Blog

How does war impact children psychologically, and what can we do to support the emotional wellbeing of young refugees arriving in the UK? Integrative Arts Psychotherapist Sheetal Amin shares some starting points for therapists, including examples of adjusting the frame, and reflects on how readily our society’s attitude to and treatment of refugees can compound the trauma of war.

How can we continue to hold risk when so many clients are in crisis, and when under-resourced support and emergency services appear on the brink of collapse? Jude Boyles, manager of a Refugee Council therapy service, shares the mounting – and perhaps familiar – pressures being experienced by her team, and explores what we can do to contain clients and colleagues in a world where ambulances may never arrive.

How do we work when impending legislation is engendering a sense of threat? As the Nationality and Borders Bill passes through Parliament, Jude Boyles, manager of a Refugee Council therapy service based in South Yorkshire, shares how both this Bill and the wider context are impacting the lives – and the therapeutic conversations – of refugee clients.

Using stones and flowers to symbolise negative and positive events, NET is a narrative therapy intervention that allows clients to reflect on their life in its nuanced entirety. Integrative Arts Psychotherapist Sheetal Amin talks us through her use of this approach with refugee clients, explaining how it helps individuals to process the past and hold hope for the future.

The Tree of Life is a narrative therapy intervention that grounds people in their past and present communities. As we mark Refugee Week 2021, with its theme of ‘We Cannot Walk Alone’, Integrative Arts Psychotherapist Sheetal Amin talks us through this approach and explains how it has helped her refugee clients to reclaim their roots and grow new connections.

If clients have become slower to answer session calls or engage in dialogue during the pandemic, how might we respond? Drawing on her work with resettled refugees, Jude Boyles reflects on the importance of continuing to offer that weekly call – while finding ways to explore how individual clients experience our persistence.

The universal languages of play and creativity can be crucial to work with unaccompanied minors who have arrived in the UK seeking asylum. As we mark Children’s Mental Health Week 2021, with its theme of ‘Express Yourself’, Integrative Arts Therapist Sheetal Amin invites us to listen to some of the experiences these children share with her – and reflects on the role of creative practice in helping them externalise and make sense of their trauma.  

How do we ground and resource a trauma survivor when the risk remains real? For refugees who have been ‘resettled’ in areas of the UK with high crime rates, the triggers are everywhere. Jude Boyles reflects on supporting the search for internal and external safety among Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

Loosening boundaries, background intrusions, slow progress, physical exhaustion… and precious moments of domestic insight, laughter, and client autonomy. Jude Boyles looks back on her first 10 weeks of conducting online and phone therapy with resettled Syrian refugees.

Conducting online therapy during the pandemic comes with particular challenges – and benefits – when your clients are refugees. Jude Boyles is the Manager and a therapist of a Refugee Council therapy service based in South Yorkshire. In her sixth occasional blog about this work, she reflects on trauma, resilience and the need for some deep therapeutic conversations to continue despite the radically altered context.