Use of time in child & adolescent psychotherapy.

We are raising funds to help child and adolescent psychotherapists improve how they use time when working with clients, in memory of Jo Bent-Hazelwood. (This is the follow on to the first donation page, which raised £2,532.)

Jo died in April 2021 from complications of cancer. She had been working as a child and adolescent psychotherapist. Her last writing was on this paper (paywall) on Using Time Well - a question from a parent of one of her clients.

Jo explored how, in the UK National Health Service, there is pressure to do more in less time: the norm is once-weekly work. Such an expectation does not sit comfortably with psychoanalytic theory and training, which remains rooted in higher frequency, longer-term cases. She recommended feeding back clinical experiences into training and on-going learning.

That is what we are going to explore. How can we ensure the experience of clinicians on 'using time well' is used to help the whole discipline to improve -- and so improve the outcomes for children and adolescents?

About her own approach, Jo wrote:

“I find it helpful to keep in mind the three Ancient Greek 'gods' of time: exercising some control through the boundaries of chronological time (or ‘Chronos’), in order to allow opportune moments to arise (or ‘Kairos’) and for communication with the timeless unconscious (or ‘Aion’).”

We will proceed in this spirit.

We are not entirely sure how we will use the money yet. Perhaps there will be an annual competition for best essay on this topic, and this money will fund a prize. Perhaps there will be a community of practitioners who meet regularly, and the money helps with some of the costs.

There is chance that, even starting with the best of intentions, we will make no progress. If that happens, then we will use the donations in the same way as the first donations page in Jo's memory. There we raised £5,390 which went directly to charities that support child and adolescent mental health.

This exploration is being run by Jo's husband, David Bent-Hazelwood.