Time to Listen to Children: Personal and Professional Communication

252 Pages·1999·2.46 MB·English

by  Birgit Carolin

TIME TO LISTEN
TO CHILDREN
Children’s needs and rights are being given greater importance in modern society through
government and media attention, yet what children themselves have to say is not often
taken seriously by adults.
The views of young people and respected professionals who work with them in social
services and child protection, the law, research and education, hospitals and voluntary
organisations, are represented in Time to Listen to Children. They share their interactions
through the medium of counselling, art, music and play therapy and emphasise the impor-
tance of our multicultural, religious and spiritual backgrounds. It is possible to put aside
authority without abdicating responsibility, claim the authors, in order to recognise and
hear children as people with rights, opinions and ideas equal, but different, from those of
adults.
Focusing on what is special about listening to children as the core of a skilled, reflective yet
active relationship, this collection should prove a valuable resource for social workers,
teachers, counsellors, mediators, advocates and parents.
Pat Milner is an experienced teacher and former editor of the BAC journal Counselling and
co-editor of the BAC Counselling Reader. Birgit Carolin is a former teacher and student
counsellor, currently working mainly in the voluntary sector with children.
For Joanna, age 10, the inspirer who listens acutely.
With love from Pat (PM)
For my first grandchild, Orla (BC)
T I M E T O L I S T E N
T O C H I L D R E N
Personal and professional communication
Edited by Pat Milner
and Birgit Carolin
London and New York
First published 1999 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001.
© 1999 Pat Milner, Birgit Carolin, and individual contributions to their authors.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Time to listen to children: personal and professional communication/edited by Pat Milner
and Birgit Carolin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Children – Services for – Great Britain. 2. Interpersonal communication in children –
Great Britain. 3. Children and adults – Great Britain. 4. Listening. I. Milner, Pat, 1933– . II.
Carolin, Birgit, 1936– .
HV751.A6T53 1999
362.7´0941–dc21 98–35444
CIP
ISBN 0–415–17197–0 (hbk)
ISBN 0–415–17198–9 (pbk)
ISBN 0-203-13751-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-18581-1 (Glassbook Format)
CONTENTS
List of contributors vii
Foreword xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction 1
PART I
Setting the scene
1 A medley of children’s voices 17
BIRGIT CAROLIN AND PAT MILNER
2 Pleasures, pitfalls and perplexities: the content of
counselling and supervision 29
DOROTHY EDDI PIPER
3 Learning to listen, learning to hear: a training
aproach 48
PENNY TOLLER
PART II
Multicultures, multifaiths
4 Communicating with a black child: overcoming
obstacles of difference 65
LENNOX K. THOMAS
5 Children, spirituality and religion 79
MARGARET CROMPTON
v
CONTENTS
PART III
At work with children
6 Children as teachers: listening to children in
education 97
COLLEEN McLAUGHLIN, MARY CARNELL AND
LYNNE BLOUNT
7 Child protection: facing up to fear 112
BARBARA SMEDLEY
8 ‘Will it hurt?’ Children and medical settings 126
PENNY COOK
9 ‘Working with hope’ in voluntary organisations 139
BIRGIT CAROLIN
PART IV
Listening creatively
10 ‘I’m going to do magic . . .’ said Tracey: working with
children using person-centred art therapy 161
HEATHER GILES AND MICKY MENDELSON
11 Listening to children through play 175
CAROL DASGUPTA
12 Listening: the first step toward communicating
through music 188
AMELIA OLDFIELD
PART V
Children, research and the law
13 ‘It’s cool . . . ’cos you can’t give us detentions and things,
can you?!’: reflections on research with children 203
VIRGINIA MORROW
14 Children and the law 216
PAT MONRO
Afterword 229
Useful addresses 230
Index 232
vi
CONTRIBUTORS
Lynne Blount is a team leader with the Primary Behaviour Support Service, Essex. She
focuses on the school environment, and works with teachers and children with special
educational needs that highlight an emotional or behavioural difficulty. She listens to
children and encourages staff to understand and respond to their behaviour in order to
break the often negative cycle of parent and teacher attitude. Publications for Essex
Information Services include Creating a Telling School: Anti-bullying pack for primary
schools, Playground Games and Promoting Positive Behaviour.
Madge Bray is co-founder of SACCS (Sexual Abuse Child Consultancy Service), Leaps
and Bounds and Findus Keep Us, an integrated project of care, therapy and home finding
for abused children based in Shrewsbury, England. In April 1998, she left the project and
continues to develop this work in new forms and directions. She is the author of Susie and
the Wise Hedgehog Go to Court (1989), Poppies on the Rubbish Heap: Sexual abuse –
the child’s voice (1991 Canongate press: 1997 Jessica Kingsley) and has contributed to
Protecting Children: Challenges and changes (Bates, Pugh and Thompson eds 1997)
and Good Practice in Counselling People Who Have Been Abused (Bear ed. 1998).
Mary Carnell is an experienced infant teacher and trained counsellor. She is currently a
home/school link teacher in Cambridge, using play therapy and counselling skills,
individually and in groups, to support children through traumatic periods, in consultation
with parents.
Birgit Carolin has worked as a teacher and counsellor in London schools, at ChildLine and
at Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge. She now works as a BAC accredited
counsellor in voluntary and private practice, mainly with children.
vii
CONTRIBUTORS
Penny Cook is a paediatric nurse, counsellor and counselling supervisor. Her work in
Addenbrookes NHS Trust hospital includes offering support and counselling to children
and families and also bereavement support.
Margaret Crompton has gained social work experience from working with children
(Leeds/Lincolnshire), lecturing (Bradford/Newcastle Universities) and writing. Her
publications include Attending to Children: Direct work in social and health care (1990);
Children and Counselling (1992); Children, Spirituality and Religion: A training pack
for Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW 1996);
Children, Spirituality, Religion and Social Work (1998). Present activities include
writing, adult education and self-employed consultancy/training.
Carol Dasgupta is a Counsellor and therapist working in private practice with children,
young people and adults. She also works for the Cambridge Family and Divorce Centre,
and has worked as a play therapist for the NHS.
Heather Giles is a psychology graduate with a Diploma in Person-centred Art Therapy. As
a teacher she is responsible for education in the Berkshire Adolescent Unit, where she has
run a weekly art therapy group for seven years, aiming to empower young people to create
positive change in their own lives.
Colleen McLaughlin is a tutor at the University of Cambridge School of Education, where
she is involved in the in-service education of teachers in counselling, guidance, pastoral
care and personal/social education, plus research and development work into exclusion
from school, guidance and drugs education. Publications include Counselling in Schools
(McLaughlin and Bovair 1993); Reviewing, Evaluating and Monitoring Teacher
Appraisal: A pack for schools (McLaughlin and Pumfleet 1995); Counselling and
Guidance in Schools: Developing policy and practice (McLaughlin, Chisholm and Clark
1996).
Micky Mendelson is a Froebel trained infant teacher specialising in art. She trained in
person-centred art therapy and counselling and is experienced as an art therapist and
counsellor with children and young people in schools, with social services and voluntary
agencies. She has also worked for the NHS and voluntary agencies in the field of alcohol
dependency, and is currently in private practice as a counsellor and art therapist.
Pat Milner is an experienced teacher and counsellor of children and students. A Fulbright
Scholar, she started the Student Counselling service at University College London, was
founder chair of the Association for Student Counselling and tutor to counselling courses
viii
CONTRIBUTORS
at South West London College and Goldsmiths College, London University, in addition
to practising as a counsellor and supervisor. For three years she was features editor of
Counselling, the journal of the British Association for Counselling. Her first publication
was Counselling in Education (1974, 1980). Recent books include Counselling: The
BAC counselling reader (Palmer, Dainow and Milner eds 1996); Help on the Line:
Essential skills for listening and communicating by telephone (Palmer and Milner 1997)
and Integrative Stress Counselling: A humanistic problem focused approach (Milner and
Palmer 1998).
Pat Monro is a London solicitor working at one of the first specialist child care legal
practices to be established in the UK. She is a member of the Law Society Children Panel.
Virginia Morrow was formerly at the Centre for Family Research and Faculty of Social and
Political Sciences, University of Cambridge, and is now a Research Fellow at the Gender
Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science. Her publications include
Understanding Families: Children’s Perspectives, a report for the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation (1998).
Amelia Oldfield has worked as a music therapist in Cambridge for seventeen years. She was
the joint initiator of the MA in music therapy training at Anglia Polytechnic University,
where she is a part-time lecturer. She has researched music therapy for adults with severe
learning difficulties (MPhil), and writes and lectures extensively on many aspects of
music therapy. She has four young children and plays the clarinet in local orchestras and
chamber groups.
Dorothy Eddi Piper is a BAC Accredited counsellor who works at the Trust for the Study
of Adolescence as Co-ordinator of Adolescent Mental Health Training Initiative. She
manages the Youth Empowerment Project ‘Youth Voice’, which involves young people
in the training of adults and the ‘Someone to talk to’ project which is developing a range
of nationally accredited training for counsellors of young people. She is a course director
of the Cascade Associates/University of East London accredited Certificate in
Counselling Supervision. Her previous experience includes teaching, residential care,
youth work, therapy in child guidance clinic and stage management. She is currently in
private practice offering counselling, play therapy, supervision and training.
Barbara Smedley combines her extensive experience in direct work with children and in
social services management, and in operating an independent consulting, training and
play therapy service in Wales. She is used widely by agencies concerned with providing
help for children who suffer emotional and behavioural difficulties. Barbara also
ix