You learn early on that you’re not going to make everything all right. Lots of kids just have very tough lives, whether one of their parents has a drink or drug problem, their dad’s just died, or they are seeing a lot of fighting going on. Sometimes social services do something about it. Mostly, they don’t because they simply can’t.

A lack of therapeutic intervention by social services is quite common in austerity Britain, and it was one of the big surprises when I started my career, working on the frontline of child mental health in schools. Indeed my local social services describe themselves as an “emergency service”, and increasingly seem to manage levels of risk, rather than help situations or people improve. In many parts of the country, Camhs – child and adolescent mental health services – is similarly stretched.

When I did my training, I thought we would be taught how the human mind works – and how to fix it. I imagined we would be given a Haynes care maintenance manual, if you like. I was 35: probably too young, definitely too naive. I’m 50 now, and understand less than ever about the complexities of emotions and thoughts that are inevitably ensnared in the kids I work with, and that’s probably not so bad. After all, the last thing kids want is to be told what is good for them.

Take one eight-year-old boy I worked with. The police had to step over needles and a stash of guns to find him cowering under a bed. He was taken into care and moved to a new school miles away, where I met him. But the social worker hadn’t really explained to him why he’d had to leave his dad. As a result he was deeply confused, and very untrusting.

He would dive under the table as soon as our counselling sessions came to an end and growl like a dog, refusing to move. Reflecting on this with my supervisor, we wondered if it was where he felt safe, and in control. All behaviour is communication, as the saying goes. The last thing he wanted was to be dragged off somewhere new again by strangers. So we acted out the story of a hurt, distrustful puppy being placed with a new owner using puppets, and discussed how unsafe that dog must feel. It took a lot of time for the boy to feel more understood but he’s doing better now.

Social services’ “thresholds” – the level of need at which they deem it necessary to intervene – are absurdly high at the moment. But that frustration never goes away. A colleague worked with a child who was seeing a lot of domestic violence at home, and helped her to plan a strategy for keeping herself safe and calling the police when things were kicking off. An hour later she got an irate phone call from a social worker telling her to stop interfering and to not place too much responsibility on the kid. That’s as far as the new “joined-up thinking” gets.

My daughter is in year 3, and we’ve been on several camping trips around the UK this summer. Only one of the 20 kids I work with each week has had more than a single day trip during that time. I had a comfortable and happy childhood, and it has been a real eye-opener seeing how hard so many families have it. I guess it’s all about perspective, isn’t it? If more people in the UK could visit the country’s deprived estates and really get to grips with how life is there, maybe there would be a greater sense of compassion for struggling parents and families.

‘Quite often you need a light touch, even a bit of humour, to get things moving.’ Photograph: Alamy

Someone I know recently posted a picture of two dogs she’d adopted from Romania on Facebook. “How English is that,” I thought. Forget the refugee children – let’s look after the animals. Because, let’s face it, children with deep emotional needs can be trickier to love than pets. Yet in forgotten corners of the UK, like the estates where I work, it is only the love and toil of the teachers and teaching assistants that is keeping the lights on for many kids right now.

There are lovely things about working in primary schools: the community ethos, the values, the constant thinking about others, and the working-together ideal that teachers embody and hope the children will embrace. It’s hard to square the Brexit vote with that, and unfortunately it seems to have unleashed some attitudes at home that have filtered through to the children. I’ve heard of several racist remarks in schools since term started and have been asked to work with a Polish family who have faced hostility at the school gates.

There is a focus on one-to-one therapy, but in practice, this isn’t always the most effective route. I’ve had far better results working with the parents or carers and children together. I’m not the most confident of people, and some of the hardest moments are being with kids and their carers when they’re at the end of their tether, or talking about the really difficult stuff. Quite often you need a light touch, even a bit of humour, to get things moving. If a kid draws a picture of tanks blowing up his parents, well, it’s a starting point.

The pay is similar to teaching, but contracts are generally short term as funding is always shaky. Yet despite the difficulties, it’s an undeniable privilege to work with children: their imagination, their energy … it’s just wonderful.

Us adults with our job titles and qualifications might think we know best, but kids often heal themselves through their friendships. It’s a big ask of any kid to open up to a stranger who she only sees once a week for 45 minutes. Children with similar life experiences tend to gravitate towards each other. Sometimes just saying, “hey, you know Aidan in year 5 has been through the same stuff as you – he got adopted last year,” is enough of a pebble to drop for two kids to get talking and things to make more sense for them.

Children who constantly get into trouble tend to develop low self-esteem, no matter how hard they seem on the outside. They get to be known as “the bad kids”, and they soon see themselves that way too. This doesn’t leave much fuel in their tanks when it comes to wanting to change. The Australian therapist Michael White coined a beautiful phrase: “The person isn’t the problem, the problem is the problem.” I once worked with a child with ADHD. He called his hyperactivity his “monkey” and we attempted to work out what the monkey needed so the rest of him could focus during class time. I love this kind of approach – it’s playful, fun and works.

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