Introduction

The following paper and discussion were presented at the second Spring Meeting of the Children's Psychotherapy Project, NY on April 19, 2001 at the William Alanson White Institute. This was the first time a treatment from the Project was presented to the larger community and as such it marked a milestone in our development.

The Children's Psychotherapy Project is a simply structured social action project for therapists. Therapists who join the Project are asked to take on one foster child in a once weekly psychotherapy, providing collateral contacts as needed “for as long as it takes.” Weekly consultation groups are run by a senior clinician. We believe that these groups are necessary and an integral part of any long-term therapy with this population. Our entirely volunteer organization is inspired by and modeled after the Children's Psychotherapy Project in San Francisco, which has been going strong for eight years now. There they see forty children and have ten consultation groups. The Project in New York started with a core group of founding members: Christopher Bonovitz, Psy.D., Neil Altman, Ph.D., Kate Dunn, Psy.D., and Elizabeth Kandall, Ph.D., who met weekly for a year to discuss and plan for the Project in New York. The Children's Psychotherapy Project, NY started seeing children in February of 2001. At the time of this writing thirteen children are in treatment and we have five consultation groups. We have gotten the bulk of our referrals from the Administration of Children's Services direct care but have also made contacts with Legal Aid both in Manhattan and Brooklyn, as well as private foster care agencies. We are open to working with other referral sources and to welcoming more therapists into the Project. To learn more about the Children's Psychotherapy Project contact Toni Heineman at (415) 474-8454 or or Elizabeth Kandall at (212) 255-8895 or .