Engaging With Complexity

Children and young people spend a great deal of their time in schools and other education settings. Consequently those working in such contexts have a huge impact and influence on the development, experiences and thinking of the children and young people with whom they interact.This book represents the bringing together of the richness and variety of ideas shared by some of the contributors to the first European Conference on Child and Adolescent Mental Health in Education Settings, held in Paris in 2005 and hosted by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. When organising this event it was our intention to gather together child mental health and educational professionals from across Europe to share innovative practice. The success and impact of this conference was such that it became the first of what is now a bi-annual series of events each taking place each in a different European city.

Rita Harris is CAMHS Director of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. She continues to work as a clinical psychologist and family therapist in a fostering, adoption, and kinship care service within the Trust, specializing in issues of contact for children with parents with whom they no longer live. She has a long record of developing community services in partnership with local authorities and the voluntary sector and involving children and young people in their planning and delivery. Sue Rendall is a consultant child and educational psychologist and is Director of EP Initial and CPD Doctoral Training at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. She has thirty-seven years¿ experience working in health and educational contexts, including being head of middle school in a co-educational comprehensive school and, later, after training as an educational psychologist at Birmingham in 1981, as an educational psychologist in three local-authority multidisciplinary services. She was Vice Dean of Postgraduate Training in the Child & Family Directorate of the Tavistock, for six years, and in 2005¿6 was seconded to the DfES for two days a week as Professional Advisor for Child & Adolescent Mental Health. Her PhD research was a systemic understanding of school exclusion. Sadegh Nashat is a consultant clinical psychologist and a systemic psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. As a training lead, he has developed and delivered a range of child, adolescent, and family mental health programmes aimed at education professionals. He has a special interest in the area of social and school exclusion and in mental health interventions in education settings.