Association of Child Psychotherapists

Association of Child Psychotherapists The Association of Child Psychotherapists (ACP) is the main professional body for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists in the UK.

The ACP is an accredited register of the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).

We are pleased to share that ACP has contributed to a recently published NHS England Workforce Design Toolkit for Child ...
13/07/2026

We are pleased to share that ACP has contributed to a recently published NHS England Workforce Design Toolkit for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). The toolkit explicitly recognises Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists (CAPTs) as one of the core professions within multidisciplinary CAMHS teams. The ACP has contributed directly to the development of this toolkit, ensuring the profession’s voice was represented at a national level.

The document positions CAPTs as specialist clinicians who:
• Provide high-intensity and longer-term therapeutic interventions
• Work with complex, high-risk and comorbid presentations
• Contribute to formulation, consultation, and supervision within teams
• This reflects and reinforces the core professional identity of ACP members.

The toolkit emphasises the need for balanced multidisciplinary teams (MDTs), combining specialist expertise with a broader range of roles.
Within this model, CAPTs are highlighted as essential to:
• Delivering depth of clinical formulation
• Supporting safe and effective care for complex cases
• Providing supervision and governance across teams

Alignment with ACP Values
Encouragingly, the toolkit consistently emphasises:
• Formulation-led, needs-based care
• Relational and evidence-informed practice
• The importance of supervision, training, and professional standards

Key Takeaways
• Child psychotherapists are clearly recognised as essential specialist clinicians within CAMHS
• The value of psychodynamic formulation and complex therapeutic work is affirmed
• However, there is an increasing emphasis on efficiency, role diversification, and low-intensity provision
• Ongoing advocacy will be important to ensure specialist roles remain protected and appropriately utilised

To download the resources and find out more about the the Community of Practice through https://future.nhs.uk/






The ACP was proud to host its annual conference from 17th-24th June, connecting ACP members from across the UK. This yea...
06/07/2026

The ACP was proud to host its annual conference from 17th-24th June, connecting ACP members from across the UK. This year’s theme 'When the Bough Breaks' was an important opportunity for members to continue to reflect and enhance clinical thinking about the experience of Edge of Care, Adopted and Kinship Care children, families and networks.

Thank you to everyone that attended and participated in this event both online and in Sheffield. We had some fantastic and presentations from inspiring Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists, showcases of new research and opportunities to socialise and connect with each other as a community. The conference was a rich space for ideas, thoughtful reflection, meaningful discussion, and connection - on a topic that feels both urgent and deeply relevant.

A special thanks to hosts The Forum and Cutlers Hall for their hospitality and Zoom Genie for their technical support.







The research matters forum brings together child psychotherapists who want to learn more about research, to enhance thei...
29/06/2026

The research matters forum brings together child psychotherapists who want to learn more about research, to enhance their knowledge, skills and to find other colleagues who may be interested in similar topics for potential collaboration.

The research carried out by members has been spurred by their clinical practice and interest in clinical issues. This discussion forum will enable dialogue on how to tackle clinical dilemmas and ethical practice in research.

This July we'll hear from James Norris on his research - a mixed methods study that combined the typical quantitative outcome-focused foundations of health research with the case-study design of psychoanalytic investigation.

The research involved a year of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with three children with ADHD diagnoses and suggested that the therapy improved ADHD symptoms as well as supporting the notion of a new type of dissociative defence, which he has named ‘micro-dissociations’. These dissociative states are linked to failures the primitive aspects of psychoanalytic theory, but often misdiagnoses as the inattentive symptoms of ADHD.

James will be discussing the research process as well as the model of memory that it has produced.

The presentation will be delivered by James Norris and chaired by Dr Elena Della Rosa, Deputy Director of Scientific Research.

For more information and to register, ACP members can visit the Current Events page on the ACP website https://childpsychotherapy.org.uk/events











ACP annual conference for ACP members – There are just 6 weeks to go until the ACP Annual Conference 2026, focusing this...
08/05/2026

ACP annual conference for ACP members –

There are just 6 weeks to go until the ACP Annual Conference 2026, focusing this year on: ‘Work with Looked After Children, Care Experienced Young People, and Adoptive & Special Guardianship Families and Networks’.

Taking place across two online webinars and an in-person day in Sheffield between 17–24 June, the conference offers a rich space for inspiring presentations, thoughtful reflection, meaningful discussion, and connection - on a topic that feels both urgent and deeply relevant.

Chaired by Katie Argent and Joanne Miley, the programme will explore:

• Clinical and theoretical perspectives on disorientation, identity, and the uncanny
• Early trauma, fostering, and the parental state of mind
• The ‘internal couple’ through the phantasy life of care-experienced young people
• The L-AC Consultation model as a foundational “root system”
• Intensive case supervision and its impact on psychotherapeutic work
• The needs of children separated from families in contexts of organised violence and human rights abuses
• Therapeutic journeys within kinship care
• Models of intervention and consultation for infants and young children removed from birth families
• Intergenerational trauma, displacement, and the psychological impact of separation
• Sibling dynamics and working to loosen entrenched relational patterns

See the full conference programme here:
https://childpsychotherapy.org.uk/sites/default/files/civicrm/persist/contribute/files/ACP%20When%20The%20Bough%20Breaks%20Programme_FinalVersion.pdf

ACP Members - Don’t miss the early bird rate ending this Sunday - Secure your place now on the ACP website
https://childpsychotherapy.org.uk/events









We are pleased to share that the ACP has featured in a bitesize newsletter about grandparents and home education. We di...
08/05/2026

We are pleased to share that the ACP has featured in a bitesize newsletter about grandparents and home education.

