Brief Psychotherapy with Children in a Specialist School: An Exploration of the Underlying Issues for Children and Mainstream Schools

This thesis explores brief psychotherapy with children on placement at a specialist
school setting, as part of an on-site, child psychotherapy outreach provision. The study
sought to explore two research questions concerning the themes that could emerge in
brief work with children and how these themes could be discussed in relation to the
understanding formed by their mainstream school teachers. A qualitative research
design was used to investigate these questions. The methods used to collect data were
case studies, concerning the brief psychotherapy with 4 boys, aged 7 years, and and
semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teachers. Thematic analysis was
used to explore the data. The themes that were derived from the analysis were described
in detail. The research found that brief work has considerable benefit for children and
mainstream schools. Through the brief work intervention, the children all made
significant progress in all areas of their lives a school. Contributions that the research
makes to related fields, the implications that it has for policy and practice and
recommendations for future research were all discussed.