A clinical perspective on therapeutic work with child lifers: themes, challenges and opportunities

• In Event: Children convicted of homicide: criminal justice responses

Abstract

What might be going on inside the mind of a child who receives a life sentence for a homicide offence? And what can make life bearable and meaningful for them as they begin their long journey in custody? Offering observations from her work across two Young Offenders’ Institutions in England, and from the experience of setting up England’s first ‘secure school’, Oasis Restore, Dr Sadie will describe some of the psychological work she and her colleagues have undertaken with child lifers. These are children in great psychological pain, who – like any of us – employ a range of defensive strategies, conscious and unconscious, to cope with the profound disruption that their offence and their sentence have wrought. Understanding these children’s needs and working with these defences – and the impact they have on the children’s families and the staff working with them – provides a powerful means of reaching them and helping them to live with themselves, and with others.

Author

• Celia Sadie, Independent Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Organisational Consultant