Book excerpt: This text describes an approach to children and young people who might be helped by child psychotherapy. Attention is paid to factors within the child's personality, to strengths and impediments in the developmental process, and to the family and wider school and community context. Individual chapters address both clinical method and a variety of clinical problems, including work with very young children and their parents, severe deprivation and family breakdown, developmental delay, and more serious psychological illnesses of childhood. This book will be of help to child and adolescent mental health professionals and to a wider public interested in the development of children and in how help can be provided when things go wrong.