worked as a family counsellor and case manager, a psychologist in a forensic setting undertaking therapeutic work with male violent offenders both individually and in a therapeutic community, and has worked as a psychologist with traumatized children. Patrick Tomlinson is a social care consultant. He has many years' experience as a practitioner, manager and director of therapeutic child care services, and is author of several books on therapeutic child care.