Blog

How can we help more refugees to access therapy? Is language really one of the biggest barriers – or is it rather our reluctance as therapists to work with interpreters? As we mark Refugee Week 2022, Refugee Council therapy service manager Jude Boyles addresses popular misconceptions about this way of conducting therapy – and shares three moving moments in which client work has been powerfully progressed by the containing partnership between therapist and interpreter.

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.