Short description:

Therapeutically Engaging Young Survivors of Violence, Exploitation, Abuse, and Neglect: A Critical Social Work Approach highlights that the current trauma model in social work, psychology and counselling with children and young people operates from a biomedical lens.

Long description:

Therapeutically Engaging Young Survivors of Violence, Exploitation, Abuse, and Neglect: A Critical Social Work Approach highlights that the current trauma model in social work, psychology and counselling with children and young people operates from a biomedical lens.

This book argues that taken-for-granted notions of ‘child’ or ‘young person’, ‘maltreatment’, and ‘trauma’ are embedded within intervention and dictate the way professionals engage with young survivors. Using a critical social work lens to critique these notions by bringing together forty years of practice and research by the author, opens up the area of therapeutic intervention to current critical, socio-political, and cultural thought. Exploring the issue as a human right, mainly a child rights lens, while simultaneously intersecting this exploration with critical race, feminist, and post-colonial theorising, provides a socio-political underpinning to examine therapeutic intervention in children's and young people's lives. Weaving together the expertise of both young survivors and the author to provide insight into current therapeutic interventions, this book invites practitioners to critically reflect on how they engage with young citizens who have experienced violence, exploitation, abuse, and neglect. Each chapter also includes questions for further reflection to help further discussion around the issues raised by the book.

Ideal for course usage across Australia as well as internationally, this book will be of interest to all scholars, students and practitioners working in the fields of social work, psychology, and counselling.

Table of Contents:

Part 1: Exploring the Knowledge Landscape  1 Introduction  2 Theoretical Scaffolding: “Giving them a little bit of trauma”    3 The Construction of Childhood Across Time and Geography: Being Babied  4 Exploring the Positioning of Children and Young People in the Child Protection Field: “Doing it for attention”  5 An Exploration of Therapeutic Intervention: “Don’t trauma bomb us”  Part 2: Exploring the Practice Landscape  6 An Exploration of the Ethical Framework when Connecting to Young Survivors of Violence, Exploitation, Abuse, and Neglect: ‘You can’t fucking scare me, bitch’  7 Leaving a Big Impact: Exploring how the Participants Felt They were Perceived and How they Perceived Professionals and the Helping Relationship  8 Exploring How the Participants Perceived the Nature of Therapeutic Help: “Give a shit or quit” 9 Bringing Together the Findings into a Conceptual Framework: Sorting Ourselves Out  10 Considerations for Practice: “Love