By: frances heywood

frances heywood
Tue, 15 Jul 2025 07:20:50 +0000

In reply to Paul. 'the deeply entrenched therapeutic culture ...' yes, I saw this when I was a governor of a local authority maintained primary school. The governors were supposed to keep a tight rein on the school budget, but when I suggested we stopped paying for a contract with a local 'counselling' agency - the response was shock horror. And it appeared that nobody had done due diligence on this organisation. I asked what training and credentials its personnel (all women of course) had, and nobody knew . So I did some research myself, and discovered the 'training' consisted of very little - not one counsellor had a degree in child psychology. I couldn't understand why the school kept the contract, which was in fact barely used. But it somehow signalled 'care and concern' in the appropriate way., and the school's website showed it proudly. So it was all about posturing. Perversely, the behaviour and disposition of one child who, it seemed to me, was actually showing signs of autism, was ignored. 'He'll grow out of it' was the collective response. as a general rule, I think one should be very wary of counselling. Especially for children. But the therapeutic culture has really taken hold, and is very popular with women.