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Child and adolescent therapy
Child and adolescent therapy concentrates on how to approach young people when it comes to understanding their emotions and counselling them.
Getting started as a counsellor of children and young people can be challenging. For instance, knowing exactly how to get an aggressive, misbehaving or scared child to open up and talk, is a skill that can take time to learn. Have a look at some of our recommended texts that can guide you with practical skills, examples and advice.
Our featured book
Counselling Children and Adolescents
The second edition of Counseling Children and Adolescents covers relevant theoretical approaches for counseling children, including Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), emotion-focused therapy, play therapy, systems theory, and developmental theories. The book emphasizes development, diversity, and the impact of early childhood trauma on overall development. This edition includes updates on topics like the multicultural ethical decision model, intersectionality, implicit bias, and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recommended reading
The counselling and psychotherapy hub is full of useful links, book chapters, interactive videos and more. Here are a few books to add to your resources:
The Handbook of Counselling Children and Young People
This landmark handbook brings together the fundamentals of counselling children and young people, across theory, research, skills and practice. It addresses what every successful trainee or practitioner needs to know in a way that is comprehensive, accessible and jargon-free. Expert authors from a wide range of backgrounds bring together the fundamentals of counselling practice with children and young people in this landmark handbook. It covers all your students need to know about theory and practice approaches, the counselling process, and practice issues and settings.
"Readable and engaging. I enjoyed the various challenges to traditional thinking, which ensure that the reader has the most up-to-date knowledge."
- Lynn Martin, BACP
Counselling Adolescents: The Proactive Approach for Young People
Now with a new companion website that provides training materials and handouts on a range of topics and with two new chapters on contemporary contexts and the use of technology this book continues to be the definitive guide to counselling adolescents.
"A very well revised edition that builds on the previous work by the authors. Informative, theoretical and practical. Good for teaching and a great source for students."
- Dr Serahni Symington, Psychology, Cornerstone Institute
The companion website is a great resource that concentrates on skills, values, self-discovery, roles and ethics.
Counselling Children: A Practical Introduction
This is the definitive guide to the skills and techniques used when working with children who are experiencing emotional problems. The Fifth Edition includes new discussions of wellbeing and resilience concepts.
The book is supported by a new companion website that provides training materials and handouts on a range of skills for counselling children. This highly practical guide is vital reading for counsellors, psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists, nurses and teachers working or training to work with children.
It's important to establish goals for counselling children. Have a read of our sample chapter for some examples of what these goals should be.