Counselling books and resources

Trauma, Drug Misuse and Transforming Identities

A Life Story Approach

Kim Etherington

Looking at the life stories of ex-drug misusers in their own words, this book offers insights into the nature of addiction and how it can be tackled. It examines the links between early childhood experiences and drug misuse and also shows pathways to recovery and transformation.

Anger Management Games for Children

Deborah M. Plummer
Illustrated by Jane Serrurier

Praise for the author:
'Deborah Plummer uses imagination and empowerment to move children and adults from discouragement to success.'
- The Canadian Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Review

The Art of Helping Others

Being Around, Being There, Being Wise

Heather Smith and Mark Smith

When searching for someone to help them reflect upon and improve their lives, people tend to be drawn towards those who are compassionate, committed and wise. This book is aimed at those who recognise these qualities in themselves and wish to develop their capacity to engage with and help others.

Art Therapy and Anger

Edited by Marian Liebmann

Professionals working in a range of clinical settings are regularly called upon to work with angry clients, and they may find their skills and resources for working with this powerful emotion limited. Art Therapy and Anger demonstrates how the non-verbal medium of art therapy provides an ideal outlet for the expression of thoughts and feelings that are too complex and painful to put into words, presenting a new and practical approach to dealing with this area of need.

Autism and Loss

Rachel Forrester-Jones and Sarah Broadhurst

People with autism often experience difficulty in understanding and expressing their emotions and react to losses in different ways or in ways that carers do not understand. In order to provide effective support, carers need to have the understanding, the skills and appropriate resources to work through these emotional reactions with them. Autism and Loss is a complete resource that covers a variety of kinds of loss, including bereavement, loss of friends or staff, loss of home or possessions and loss of health.

Beating Eating Disorders Step by Step

A Self-Help Guide for Recovery

Anna Paterson

People living with eating disorders find it hard to take the step of choosing recovery, often because the disorder has developed as a way of 'coping' with problems or stresses in the their life. This book outlines new and positive ways of dealing with eating disorders for people living with eating disorders and their families.

Big Steps for Little People

Parenting Your Adopted Child

Celia Foster

'…all those involved in the adoption of children, old hands and new, will be stimulated and encouraged by this infectious read.'
- from the Foreword by David Howe, Dean of the School of Social Work and Psychosocial Sciences, University of East Anglia

The Bullies

Understanding Bullies and Bullying

Dennis Lines

Is there a particular type of person who becomes a bully? Why do bullies behave like they do? How can we interpret and understand bullying within relationships?
The Bullies attempts to get inside the minds of the bully and victim - the child, the adolescent and the adult - across a wide range of 'closed' situations including the home, school and workplace, prisons and the armed services. By listening to the voices of bullies and victims from all kinds of backgrounds without making judgements, counsellor Dennis Lines provides unique insights into bullying and what makes such domineering and aggressive behaviour so complex. He discusses controversial issues such as genetic predisposition towards abusive behaviour and draws on his counselling knowledge to provide insights on how to understand and treat bullies to change their behaviour.

A Child's Journey to Recovery

Assessment and Planning with Traumatized Children

Patrick Tomlinson and Terry Philpot

This book shows how carefully planned and assessed treatment can help traumatized children. It outlines how to set up a process for measuring a child's progress towards recovery. Uniquely, the book describes a practical outcomes-based approach that can be provided by an integrated multi-disciplinary team.

Cool Connections with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Encouraging Self-esteem, Resilience and Well-being in Children and Young People Using CBT Approaches

Laurie Seiler

Cool Connections is a fun, engaging workbook that provides a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) approach to positively modifying the everyday thoughts and behaviours of children and young people aged 9 to 14.

Counselling for Asperger Couples

Barrie Thompson

Counselling for Asperger Couples is the first book to provide a complete model for counselling couples where one partner has Asperger Syndrome (AS).
The book provides details of the seven different stages of the model and includes anecdotal evidence from clients who have used it. The author explains the importance of initial separate counselling and describes the co-counselling process using case studies to demonstrate useful strategies. The book offers valuable advice on improving communication and cooperation and includes photocopiable activity sheets.

