CAT is about understanding relationships with self and others. Relationships begin from birth. Even before a child is born, circumstances in the parents' past and during pregnancy can influence how early relationships develop. CAT is relevant at all stages across the lifespan, including with children and young people.
CAT's flexible use of drawings and letters makes it possible to adapt therapeutic work to meet individual needs. This means it can usefully fit with a broad range of ages, abilities and preferences.
In work with families and teams supporting young people, CAT can help to highlight common themes and enhance shared understanding. It can help bring together different viewpoints. Given the many services that may be involved with a young person and their family, a common language through CAT can help people understand each other better.
CAT therapists have been working in this area since at least 2013. A Youth CAT special interest group (SIG) was set up then to help co-ordinate this work. Since September 2020 a relaunch of this SIG is helping to refresh connections. Meetings have brought together around thirty therapists using CAT with children and young people of all ages. In many cases this includes work with parents, carers and organisations supporting young people.
CAT therapists are working across the early lifespan, from parent/infant mental health to young people in their adolescence. Many teams in child & adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) are benefitting from CAT. In addition to community teams, CAT therapists are also working into inpatient units, including secure/forensic units for young people.
CAT is also supporting children and young people, along with family and professional carers, around fostering, adoption and other 'looked after children' settings. Parenting support and education are other areas starting to benefit from CAT thinking. CAT has also been applied towards helping strengthen and support communities.
You can learn more about some different examples of CAT with children and young people by following the links below:
CAT and Young People is a 5.5 minute video produced by ICATA, the International Association for Cognitive Analytic Therapy. It features Louise McCutcheon, clinical psychologist, CAT practitioner and senior program manager with Orygen, Melbourne, Australia. Louise describes why she considers CAT to be well suited to therapeutic work with adolescents and young people.
This is a blog about using CAT ideas to help inform parenting, by our member Alison Jenaway who is a former Chair of ACAT. Read the Parenting - The Middle Way blog at this link.
Read a 2017 article by our member Nick Barnes, describing his work in a child and adolescent mental health service in London. Follow this link to read A Relational Approach to Young People's Mental Health.
You can also read many more examples of work with children and young people using the relational approach of CAT through the 2024 publication: Working Relationally with Young People: A Cognitive Analytic Approach to Connecting One to One, with Families and Across Communities
This page is adapted from Youth CAT by ACAT Public Engagement Team which was licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
The current page is therefore protected by the same license and conditions
