Independent Child Psychotherapy Masterclass

This is a live online space for IPCAPA child psychotherapists to present their work to a senior child clinician in the presence of an audience of BPF members and alumni. It is an opportunity to observe an Independent approach in practice and to gain a deeper understanding of how we work with children and adolescents.

For this particular Masterclass, we will welcome Lydia Tischler to the supervisor’s chair. Sheena Swaffield, a recently qualified CPT currently working in CAMHS, will be presenting.

Please note, as this is a member-only event you must be logged in to register.

Lydia Tischler
Lydia is a highly respected child analyst who is well known to child psychotherapists who trained with the BAP and now with IPCAPA at the bpf, as well as to colleagues in the wider bpf, amongst child psychotherapists in the UK as well as abroad. Lydia arrived in the UK in 1945 having survived the holocaust and has brought to her work, a spirit of resolute determination and curiosity, alongside her passion for people and understanding, her generosity and good humour. 

Lydia joined the 1953 -1957 Hampstead Child Psychotherapy Training (now the Anna Freud Centre) where she trained under Anna Freud and colleagues between 1953-57. Once qualified, she started to work at the Cassell Hospital (1962- 1985) where she became the Principal Child Psychotherapist. Lydia then moved to the Redbridge Child and Family Clinic taking up the Principal Child Psychotherapist role (1985-1987). Following this Lydia worked as the Consultant to the Student Counselling Service at City and East London College, offering individual and group supervision of Student Counsellors (1988- 1991).

Alongside her clinical work, Lydia played an instrumental role in the development of the Child and Adolescent training at the BAP. Lydia held senior roles on the training as well as within the BAP, including of the Chair of the Child and Adolescent training committee (1991-94) and later of the Child section (1995-98). Lydia continued to work on developing the training, for example being a key figure in the negotiations with Birkbeck College to set up the MSc, where she later ran discussion groups for students. Lydia has remained involved directly with trainees through her work as an intensive case supervisor, progress advisor, and work discussion leader and teacher. Lydia also contributed over many years to the training and professional development of Trainee Psychologists, Psychiatric Registrars, Social Workers, Health Visitors and Nurses.

Lydia’s energy and enthusiasm has also taken her abroad where she has been, influential in setting up the child and adolescent psychotherapy training in the Czech Republic (1994), participated in training child and adolescent therapists in Estonia and supervising colleagues in St Petersburg. She is currently helping to set up a child and adolescent psychoanalytic counselling service in China.

Lydia’s significant contribution to child and adolescent psychotherapy profession and to the mental health of children, young people and families, has been recognized by the Association of Child Psychotherapists, the CSPAP Czech society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and the BAP, now the bpf where she is a Fellow, as well as in 2023 when she was made an Honorary Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society and received The Times Sternberg Active Life Award.

Sheena Swaffield
Sheena qualified as a child and adolescent psychotherapist from the Independent Psychoanalytic Child and Adolescent Training Association (IPCAPA) in 2023. She was joint recipient of the Eileen Curtis prize for her outstanding qualifying paper, describing 15 months of intensive psychotherapy treatment with the 17- year-old daughter of immigrant parents. At times, bewildering and frequently frustrating for both trainee-therapist and 
client, the work itself was characterised by the struggle against apathy, the repetitive cycle of hope to despair.

Sheena is finalising her doctoral research that explores the experience of kinship grandmothers, using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to identify themes including depletion and loss, manifestations of stigma and the lack of support. She comments on the implications of her findings for the carer support work of child Psychotherapy.

Prior to this, Sheena completed the Birkbeck MSc in Psychodynamic Counselling for children and Adolescents in 2006. In her former life she worked in secondary education, teaching in mainstream and special school settings and has lived and worked in different areas of the UK. 

At present, Sheena is working full time in a generic NHS CAMHS setting for the North East London Foundation Trust (NELFT). Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy has not been offered in this particular clinic for some time. There is one other qualified CAPT there part-time who offers fortnightly supervision but has not yet been able to offer supporting parent work. Currently, all of Sheena’s psychotherapy cases are on the complex pathway, working with  looked after children