The Need for Counselling

Too often children who are placed in alternative care, or children who have been moved from an institution to a family – whether it be their own or a new one – are not provided with any counselling. This is a big problem and can even cause a ‘placement break-down’. Meaning it turns out not to be possible any longer for a child to stay in the family she was placed in – even if it was her own – because of emotional and behavioural problems.

When a child is placed in family-based alternative care, she has already been through a lot. Whether she has been taken from an institution – or ‘orphanage’ – to be placed in a family, or whether she has been removed from her own family for her own safety, or because there are no relatives left to take care of her, it is a lot to deal with for a child. It does not matter that the situation that she is moved to is better than the one she came from, she is still going to be severely affected by her troubled – and often traumatising – background.

Counselling should be available, preferably all the way through the process, from before the child is moved, through the move, and until after the child has settled in. Counselling meaning someone who is trained to provide psychological support regularly talking with the child, helping her express how she feels about the situation, what is troubling her and what her main fears are. The counsellor can then also talk with the child, in a way appropriate to her age, developmental level and experiences, to help her process what is happening or what has happened to her and helping her to cope with things. All of this is done confidentially, so the child does not need to worry that other people will find out what she talks about with the counsellor.

It sounds like a small thing, to talk about what has happened to you or what you are feeling, but having this opportunity and receiving this support makes an enormous difference. Having a way of working through traumatic experiences and emotional turmoil can make a great difference in how secure the child feels and to what extent she is able to allow herself to trust the people she is going to live with. It also makes a big difference in whether or not underlying psychological and emotional problems cause very serious challenging behaviour.

For successful placement in families, wherever the child has come from before that placement, it is essential to provide the child – and sometimes the family as well – with counselling. It is a relatively small thing that can make a big difference.

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