‘Between the woods and frozen lake’: a child psychotherapist’s experiences of developing a grant application for an RCT feasibility study

Abstract

Drawing on the six stages identified by Henton and Midgley (2012) in the narratives of five child psychotherapists involved in the IMPACT study on their evolving attitudes towards participation in outcome research, this paper explores another child psychotherapist’s internal and external world experiences of writing a National Institute of Health Research grant application for a randomised controlled trial feasibility study. It makes use of the key associations that came to mind on first reading Henton and Midgley’s article, outlines the practical and emotional stages of developing the grant proposal and briefly considers some of the wider implications of this kind of work on a personal, organisational and professional level.

Keywords:

• grant application
• RCT feasibility study
• conduct disorder
• inter-generational attachment
• metaphor

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to Professor David Cottrell, Dr Maureen Twiddy and staff at the Clinical Trials Research Unit at the University of Leeds, Andrea White for research assistance, Lynda Ellis, Nick Waggett, Janet Shaw, Jason Kausal, Rajni Sharma, Amy Deakes, Simon Cregeen, Karl Huntbach, Sandra Fentiman, Julie Klingert Hall, Susie Payne and all those who contributed to discussions of the project; and to Nick Midgley, Jill Hodges, Margaret Rustin, Michelle Sleed, Patrick Luyten and Adam Phillips for their advice, expertise and inspiration.