Children’s Focusing Corner, History and Organisation 

History

Only a few articles were written about Focusing with children when Marta Stapert started in 1985 to integrate focusing in individual child psychotherapy in a school for children with special needs. Bart Santen wrote already in 1975 in a Dutch magazine: B. Santen en G.Koopman: Symmetrische symbolisering bij kinderen. Uit: Tijdschrift voor psychiatrie, 1975, nr. 10-11, Jaargang 17.

Mary McGuire had started focusing in a school in Canada. She wrote an article and had to end this experience too soon. McGuire, M. Psy.D. (1986), School Project: 'Teaching Clearing a space' to Elementary School Children, The Folio, vol.5, nr.5, 1986

In 1993 Marta Stapert saw a video of ‘Clearing a space in the classroom’ from Japan. She started to introduce focusing to her colleague teachers in The Netherlands. Together with Anneke Broertjes they developed a program on how to teach focusing to children in a group.

During the International Focusing Conference in Gloucester (near Boston) in 1996, the  first workshop ‘Clearing a space in a group of children through drawing’, took place.

During lunchtime in this conference the “children focusers”  came together around a table in the corner of the room. The ‘Children’s Focusing Corner’ had been born. We adopted ‘Golliwog’s Cakewalk’ from Children’s Corner, music from Claude Debussy, as our tune.

Since 1996 till October 2006 Marta Stapert has been the coordinator for ChFC.

International Children’s Focusing Conferences,  once every 2 years

1998, 1st in Hungary, Salgótarján “Focusing with children”

2000, 2^nd in Hungary, Salgótarján “Children’s Inner and Outer Peace”

2002, 3^rd in Canada, Toronto “Harvesting Wisdom, Planting New Seeds”

2004, 4^th in Iceland, near Reykjavik "Bringing Focusing to the Children of the World"

2006, 5^th in Romania, Cluj Napoca “Bringing Focusing to Children in Institutions and Education”

Structure

ChFC is a workgroup of The Focusing Institute and works together with TFI on important structural issues and decisions.

Acting on behalf of ChFC, there are national and international coordinators:

International coordinators for ChFC enhance the development of focusing with children in the broadest way, throughout the world. National Coordinators stimulate Children’s Focusing within their own country.

In order to be as open as possible for energy and input from all sides ChFC is an open organization without strict rules.

Training

Up till now in many countries Children’s Focusing has been developed by several focusers, as yet unknown to The Focusing Institute and Children’s Focusing Corner. For example: We were happily surprised that in The International Focusing Conference in The Netherlands in May 2006, we could count 42 participants out of 180, who are involved in focusing with children.

Marta and Ynse Stapert developed programs to train adults in Focusing with children. New coordinators are in training now.

The main program at this moment is 60 hours training in Focusing with Children, in three parts of 20 hours, mainly for focusing- trainers and trainers-in-training.

Part 1 General focusing, focusing attitude, focusing for parents in the family

Part 2 Focusing in schools, institutions and in other groups, individual and group programs

Part 3 Focusing in child psychotherapy, playtherapy and individual focusing sessions with a child.

These trainings have been given in Belgium, England, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Japan, Netherlands, Romania, Suriname, USA

New programs and trainings have been developed for:

Child Focusing Psychotherapists, in Romania (Marta Stapert and Madeleine Walder-Binder)

Parents, in England  (Eileen Fendick)

Children and Teachers, in The Netherlands: Focusing in the classroom, with a research program (Marta Stapert). (Will be translated into English)

Certification

• a Focusing Trainer to be able to become a Children’s Focusing Trainer
• a Focusing Coordinator to become a Children’s Focusing Coordinator

If you are a Focusing Trainer already, you will get the Children’s Focusing Trainer certificate after attending with good result the 60-hours training program, with the requirement to be certified member of TFI.

As a Children’s Focusing Trainer you are able to work with children in a focusing way and teach/train other adults (for example parents, teachers, group workers) how to be in a focusing way with children, also depending on your professional education and interest.

You need to be a Children’s Focusing Trainer and certified member of TFI, to train the ChFC School-Focusing Programme in schools.

