Clinical Services
Compassionate Care for Children, Adolescents, and Families Make An AppointmentAbout MeWhat is Psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy is a collaborative process between a therapist and a client, aimed at addressing emotional and psychological challenges. It involves exploring thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to help individuals achieve mental well-being and personal growth.
Clinical Services
Before I offer to help, I always ask you to attend an initial consultation with me. This is because it is never possible to know what to offer adults, adolescents, children, or parents until we have had an initial meeting. This can be in-person or online and usually lasts for a full 60 minutes. During it, I aim to gain an understanding of your concerns, how you are currently dealing with them, and whether I am likely to be helpful. If we agree that I am likely to be helpful, then I make a proposal for the length and frequency of sessions and set the fee based on 50-minute sessions. Sometimes we need several initial meetings to establish this, especially if your concerns are particularly complex. During the initial meeting(s) with parents and children I will be able to confirm or otherwise any speculations you have about your child’s or adolescent’s attitudes, behaviours, moods and other presentations. I will also be able to offer ideas about the emotional and relationship issues that are often within many diagnoses children and young people receive from other practitioners. The fee for the exploratory/assessment sessions is fixed. If after these we decide to continue the fee for ongoing work is by negotiation.
Specialised Expertise
With nearly 40 years of experience in general cases within CAMHS, I have developed expertise in several specific areas:
- ADHD and Autism (ASD)
- Adolescent ‘meltdown’ and navigating adolescence
- Adopted Children and Young People
- Children and Young People in the Care System
- Families Where the Role of the Father is Weakened
- University Students and the Impact of Higher Education on Emotional Well-being
- PTSD when found in all of the above and in all other children and families
Group Psychotherapy
My aim is to help all group members find therapeutic the experience of being in a group. Groups offered can be without a specific focus, or focused upon a particular concern or issue that is common to all members. Examples are the trials and tribulations of fatherhood (including grand-fatherhood), and divorce and separation. Most frequently the groups offered are to parents struggling to understand their child’s attitudes and behaviours.
Psychotherapeutic experiential groups are usually for children or adolescents with the same or similar issues. Here it is the sharing and understanding issues that brings benefit to them; for example, issues adding up to low self-esteem. Group psychotherapy is offered when it is felt likely to be more beneficial than individual psychotherapy.
Decisions about individual or group psychotherapy are taken either during the initial session or after a brief assessment period that might make clear group rather than individual as a preferred option.
Supervision Services
Supervision can be one-off or ongoing. I call one-off a consultation, which might be appropriate if you are stuck with a case and need some direction-finding. Ongoing supervision is a way of understanding a particular case as you work with it over time, or several cases that you need help understanding. The idea behind supervision is that it supports you in growing your awareness and skills as a practitioner through deep case discussion with me. Group supervision is often helpful for psychotherapists working with similar cases or simply wanting to extend their awareness of their practice through working together with others in a supervision group.
Clinical Consultancy
Clinical consultancy is for the range of different and interested professionals working on the same case. Examples are adoption and fostering cases that necessarily have multi-agency involvement. The aims of consultation vary but include helping professionals see something more clearly, something new, or getting into the best mindset to make clearer decisions about the child.
Engaging Webinars on Key Issues
I run webinar series (usually for ten-week terms) on a range of issues. I have a particular interest in the life and work of the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion and have run introductory and more advanced level series. I have a career-long experience of working with children in care or adopted and other severely deprived and traumatised children, including those previously caught up in inner-city gangs. Further, my clinical interest in the role of the father – including adoptive, foster, and step – has also led to my running webinar series (some on how to conceptualise the role within a psychoanalytic literature that overlooks it, some on typical clinical issues arising when the role is not held in mind). Being concerned about the climate crisis, I run webinars on Climate and Democracy.
Testimonial
I have known and worked with Dr Andrew Briggs, Consultant Child Psychotherapist for over 25 years mostly in the field of therapeutic work for Look After Children. I work as a Systemic and Family Psychotherapist and from our work together, joint discussions and writing we have been evolving an integrated approach for effective therapeutic work with children, their carers and the institutional systems that support them. Andrew has both depth and breadth of experience in his discipline and an awareness of just how difficult it is in the ‘systems around the child’ to hold the child’s needs and depth of struggle for a secure, accepted identity in their search for being who they truly are.
His wisdom is drawn both from depth of reflected professional experience and wide academic reading and writing about the subject that he feels passionate about-the psychological development of wellbeing of every child as both human right and socio-political challenge to all our communities of living.
