Description
Dramatherapy and Learning Disabilities demonstrates the power of dramatherapy to help clients with learning disabilities, addressing current research, evidencebased work, and methods in the dramatherapy and learning disabilities fields.
Featuring contribution from 19 dramatherapists with a range of clients of all ages who have moderate to severe learning disabilities, this book presents ways in which dramatherapists are innovating new approaches to their work in the field. The authors demonstrate their expertise but also acknowledge their limitations. They explore what it is like to work in multidisciplinary teams and with parents and carers of children and adults with learning disabilities. Each chapter provides detailed vignettes of client/therapist experience and enables the reader to gain insight into therapists’ thinking and the process that guides their clinical judgement. Structured accounts of sessions and outcomes, tracking clients’ progress and the use of evaluation tools evidence the effectivity of dramatherapy and creative therapies’ practice.
This book will be a significant resource for trainee dramatherapists, arts therapists and professionals interested in incorporating creative methods into their practice. It also provides examples of burgeoning arts therapies research within the field and lays the foundations for future projects.
Table of Contents
List of contributors
Introduction
HELEN MILWARD
Chapter 1: Dramatherapy and Learning Disabilities
HELEN MILWARD
PART 1: Special Educational Needs and Disabilities
Chapter 2: Family Ties: Supporting Sibling Relationships
JESSIE ELLINOR AND SOPHIE RIGA DE SPINOZA
Chapter 3: ‘May we speak for you?’: Thoughts on a Multi-Vocal Approach When Working with Clients with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties (PMLD) within an Education Setting
LUKE SIMONDS
Chapter 4: How Can We Track and Aid Emotional Development in Children and Young People with Learning Disabilities?
HELEN MILWARD
PART 2: The Journey through Adolescence
Chapter 5: Meeting Maddy Where She Is: A Figurative and Literal Journey
AMEE FREYONE
Chapter 6: The Hero’s Journey and Learning Disability: A Case Study
ROSALIND DAVIDSON
Chapter 7: Finding Sameer: A Client’s Journey to Self-Discovery
HAYLEY SOUTHERN
Chapter 8: "We are lots of things": Exploring Dramatic Imitation with Adolescents in Special Education
AMANDA MUSICKA-WILLIAMS
PART 3: On to Adulthood
Chapter 9: Yes I am, Here I Am: Using Confirmation as an Antidote to Cultural Shame
MELANIE BEER AND GILLIAN DOWNIE
Chapter 10: Attunement in Dramatherapy: Working Intuitively and the Importance of the Co-Working Relationship
TIM GOLDMAN AND LINA IB
Chapter 11: Meeting the Challenge: Co-Producing a Presentation as an Evaluation Process
SEREN HAF GRIME
Chapter 12: Roots to Grow: The Development of Dramatherapy in a Low-Secure Service for Men with Learning Disabilities
JENNIFER PULLAN
PART 4: Coping with Change
Chapter 13: The Get Going Group: Dramatherapy Groups Supporting Adults with Learning Disabilities and Mental Ill Health after Discharge from Hospital
JANE BOURNE AND SIMON HACKETT
Chapter 14: Making Connections through Life and Death
JESSIE ELLINOR AND AMY KEENAN
Chapter 15: Emerging from That Storm: Reflections on a School-Based Arts Therapy Team’s Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic
REBECCA BLAKE AND GEORGINA HARRIS
Conclusion
HELEN MILWARD
Index
