All Units and Services run by Marlowe Child & Family Services share a belief system that underpins a Therapeutic approach to caring for children and young people. We have an ultimately positive outlook with a firm commitment to Growth and Change.

Meeting Basic Needs

Abraham MaslowWe believe that all children and young people, particularly those who have led troubled lives, require first and foremost, a high level of nurturing care. Their basic needs must be met to the highest standard. This includes providing accommodation that enhances a warm, homely atmosphere; and ensuring they are well clothed and fed well. High regard must be given to their physical well-being. Further, we aim to provide, children and young people with the opportunity for a structured life within an environment that reflects the belief that each person had the right to feel important and valued. We believe this requires practical, as well as emotional care.

Non-Contingent Positive Regard & the Therapeutic Relationship

Carl RogersAll people, by reason of their humanity alone, have a right to respect, dignity and decent treatment. Therefore, each child or young person, whatever their background and whatever they may have done, has the right to such dignity and respect. This is the basis of a therapeutic relationship and should not be withdrawn under any circumstances. Children and young people need to feel that the relationship with their adult carers is ‘real’ rather than ‘contrived’. Relationships must therefore be based on genuineness and honesty. It is success in the relationship that facilitates a process of Change and Growth. Successful carers therefore need to be congruent, honest, open and trustworthy. The relationship the primary therapeutic tool.

Owning Your Own Actions and Taking Responsibility

If any child or young person is to move forward in their life, and grow to be an effective and successful adult, the process of change must include the development of responsibility. They need to learn how their actions effect the way other people feel. We therefore lay great emphasis on working through the process of denial and blame that so often characterises the damaged child with little or distorted self-esteem. Helping children and young people to feel safe, and minimising the amount of bad choices and decisions children and young people make, is an essential part of our work.

A Need Led Service

We understand the importance of beginning our work from where the child or young person is in their life. We believe offering a range of interchangeable service is our greatest strength. Individuals are assessed as to their own specific needs. Care is then structured and planned to meet this. Given that needs change over time, the type of care offered must reflect these changes. Further, genuineness requires relationships to be based on an individual's intrinsic value and worth.

Psychotherapy and Counselling

Whilst seen as enhancing rather than replacing therapeutic work carried out in the process of the child or young person's day-to-day life, individual psychotherapy is provided as appropriate as an important part of recovery and growth. All Marlowe Child & Family Services therapists are appropriately qualified. Group and creative therapies are also offered to children and young people.

Expert staff from various professional backgrounds including trans-personal psychotherapy, art therapy, drama therapy and play therapy work with the children and young people. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Psychiatry can also be available as work appropriate. Across our service, therapeutic input is integrated into the ethos of each home. All children and young people are given the opportunity to participate in regular therapy sessions.

Theoretical Principles

Marlowe Child & Family Services Philosophy is based upon phenomenological principles and draws heavily upon the works of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, and the general theories of Person-Centred Counselling.

Assumptions

Person-centred theory emphasises the importance of people's subjective self-concept. This consists of the ways in which we perceive and define ourselves. Reality for all individuals is what we perceive. All individuals are inherently Good and Effective. This is the essence of the organism's self (or ‘actual’ self). Each organism has physiological, safety, love, belongingness and self-esteem needs. Inherent within each organism is a self-actualising tendency, which acts as our motivation to maintain and enhance ourselves. We all have the inherent capacity for Growth and Change.

Acquisition of Beliefs

Almost from birth, we develop a self-concept. This is a belief system about ourselves and the type of person we think we are. From early childhood we find that there are discrepancies between how we are regarded by others, and how we regard ourselves. The approval and regard becomes dependent (or contingent) on their expectations of us. of others. This effects our self-concept and we learn to change our view of ourselves (our actual self) for the self as perceived by others in the real world (the ‘real self’). This ‘real self-concept’ acts as a ‘false self’, detached from our ‘actual’ Good and Effective self. This is known as incongruence, for which there is limited insight. The more our relationships are based on contingencies, the more incongruent and detached from our ‘actual’ selves we become. Further, the self-actualising tendency in all of us acts upon this false self-concept, rather than the ‘actual’ self. Therefore, we are driven away from, rather than towards our innately good and effective self.

Maintenance of self-esteem is a basic human need. The incongruent person's self-esteem is based upon successfully actualising self-concepts. Self-esteem is therefore not necessarily lower or absent, even when behaviour and affect are disturbed. However, self-esteem is based on a false perception of self.

Goals

Humanistic Goals for Therapeutic Living are:

• Openness to Experience
• Rationality
• Personal Responsibility
• Self Regard
• Capacity for Good
• Ethical Living

Change and Growth

The process of Change and Growth can be achieved through the development of congruence. This arises in conditions where the self experiences positive regard and empathy, unconditionally. This challenges previous false perceptions about the self, allowing us to re-discover our ‘actual’ Good and Effective self. Such a challenge to false self-perceptions can only occur in a relationship based on Unconditionality, Honesty and Genuineness; and when all our needs are being met. There needs to be a Therapeutic ‘other’ with which we can form such a relationship.

The Therapeutic ‘other’, within the relationship, gives the opportunity to safely challenge our false perceptions distortions and distortions of our ‘actual’ self, and to experience reality safely. We can then develop insight and value our ‘actual’ self. Self-concept can changed and become aligned with our ‘actual’ self concept. The consequence is Positive Growth and Change. Through this we can move towards the innately Good and Effective and Self Actualised person we should be.

Further Reading

• Abraham Maslow - Towards a Psychology of Being & Motivation and Personality
• Carl Rogers - On Personal Power (1977) & A Way of Being (1983)