ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the complexity of consulting to therapists who work with children and adolescents between the ages of four and eighteen who live with and are financially dependent on adult caretakers. It elaborates on four specific systems the consultant must consider simultaneously: the child’s, the parents’, the therapist’s, and their own. It highlights the importance of keeping the child and young person’s needs central by being therapist-led in consultation while offering a broad supervision offering, including: unblending the consultee’s parts, sharing responses of the consultant’s parts, tracking parts in the child and parent systems, and exploring polarizations and alliances. Two detailed composite clinical cases are included. In the first, the consultant and consultee attend to triggered parts in their systems, and the consultant uses her reactions to track parts in the mother and help the consultee become more Self-led. The second case example highlights the importance of distinguishing between therapist Self-energy and a Self-like carer doing the work.