Counselling Survivors of Domestic Abuse

Christiane Sanderson

Counselling Survivors of Domestic Abuse explains how counsellors can facilitate recovery from domestic abuse within a secure, supportive therapeutic relationship.
There has been growing awareness in recent years of the impact and consequences of domestic abuse, especially the relationship between domestic abuse and mental health. To appreciate the nature of trauma caused by domestic abuse, professionals need to understand its complex nature and the psychobiological impact of repeated exposure to control and terror. This book examines the therapeutic techniques and specific challenges, such as secondary traumatic stress, faced by professionals when working with survivors of domestic abuse. The author stresses the importance of identifying domestic abuse so that it can be addressed in the therapeutic process to aid recovery, and explores issues such as safety and protection, the long-term effects of abuse and the importance of grieving to the restoration of hope.

The Creative Arts in Palliative Care

Edited by Nigel Hartley and Malcolm Payne

Use of the arts in palliative care settings is a powerful and effective way of addressing the practical, psychological, social and spiritual issues faced by service users in end-of-life care.
The Creative Arts in Palliative Care uncovers the possibilities for using the creative arts and provides guidance on how to implement arts projects successfully. Part 1 focuses on designing objectives for the creative arts in palliative care - such as self-fulfilment, social participation, diversion from pain and other common symptoms - and managing creative arts services. Part 2 demonstrates the theory and principles in practice, with detailed case studies: each chapter draws on a real-life project, the approaches it employed and the outcomes achieved.

Effective Grief and Bereavement Support

The Role of Family, Friends, Colleagues, Schools and Support Professionals

Kari Dyregrov and Atle Dyregrov

' …a profoundly significant book on a topic rarely discussed and little researched, dealing with sudden or unexpected death. The authors have brought together the latest knowledge in the field, and explore how social networks and professionals working with the bereaved can help. This is an important book for all of us, who will sadly one day experience this... it is a must read for those in the field and those suffering.'

Families of Adults with Autism

Stories and Advice for the Next Generation

Edited by Jane Johnson and Anne Van Rensselaer

Families of Adults with Autism is a collection of real-life stories of people on the autism spectrum growing up, as told by their parents and siblings.
The individual accounts explore the challenges that families of people with autism have faced, and the techniques they have used to improve the quality of their children's lives, from mega-doses of vitamins and dietary changes to intensive interaction. The contributors also relate how they have worked with their children or siblings to help them to function at their highest possible level, be it showing an awareness of their environment, holding down a full-time job in a local store, competing in the Special Olympics, or achieving international recognition as an artist.

Getting Wise to Drugs

A Resource for Teaching Children about Drugs, Dangerous Substances and Other Risky Situations

David Emmett and Graeme Nice

Getting Wise to Drugs is a resource for use with children aged between eight and twelve years. It comprises exercises centred on illegal drug use, medicine use and safety, solvents, alcohol, tobacco, crime and other anti-social and risky activities.

Kids Need...

Parenting Cards for Families and the People who Work With Them

Mark Hamer

What is the difference between children's 'needs' and 'wants'? How should parents respond to the demands of their children? Do all children need the same things?
Kids Need… cards present a creative approach to exploring children's needs and parents' knowledge. Each card features a child's 'need', for example 'a room of their own', 'pocket money', 'to make mistakes' or 'to be criticized', and participants are invited to place cards under one of the three header cards: 'Kids Need', 'Kids Sometimes Need' and 'Kids Don't Need'. The cards are designed to be flexible and adaptable, and can be used to encourage general discussions, as therapeutic tool, or as an aid to the assessment of parenting skills.

Listening to Children

A Practitioner's Guide

Alison McLeod

'Listening to children' is one of those feel-good phrases that always features in childcare literature as if it were self-evidently a good thing. Often, however, there is a lack of critical attention to what it really means: How does one listen? How can one evidence that listening has taken place?

Malpas the Dragon

Ann Cattanach
Illustrated by Michael Renouf

Malpas the dragon flew all around the world, breathing fire, screaming, moaning and farting. He made everybody afraid.
Malpas was treated badly by his parents. They taught him to be a very rude, angry dragon, but this meant that he was also unloved and lonely. Every day he cried stone tears that he sent to his only friend, Haley. But Haley knew the tears were special. She gave them as gifts to lonely children to help warm their hearts.

