Tavistock child psychotherapy in schools: A brief history of a long relationship

This chapter gives a short history of the relationship between Tavistock child psychotherapy approaches and education, looking at how child psychotherapists and teaching staff have worked together in different and evolving ways since the 1930s when child psychoanalytic psychotherapy came into practice. It looks at how many child psychotherapists started out as teachers and then returned to schools to work with staff and children in a different capacity and how, over the years, child psychotherapists and teachers have found creative ways to work together, through Tavistock courses and in-school services providing staff consultation, work discussion groups, individual and group therapy. It shows how child psychotherapists have at times been based in education services, at others in health services, but have always been dual citizens, taking their thinking and services out of clinics and into school communities