Child Psychotherapy Service
The Child Psychotherapy Service offers therapeutic assessments and treatment for children aged 5 to 13 with a range of difficulties ranging from problems with peer relationships, aggressive behaviour, anxiety and underfunctioning at school.
Child psychotherapy is a way to treat children’s difficulties and emotional distress by exploring the thoughts and feelings that may lie behind them.
In therapy children communicate their preoccupations through playing and drawing as well as how they relate and behave. Child psychotherapists observe, reflect, and respond in words and play, according to their understanding of the child’s communications. Thinking and talking with a therapist about their troubled thoughts and feelings can help children to put their experiences into words rather then acting on them. They are helped to make sense of their experience and to develop their potential in relationships and at school.
We undertake a thorough assessment of your child before any recommendation is made.
Meetings with parents/carers are part of the assessment process and, if recommended, of therapy.
Therapy with the child can last from a few meetings over a period of weeks to regular sessions, one or more times a week, over 2 or 3 years.
There is a standard fee for funded cases, but for private referrals there is a sliding scale according to ability to pay.
The Anna Freud Centre has taken a leading role in evaluating the effectiveness of child psychotherapy. We will ask you to fill out various questionnaires before we first meet and at different stages after that to evaluate whether our service is helping you and your child.
For more information or to make a referral please contact Katharina Watt on 020 7443 2230 or katharina.watt@annafreud.org