A literature review of therapeutic intervention with young survivors of violence, exploitation, abuse and neglect

With the advent of childhood studies, the nature of childhood as a sociological construct emerged.  In the therapeutic context, central concepts such as ‘childhood,’ ‘maltreatment, and ‘therapy’ are written into the literature as taken-for-granted phenomena. Examination of these concepts is pivotal to any research on therapeutic intervention with children and young people who have experienced violence, exploitation, abuse, and neglect. This allows the therapeutic field to examine how they are part of a child or young person’s context, how this context affects the construction of children and young people as they enter therapy, and how they, as therapists, are part of this contextual construction. A rapid review of the literature on therapeutic intervention was chosen, as it provided a systematic mapping of the existing scholarship. A PICO strategy was developed and used to search seven databases. A thematic data analysis was conducted based on the research questions developed to explore the literature. Findings highlighted that a wide range of interventions is available to young survivors, but commentary on their effectiveness is dominated by adults and focused on individualised outcomes. The findings also highlighted a very narrow construction of young survivors’ identity within the therapeutic world. The key conclusion from this review is that there is a need to see young survivors as more than a sum of the experience of violence and abuse and deserving of a more credible seat at the epistemic table.