By John Whitwell My Preface about the Cotswold Community is from the book, “Revealing the Inner World of Traumatised Children and Young People” by Christine Bradley with Francia Kinchington and published by Jessica Kingsley. I worked with Christine at the Cotswold Community in the 1970’s and we both experienced the hard-won creation of a therapeutic […]
By John Whitwell. Introduction I will start by describing the physical layout of the Cotswold Community and it’s history. Visitors are struck by its size and air of calmness. It is a village type community within a 350 acre farm. The buildings reflect its history. In the centre there are the original Cotswold stone farm […]
By John Whitwell | Piblished in Association of Group Psychotherapists – AGP Newsletter, November 1995 I have worked at the Cotswold Community for 23 years and, for the last 10 years, I have been Principal. The Cotswold Community is a therapeutic community, based on psychodynamic principles, that provides treatment, care and education for 40 severely […]
By Pat Hancock, Sally Simmons and John Whitwell | Published in International Journal of Therapeutic Communities, Vol. 11(2), 1990 Introduction “D.W. Winnicott (followed by others including Richard Balbernie and myself) found the concept of integration of the individual as a whole person to be of supreme importance in determining the needs of a deprived child” […]
By John Whitwell | Published in Therapeutic Communities 1994, Vol 15 No. 2. This paper began to take shape in my mind while I was attending the 1993 Windsor Conference of European Associations of Therapeutic Communities, which had the theme “staying alive”. It was noticeable how the papers presented from England were very much linked […]
By John Whitwell | Published in Therapeutic Communities (1992), Vol 13 No. 2. This paper was first presented at the XIIth Anglo-Dutch Conference on Therapeutic Communities, Windsor, September 1990. Introduction I imagine that every therapeutic community has identified a threat to its survival in some form or other. It may be internal to the therapeutic […]
Based on a paper given at the IX International Workshop on Therapeutic Communities, Cumberland Lodge, London. September 1987.
There are clear differences among the therapeutic communities for children and young people. It should be possible to assess the needs of children more accurately and to match these to the therapeutic approaches of the different communities. In this connection I wish in this paper to convey the importance of Winnicott’s concept of “integration”.
This paper is about the work of Isabel Menzies Lyth as an external consultant to the Cotswold Community in its transition from being an approved school to a therapeutic community. The role of an organisational consultant is to work at the dynamics of the whole organisation and how the various parts relate to each other and to the whole. I attempt to illustrate the way this works by choosing five themes, among many, which emerged during the period of Isabel’s consultancy. Although these themes relate to work done in the 1970s, they are still relevant for the Cotswold Community and I believe they will be relevant to other therapeutic communities and the residential sector in general.
By John Whitwell | Published in Therapeutic Communities, 1998, Vol. 19 No.2 Introduction I will be drawing on my 25 years experience at the Cotswold Community (Whitwell, 1989) to demonstrate the need for clear organisational boundaries as a key part of the treatment programme for the most seriously disturbed children. The Community’s primary task is […]
By John Whitwell | Published in Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties: A Peer Reviewed Journal, Vol. 3 No. 1 Spring 1998. Introduction I should start by saying that the layout of the day and the way we are doing it is very much not a therapeutic community approach. I am feeling all the anxiety right now. […]