Editorial

I write this editorial for the second edition of 2020 at the end of an extraordinary and unsettling period of global uncertainty, and on the brink of another, as the next wave of the Covid-19 pandemic starts to gather force in many parts of the world. There is no doubt that the year so far has been a complex and turbulent one, with the impact of the Coronavirus on our physical, mental and economic health, as well as with the important issues that activity related to the Black Lives Matter movement has re-exposed. Our next edition will feature a collection of shorter pieces from the international community, giving accounts of what has been experienced and learned from the global phenomena that have been so preoccupying for all of us.

The current edition features articles and papers that pre-date the past months, giving us an important link to our ongoing interests and areas for development, but still offering scope for new ways of working clinically, thinking theoretically, and interacting creatively with the structures and frameworks in which our work takes place, as well as with colleagues from connected disciplines.

Papers from Andrew Dawson and Adam Goren highlight the dual focus that needs to be held by psychoanalytic child psychotherapists in relation to our core aim of working with the vulnerabilities and scope for development of the children encountered in our work. Dawson brings the reality of the contemporary commissioning frameworks in which much clinical work takes place, examining it in close and meaningful connection with work with children in the care system. He gives an account of collaborative work that included the development and use of a clinical formulation tool. This powerful account of the possibility for embedding psychoanalytic child psychotherapy practice and thinking into a model that also satisfies wider system needs is a hugely helpful model for how we can join up internal and external world pressures, in a way that meets the needs of child