We discussed that children’s relationships with their granparents could contribute to their wellbeing. “Grandparents offer attention, support, different viewpoints and interests. They can also offer a bridge between life at home and the “outside world”, helping children feel safe and secure enough to venture out into the world.”

To read the full piece visit:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zrswrmn










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Research Matters Forum - ACP Members Register Now Holding harm in mind: qualitative explorations on psychoanalytic work ...
19/04/2026

Research Matters Forum - ACP Members Register Now

Holding harm in mind: qualitative explorations on psychoanalytic work in forensic contexts
Tuesday 21 April, 6:30pm to 8:00pm

Join us for a compelling joint talk exploring psychoanalytic work within forensic child and adolescent mental health. Drawing on two qualitative research projects, this session will examine how experiences of harm enter therapeutic and consultative spaces - and how professionals work to understand and contain these complex dynamics.

This forum brings together insights on:

• Working therapeutically with young people involved in sexual harm
• Supporting professionals engaging with high-risk youth populations
• Using psychoanalytic thinking to hold and make sense of violent or harmful behaviour
• Sustaining reflective practice in the face of challenging clinical material

Facilitated by Dr Alexandra Busse and Dr Tom Robinson, and chaired by ACP’s Deputy Director of Scientific Development - Dr Elena Della Rosa, this discussion offers valuable reflections for our members working in forensic contexts.

ACP members can register now via our website https://childpsychotherapy.org.uk/events

Open to book for ACP members!L3 Safeguarding training – a mandatory requirement for all ACP membersDate: 29/11/2025Time:...
21/11/2025

Open to book for ACP members!

L3 Safeguarding training – a mandatory requirement for all ACP members

Date: 29/11/2025
Time: 10:00-16:00

Visit the ACP website to register
https://childpsychotherapy.org.uk/civicrm/event/info?id=540&reset=1

This training is designed to address the safeguarding implications for child psychotherapists in the work that they do with children and young people. It acknowledges the ethical, clinical and legal dilemmas inherent in making decisions about safeguarding in the context of the therapeutic relationship.

Among the topics discussed are:

• Confidentiality and information sharing

• Understanding the role and procedures of the police and the local authority when a safeguarding concern is raised

• Preserving the therapeutic relationship with the child

• What to expect if a safeguarding concern is made against the therapist

Further information on the ACP website

The ACP supports 2025, with the campaign encouraging future adoptive parents and raising awareness about adoption. M...
20/10/2025

The ACP supports 2025, with the campaign encouraging future adoptive parents and raising awareness about adoption.

Many ACP members work with looked after an adopted children and their families. Simon Cregeen, a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and member of the ACP, argues that whilst it’s important to support the adopted child, it’s also critical to consider the emotional experiences of adoptive parents too. The parents need to do their best to look after their relationship as a couple, not only for their own sake, but also because this is the most essential resource for their children.

Simon sees young adults (age 16 – 25) who are in psychological distress or suffering developmental crises in his private practice. He also sees adult couples who are struggling with a range of emotional and relationship difficulties, including couples who are adopters. For many years he was Head of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy in CAMHS serving Manchester and Salford.

He says: “A common feature in work with adoptive parents is the presence of shame and guilt, leading to blame being projected onto the other parental partner, or one or more of the couple’s adopted children. Shame is experienced in relation to the adoptive parents’ feeling that they are failing to match their internal, idealised standards of being parents, including being ‘much better ones’ than the birth parents.

"Difficulty with mourning is often a central concern for adoptive couples struggling with such issues. When couples are seeking to adopt due to childlessness, there are experiences of loss on the parental side, as well as the children’s. The cumulative traumatic loss for couples who have, for instance, lost babies or suffered multiple failed IVF attempts cannot be underestimated, nor the courage required, and difficulties encountered in mourning the loss of an imagined ordinary family experience.”

For example, one of the things which often happens is that parents can become divided in what they feel and think they should do as adoptive parents and as a couple. This can lead them to being unable to acknowledge one another’s point of view or emotional experience. So, in relation to feelings of loss and grief aroused by their adoptive child not bringing them the type of parenting experience they hoped for, one parent may feel bereft, still yearning for a birth child, and this may stir feelings of depression, while their partner may be feeling more stoical, that what’s gone is gone ("we just have to get on with the present situation and make the most of it"). Both feelings are valid.

If the couple are struggling to allow for their partner’s different experience then a conflict can arise. This is a painful couple dynamic and readily leads to blame being passed between them. However, if the couple can catch themselves, and see that this is something happening between them as a couple (ie it’s not one or the other’s fault), and observe and share what they are thinking and doing to one another, then two things can happen. Firstly, they are sharing responsibility for the conflict between them; secondly, they can become curious about their partner’s feelings, and the difference in these from their own. A bridge can be formed between their different emotional responses to the adoptive parenting experience they are having.

Visit You Can Adopt website to find out more about the campaign
https://www.youcanadopt.co.uk/naw/

To read more about how child psychotherapy can help visit our website
https://childpsychotherapy.org.uk/resources-families/how-child-and-adolescent-psychotherapy-can-help

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