Abstract

As a probation officer and social worker, Anne Bannister has successfully used creative therapies with abused children for 25 years. Combining her practical experience and recent doctoral research she reflects on how and why these therapies actually work in the healing process. She shows how in 'the space between' children and their therapists, the child and adult can each use their creative skills to aid developmental processes, reverse negative brain patterns and affect positive behavioural changes to heal the damage caused by severe abuse in childhood.

The author presents a practical model called the Regenerative Approach to use when assessing and working therapeutically with traumatised children. Her research has implications for those working in the field of children's development and learning, and provides an important new approach for social workers, creative therapists and all those who work with traumatised children.

This book will be helpful to a variety of professionals who are trying to work with children who have experienced abuse in their lives. The NSPCC plays a leading role in trying to understand and deal with the effects of abuse on children's lives and development and this book reflects the careful and thoughtful approach that is needed in such work. Ann Bannister's work has been one of the foundations in the development of the approach taken by the NSPCC.
YoungMinds Magazine
Anne Bannister is one of Psychodrama's great practitioners in the field of working with children and young people. This book is testimony to her endless and untiring work alongside children. She is someone who is playful, creative, energetic, and a strong advocate and witness, for those children whose voices may have been silenced through abusive experiences.This book is a must for all who work with traumatised people and it provides a well grounded and safe model that allows for people to grow and develop.
BPA Journal
This book presents an approach which reflects the authors deep respect and understanding of the children she has worked with. It provides strong theoretical evidence for working creatively with traumatized children and presents relevant case material which illustrates how Bannister has successfully applied this theory to practice. It is an essential resource for all creative therapists working with children who have suffered abuse, providing a model of intervention which seeks to "return the power of regeneration to the young person."
Irish Association of Creative Arts Therapists Journal
The author has 25 years of experience as a probation officer, a social worker and a psychotherapist. After publishing extensively on child protection issues, psychodrama, drama therapy and play therapy she now reflects on how her "Regenerative Model" of assessing and treating traumatized children came into being...an intriguing introduction to the field for a beginner and is a rewarding and stimulating review for a seasoned therapist.
Journal of Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Anne Bannister worked as a probation officer and as a social worker/therapist for the NSPCC. She pioneered the formation of the Child Sexual Abuse Consultancy for the NSPCC and managed it until her retirement. She published extensively on child protection issues and on psychodrama, dramatherapy and playtherapy.
a lovely combination of theory and practice written in an easy to digest style. It was rewarding to read how the arts could be used so effectively to help children in what was very short term work. During the case studies there were some inspiring pieces of work presented as both therapist and children strove to make sense of the unthinkable and unsayable using the arts.
Family Futures Consortium
If I could unravel the strands that make this book, they might be these: the author's thirty years experience as probation officer, social worker and therapist; the phenomena of the sexual abuse of children as it emerged into public consciousness since the 1970s; ways of demonstrating the value of creative arts therapy for traumatized children; a therapeutic model for working in this field that is linked to theory and backed by the author's own research; the poetry of therapy sessions with children as expressed in case studies. All this in only 144 pages of text!
Dramatherapy