Overcoming Loss

Activities and Stories to Help Transform Children's Grief and Loss

Julia Sorensen
Illustrated by Maryam Ahmad

Overcoming Loss is a photocopiable resource that addresses childrens' feeling of loss, which can arise from changing communities, schools, moving house, divorce or the death of a parent or grandparent. Children are limited to a vocabulary of broad emotions like 'happy', 'sad' and 'angry', and are often unable to articulate their grief in words. This can impair their long-term emotional development.

Passionate Supervision

Edited by Robin Shohet

" This is a book that unashamedly brings love, spirit and soul into the heart of the supervision process but does so without becoming sanctimonious or precious. We see this through the various heart-felt experiences and stories of the different helping professionals that Robin Shohet has brought together"

The Pocket Guide to Restorative Justice

Pete Wallis and Barbara Tudor

'Restorative justice… puts the emphasis on repairing the harm caused, holding offenders to account before their victims… It is not a soft option. It is tough for an offender to continue denying the consequences of their actions when they sit across the table from their victim. This explains why restorative justice is effective in cutting re-offending. Such face-to-face meetings… can also help the victim.'

Prayer in Counselling and Psychotherapy

Exploring a Hidden Meaningful Dimension

Peter Madsen Gubi

Within mainstream counselling and psychotherapy there is growing interest in the spiritual dimension of counselling. Prayer is at the centre of most spirituality and prayer is important to many people's psychological well-being.

Psychological Processes in Deaf Children with Complex Needs

An Evidence-Based Practical Guide

Lindsey Edwards and Susan Crocker

'This volume offers a broad perspective on psychological processes in children with complex needs. Armed with this valuable tool, professionals, parents, and educators will be much better prepared to offer deaf and hard of hearing children the support and opportunities they deserve.'
- from the Foreword by Marc Marschark

R U Listenin'?

Helping Defiant Men to Recognize their True Potential

Terry Bianchini

R U Listenin'? challenges men to reflect on their personal and emotional behaviour and uses prison life as an analogy to help them rethink their perspectives.
Aimed at professionals working with men who are challenging the boundaries of society or any man who feels frustrated by his life, the book offers detailed illustrative case studies, structured exercises and topics for discussion, which can be used by the individual or in a group context. These features are identified in the text by pictorial icons, making the book easy to navigate. The exercises are imaginative and challenging, encouraging men to develop social and communication skills and an understanding of how the structures of society work. The author also suggests exercises and techniques for dealing with challenging groups, which are ideal for use by group facilitators.

Relating to Clients

The Therapeutic Relationship for Complementary Therapists

Su Fox

The relationship between practitioner and client in professional therapeutic contexts is a crucial factor in the healing process. This practical guide draws on the vast body of information on that relationship from psychotherapy and presents it in a distilled and relevant format for the complementary therapist.

A Self-Determined Future with Asperger Syndrome

Solution Focused Approaches

E. Veronica Bliss and Genevieve Edmonds

A Self-Determined Future with Asperger Syndrome presents an empowering, practical approach to helping people with Asperger Syndrome (AS) to succeed at college, at work, at home and in life.

Social Skills Games for Children

Deborah M. Plummer
Illustrated by Jane Serrurier

Praise for the author:
'Deborah Plummer uses imagination and empowerment to move children and adults from discouragement to success.'
- The Canadian Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Review

Speaking about the Unspeakable

Non-Verbal Methods and Experiences in Therapy with Children

Edited by Dennis McCarthy

'The imaginative therapies described in this book offer a welcome counter-balance to medical trends dominating the current practice of children's therapy. Inspired practitioners experienced in listening to buried, altered or muted voices of traumatized children invite us into their consulting rooms to witness the unique ways the soul speaks in images, movement and sound.'
- Nor Hall, Ph.D. psychotherapist, theater artist and author of The Moon & the Virgin and Those Women

'This book is an offering to all our senses enabling us to delve into the powerful sphere of the implicit, making tangible aspects of self that have been difficult to reach in more traditional psychotherapeutic practices. I highly recommend this book for all readers, as a therapeutic tool, a guide to understanding your child's play, or to stimulate your own self-expression. Accept the offering and receive a gift that will inspire your thinking as well as your creative sense.'
- Suzi Tortora, Ed.D. registered dance therapist and the author of The Dancing Dialogue: Using the Communicative Power of Movement with Young Children .

