Creative Art Therapy Service (CATS)

Therapists will be based at the school for the day so children do not need to leave school to attend therapy. Referrals will then be considered in line with CATS referral criteria, by the panel made up of the ISS manager and lead art therapist. The therapists, with the support of the lead, will then work with the school’s senior leadership team (SLT) and teaching staff to find the best times for children to attend therapy with minimal disruption to their education.

CATS may be particularly suitable for schools who have young people who do not meet CAMHS thresholds and/or have neurodiversity and find talking therapies less accessible.

CATS is a training partnership with art psychotherapy trainees. They are managed and clinically supervised by the lead art therapist.

Schools also have liaison work with the lead art therapist and the service lead for Integrated Schools at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Both of these staff have many years’ experience working therapeutically with schools around special educational needs (SEN) and social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs in various different capacities such as senior leadership, consultancy, therapy and training.

Art therapy is a form of psychological therapy that uses physical art materials and art making as its primary means of communication.

The art therapist supports the child to reflect on their art making as a way to help the child understand themselves. Art therapists have statutory regulation under the Health & Care Professionals Council.

Art therapy aims to:

• Support the young person to tolerate failure and uncertainty through the act of reflective art making.
• Gently increase the young person’s capacity for reflection by thinking with the therapist about the artwork the child has made.
• In doing so, this can Improve the young person’s emotional resilience and self–awareness more broadly throughout their life.
• Art therapy is a physical and sensory activity working on multiple communicative levels, e.g., visual, tactile, kinaesthetic and more. Sensory engagement can be effective in regulation of emotions.
• There is a growing evidence base that art therapy supports children to through their education, helping with emotional regulation, concentration and relationships with staff and peers.

CATS can be purchased by the school directly and operates with school term times. Referrals for individual children in a school cannot be made, but the school can purchase a day (or more) of art therapy so the trainee will be onsite.

• A systematic review of the effectiveness of art psychotherapy for children with mental health disorders
• Health & Care Professions Council - Art Therapy Standards of Proficiency