ABSTRACT
The account of a day centre for disturbed young children and parents, which attempts to provide facilities for extended observation and a supportive, therapeutic environment, is an example of one of the fields of work into which the skills of the child psychotherapist may usefully take him. This chapter describes the work of a psychotherapist in day unit. It looks at some of the problems of children attending the Day Centre. Psychotherapy with individual children is the work which is painstaking and very time-consuming. Only a comparatively small proportion of children can receive such individual help. Attention is therefore increasingly directed to a consideration of how the psychotherapist's skills might be used to benefit a wider number of children. The psychologist's role is an important one. She not only assesses the children's intellectual capacities and carries out a developmental assessment, but may advise on nursery teaching techniques or devise specific behaviour modification programmes or teaching for some individual children.
