‘Who owns my pain?’ An aspect of the complexity of working with looked after children

Abstract

This paper underlines the difficulties of working with looked after children and their carers. The author discusses a particular approach to respond to the complexity of looked after children's emotional difficulties, and their impact on the network of professionals making decisions about their life in care. As their own parents are no longer in a position to take responsibility for them, their trauma and past abuse make for a lack of clarity amongst this network when establishing the responsible role in loco parentis. In order to provide effective therapeutic work with these children, it is crucial to consider their disturbance as affecting the network around them. Enabling the network to understand and process powerful feelings around the child enhances its self-reflective function, so crucial for thinking about the child's needs and emotional development.

Keywords:

• CAMHS
• foster carers
• network
• fostering
• consultation
• deprivation
• abuse
• acting out
• social workers
• psychotherapeutic understanding

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my encouraging husband, Andrew Briggs, for his support and help in writing this paper.