If you are not yet a Focusing Trainer you can start  a Children’s Focusing Program after a minimum of one Basic Focusing course. You will get a part-certificate of the number of hours you attended training in children’s focusing. Once you are a certified Focusing Trainer and have got 60 hours of Children’s Focusing Training you can ask your Children’s Focusing Coordinator to exchange it for your Children’s Focusing Trainer Certificate.

Part-certificates can be given, taking into account that by the end, the whole field of children’s focusing has to be covered in order to become a Children’s Focusing Trainer.

This is especially meant for those focusers who want to use focusing with children at home or in their profession.

Certified Children’s Focusing Trainers and -Coordinators may use the logo of ChFC and TFI.

Training abroad

Up till now Focusing Training and Children’s Focusing training in other countries took place after invitation, mostly of a focusing coordinator in that country, or, in countries where focusing was unknown up to then, by a key-person in the field of psychotherapy or education.

New models of certifiable training can be developed in deliberation with an International Child Focusing Coordinator.

Children’s Focusing Coordinators and Contact Persons from January 2007

Marta Stapert will end her senior / international coordinatorship for ChFC.

Three International Children’s Focusing Coordinators

will continue for the  (international/) worldwide tasks

Children’s Focusing Coordinators for Countries

Finance Manager

Greetje Stienstra

National Organisations

Contact Persons
 

Homepage

Homepage of ChFC www.focusing.org/children
- general information about children’s focusing
- articles in different languages, some with translations

- reports of the conferences

Moderator: Heidi Essler 

Webmaster: Bill Silverman

Children’s Discussion List

The Children’s Focusing Discussion List is meant to be the connection between adults who are, in the broadest sense, involved in Children’s Focusing, in the world. Learning from each other is a fundamental belief in Focusing training and development.

Moderators stimulate and manage the discussion list, the organizational part as well as the content, and maintaining the respectful attitude.

Moderators for the Children’s Discussion list

Laura Bavalics (USA-Chicago) for stimulating the content and maintaining the respectful attitude

Lucy Bowers, Brigitte Domas and Agota Székely also support the energy and variety of discussion on the list.

Simon Kilner (UK,Leeds) for the organizational part

Webmaster is Bill Silverman

Book/Manuals

Erik Verliefde and Marta Stapert wrote in Dutch language: De kunst van het luisteren, Communiceren met kinderen op school en thuis.

The translation and publishing in English will be ready in 2007.

Translations in Hungarian, Korean, Romanian, Japanese and other languages will follow after the English translation.

In The Netherlands the Manual ‘Focusing in schools’ is ready. In this training the teachers learn ‘Focusing in the classroom’ at the same time. Questionnaires before and after the program are added for research. Translation in English will follow as soon as possible, so that it can be used in other countries also.

The Manual (in English and German) of the training for Child Focusing Psychotherapists in Romania, (given by Marta Stapert and Madeleine Walder-Binder) is almost ready. It consists of 100 hours adult focusing and 60 hours children’s focusing, described step by step. It is a Manual for Children’s Focusing Trainers only.

Organizing the Children’s Focusing Conference once every 2 years

Up till now we managed to organize small conferences, in Hungary with around 75 participants, the last 3 conferences with around 30 participants. The conference is organized in the country where it will take place. The coordinator of the organizing country, organizes the Conference with a team of Focusers, with support of ChFC. However the input for organizing such a conference is a heavy job, it is an important meeting-point to exchange and present ideas and experiences, so that focusing with children can develop further and take a more influential role for a better world for children.

Finances

ChFC is administering a small fund from gifts. It is sometimes used for travelling to give training in underdeveloped countries, where no fee could be asked for the training.

Greetje Stienstra oversees the management of this account.

Some Ideas for the Future

- to moderate a discussion list for children. Can you imagine!

- to stimulate still more, so that all focusers with children send their materials/manuals/articles to the ChFC Homepage. It can be in any language
- to create an archive in the ChFC Homepage with messages from the Discussion list, to make important content available to more readers, after permission from the writer. 

Click here to see 5th International Conference 2006 Reports
 

Thanks to Fred Kusters for designing the
Children's Corner pages on The Focusing Institute's website.