Spirituality, Ethics and Care

Simon Robinson

Spirituality, Ethics and Care provides guidance on how to integrate spirituality and ethics in professional and voluntary care.
The author argues that the strong connections between moral meaning and spirituality are often not reflected in the health and social care literature. Using case studies and examples from everyday situations, such as end of life decisions, conjoined twins, heart conditions, social work, mental health and emergency care practice, the author provides a practical framework for incorporating spirituality into ethical decision-making and care.

Understanding School Refusal

A Handbook for Professionals in Education, Health and Social Care

M. S. Thambirajah, Karen J. Grandison and Louise De-Hayes

School absenteeism is a huge problem in education and this book focuses in particular on children who experience 'school phobia' or 'school refusal' as opposed to those who choose to truant.
School refusal is a crippling condition in which children experience extreme anxiety or panic attacks when faced with everyday school life and this handbook aims to explore and raise awareness of the problem of school refusal in children and young people, and provide plans and strategies for education, health and social care professionals for identifying and addressing this problem.

Who's Who of the Brain

A Guide to Its Inhabitants, Where They Live and What They do

Kenneth Nunn, Tanya Hanstock and Bryan Lask
Illustrated by Linn Iril Hjelseth

Meet the inhabitants of the brain in this reader-friendly introduction to what it is and how it works.
Residents include Frederick Foresight (the frontal cortex), Mayor of Cephalton-upon-Ridge, who is the 'big picture' person responsible for planning and decision-making; Sage Seahorse (the hippocampus), who has an astonishing memory for times, names and places; Annie Almond (the amygdala), the community's alarm system who is always on the alert; and many other fellow citizens. Each character is introduced and their appearance, role and key functions in the brain explained. The authors also show what happens when things go wrong in the brain, and illustrate the work using examples of classic clinical cases.

Working with Young Homeless People

Phil Robinson

Young homeless people are ordinary young people trapped in an extraordinary situation. This accessible guide provides information and advice on how to understand the needs of these young people, and how to ensure they are supported effectively.

Young Children's Rights

Exploring Beliefs, Principles and Practice
2nd edition

Priscilla Alderson

Praise for the first edition:
'There is much to be commended in Alderson's book, … It is written with clarity and passion and adopts a child-centred perspective, and most of Alderson's points are well backed up with appropriate, illustrative, research and practice examples. …'

The Asperger Couple's Workbook

Practical Advice and Activities for Couples and Counsellors

Maxine Aston

Asperger Syndrome (AS) can affect some of the fundamental ingredients required to make a relationship work, such as emotional empathy and communication. Maxine Aston, author of Aspergers in Love, has created this workbook to help couples where one of the partners has Asperger Syndrome deal...

Counselling and Reflexive Research in Healthcare

Working Therapeutically with Clients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Gillian Thomas

' …a rare exemplar of counselling practitioner-research in an NHS setting … this work is a readable and engaging resource for anybody who wants to know more about being a counsellor or practitioner-researcher with people with chronic illness, or about the needs of people who have...

A Creative Guide to Exploring Your Life

Self-Reflection Using Photography, Art, and Writing

Graham Gordon Ramsay and Holly Barlow Sweet

An award-winning psychologist and professional photographer join forces in this unique creative guide to exploring and understanding your life: who you are, what you value, and what you wish to achieve.

Personality Disorder

The Definitive Reader

Edited by Gwen Adshead and Caroline Jacob

A Personality Disorder Reader offers a comprehensive and accessible collection of papers that will be practically useful to practitioners working in secure and non-secure settings with patients who have personality disorders.

Therapy To Go

Gourmet Fast Food Handouts for Working with Adult Clients

Clare Rosoman

This convenient collection of handouts provides a wide range of ready-made activities for all kinds of therapists working on a professional level with adult clients.

The activities within this book are suitable for any therapist, whether trained as a counsellor, psychologist, social...

Therapy To Go

Gourmet Fast Food Handouts for Working with Child, Adolescent and Family Clients

Clare Rosoman

This convenient collection of handouts provides a wide range of ready-made activities for all kinds of therapists working on a professional level with child and adolescent clients and their families.

What You Need to Know About Cannabis

Understanding the Facts

David Emmett and Graeme Nice

Does cannabis really trigger schizophrenia? Is it true that cannabis is a non-addictive drug? What's the difference between hash and skunk?
According to the UN's estimate, 160 million people around the world use cannabis; that's roughly 2.5 per cent of the world population. Despite these...