Our Story
Chorus was formed by psychoanalytic child psychotherapists Sarah Peter and Eva Crasnow. Having worked in NHS, local authority and charity settings for over 20 years, we met many families with babies and young children facing extremely challenging life circumstances, such as domestic abuse, poverty or homelessness.
We saw first-hand how often these families were only offered support many years later, rather than at the time, when they needed it. We also saw how services tended to ask what’s wrong with a child or family, and how a therapy or a medication could fix this, rather than trying to understand what has happened to them and how this has affected them. Mainstream mental health services also rarely asked what support could be provided by linking up families with others in their community with similar experiences.
We were also lucky enough to take part in a therapeutic project which made real differences to the lives of children under 5 and their parents. We learnt about the incredible impact that can be made by bringing together families facing similar challenges in therapeutic groups, where they can access timely support from skilled professionals, and from each other.
Groups work because they empower people, not just to receive support, but to give it as well, and to form the social connections that are the foundation of a healthy life. We wanted more families to access this sort of support when it counts, and we formed Chorus to do just that.
What we do
We work with agencies that want to provide specialist mental health support to families with babies, toddlers and children under 5.
Our therapeutic parent-child groups enhance the crucial early relationships between parents and children, helping families identify and grow their pre-existing capacities, and strengthening the foundation for children’s later development. Each group creates a sustainable peer support network, which means that when the group ends, the support continues.
We respond innovatively to local need by co-creating our therapeutic programmes with families and the agencies that support them, filling gaps in existing service provision and effectively engaging families for whom services can be ‘hard-to-reach’.
Where needed we also offer individual assessment and therapeutic input. Developed by listening to the needs of the child, the family and the wider professional system, our therapeutic partnerships are designed to meet the emotional, social and developmental needs of the youngest children and their parents in their local communities.
Why we do it
It seems simple because it is - the earlier support can be offered, the better the outcomes for the child and family later.
Children aged 0 - 5 experience the fastest rate of psychological, neurological and cognitive development in the whole life cycle. Providing specialist support very early in life gives families resources to draw on throughout the rest of childhood and beyond. Yet many agencies do not have the capacity to provide this specialist input.
By providing specialist therapeutic support in children’s earliest years, and linking parents and children into sustainable peer and community support networks, our approach mitigates later difficulties and reduces the need for onward referrals to specialist mental health services.