Face to Face with Children: The Life and Work of Clare Winnicott

“This book is primarily about the ways in which psychoanalytically informed social work set out to help troubled children in the middle decades of the previous century. As such it represents an invaluable historical record. But I believe it has much wider contemporary relevance and resonance. Pointing backwards to the rediscovery of lost values, it also has significant links with the very cutting edge of twenty-first century social care.” – From the Foreword by Jeremy Holmes, Visiting Professor, Psychoanalysis Unit University College London, and Honorary Consultant Psychotherapist, Tavistock Clinic

This book presents the life and work of one of the leading British social workers of the 20th century. The wife of Donald Winnicott, an analyst of Melanie Klein, a wartime innovator in helping evacuated children, a teacher and mentor to a generation of British social workers and a gifted psychoanalyst, Clare Winnicott’s life encompassed a remarkable richness of relationships and accomplishments. As well as documenting Clare Winnicott’s life and career, this book also contains valuable and pragmatic career strategies for assisting parents and other care-givers in the difficult challenge of creating and sustaining facilitating environments for troubled children.