ABSTRACT

This chapter describes a collaborative effort between a physiotherapist, Melanie Bladen, and a child psychotherapist, Jeanne Magagna. The family, physiotherapist, child, and multidisciplinary team have a continuous reciprocal interaction and influence on one another. For example, the feelings of the multidisciplinary team and the parents towards the physiotherapist influence how the young person receives and responds to the physiotherapist. Rosa became very engaged in the physiotherapy with Melanie and excitedly anticipated the physiotherapy sessions; however she split off any good feelings, which she might also have for the nurses, and placed them all with Melanie. Collaboration implies working out a mutually agreed timetable with the families and child, as well as with members of the multidisciplinary team who also work with the family. Physiotherapists exert some degree of selective bias in their attunement behaviours, and in doing so they create a pattern for the child's shareable interpersonal world in physiotherapy sessions.