ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the role of child & adolescent mental health service professionals in promoting the reintegration of excluded pupils into mainstream education in inner-city settings in the United Kingdom. This involves more than just direct clinical work, as there is much more scope for intervening at wider systemic, organizational, and inter-agency levels. Direct clinical work is only part of the story of the contribution made by mental health professionals in exclusion settings in education. The chapter outlines the practice and experience of reintegration, using examples where different mental health contributions have supported pupils’ reintegration. It discusses with an outline of the unconscious factors underlying exclusion. The chapter also outlines of what may be the unconscious influences on “exclusion settings” within mainstream society and education, and their implications. Different frameworks are used to conceptualize the contribution that mental health professionals can make in reintegration.