John Hills, former Co-Vice Chair of Association of Family Therapy (AFT)
Testimonial
We were at a complete loss as parents to understand our 14-year-old son. Our utter helplessness Dr Briggs completely understood and showed us a way through our overwhelming anxieties. Our son benefited enormously in his sessions with Dr Briggs, and we began to see that he may have been misdiagnosed with autism as a younger child.
Previously anxious parents wanting to understand their adolescent
Testimonial
Although he works at a much deeper level it is clear that Dr Briggs has an enviable understanding of attachment theory. His help for a young girl with disorganised attachment was remarkable giving her a new space in her mind to think about herself and contact with the world. Incidentally, her school performance then began to take- off.
Consultant Clinical Psychologist, NGO funded fostering organisation
Testimonial
When I first met Andrew me and my son did not take to him. I felt very hostile. Through the work it turned out my son resented Andrew as the father he did not know. The work helped me face the reality that I had forced his father to leave. Firm but not over-bearing. Sensitive but not a push-over. Andrew patiently helped me and my son see how the absence of his father had been the cause of so many of our emotional difficulties.
Single mother who reunited with her partner towards the end of the intervention for her and her son
Testimonial
We were lucky to be referred to CAMHS from our barracks. My husband had seen too many tours, all without psychological support from the Army or elsewhere. He drank heavily and took drugs off-duty. He terrified us and I was forced to take out an order and he had to find somewhere else to live. After three months of weekly sessions my son and I changed from seeing him as a power-seeking, abusive, male tyrant to a very vulnerable man unable to allow himself to be so. He became part of our sessions and after another three months of us listening to him talk with Dr Briggs we all felt very differently, much closer and wanting to live again as a family unit.
Army Sergeant’s wife
Testimonial
My eleven-year-old daughter had become a problem at school. She utterly resented authority. She had been like this at home about two months after my new partner moved in. Her outbursts began against me but then included this man I hoped she would see as her stepfather. Andrew quickly saw her resentment for this good man as being mainly for me and her father. She simply could not express it directly to me as she feared I would leave like her father. When the truth willed out it was clear she also feared her stepfather leaving and her deeper resentment was for her father. Andrew helped us all re-calibrate and see these losses and gains in balance.
Anxious mother unable understand her daughter’s disconnection from her
Testimonial
We had two siblings breaking down their foster placement with two parents who were not making use of our support. Andrew quickly understood that these children were in the wrong placement and that damage limitation was the most therapeutic offer we could make for the time being. With heavy hearts but being sure things were for the best we found them far more emotionally able parents.
Local authority Children in Care Team
Testimonial
There is no way we would have held onto this boy we are fostering without Andrew’s insights about him gained in psychotherapy sessions with him. We had no idea that his bizarre, intrusive, behaviour was caused by his being abused by birth parents and then in various inner-city gangs. Andrew’s regular meetings with us helped us to find a way of accepting that we were not being attacked as his behaviours were expressions of what had so deeply and profoundly traumatised him.
Foster parents to a 13-year-old boy placed after repeated previous placement breakdowns
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the process for starting psychotherapy?
The process begins with an initial meeting, either in-person or online, lasting 60 minutes. During this meeting, I aim to understand your concerns, how you are currently dealing with them, and whether I can be of help. If we agree to proceed, we will discuss the length and frequency of sessions.
What issues do you specialise in?
I have nearly 40 years of experience dealing with a wide range of issues. My specialisations include PTSD , ADHD, Autism (ASD), adopted children and young people, those in the care system, families with a weakened paternal role, and the mental health of university students.
Do you offer group therapy sessions?
Yes, I offer group therapy sessions for individuals with similar issues. These groups provide a supportive environment where participants can share and understand each other’s experiences. Examples include groups for fatherhood challenges, divorce and separation, and low self-esteem in children and adolescents. For all groups I am present as facilitator of all members’ journeys.
What is clinical supervision, and who can benefit from it?
Clinical supervision is a service for professionals who need guidance and support in their practice. It can be a one-off consultation or ongoing supervision to help understand particular cases or improve skills. Group supervision is also available for those who wish to enhance their practice through collaborative learning.
What types of clinical consultancy do you provide?
Clinical consultancy is aimed at professionals working on the same case, such as adoption and fostering cases that involve multi-agency collaboration. The goal is to help professionals see new perspectives and make clearer decisions about the child.