John Conolly

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John Conolly

Lead Counsellor, Westminster Homeless Health Counselling Service

Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust

My passion for delivering psychological healthcare to homeless and excluded people arose when I came to realise not only how traumatising homelessness is for people, but also how frequently early and middle childhood abuse appears in homeless peoples’ life narratives.

Thus it is estimated that 60 -70% of single homeless people suffer from one form or other of Personality Disorder, or what I have come to understand as, a ‘traumatised personality’.

Together with Paul Ashton and the support of the Westminster Rough Sleepers Unit, I co-founded the Westminster Complex Personality Network a cross sector forum bringing together services and ex-service users to discuss and learn from working with the challenges of personality disorder or of ‘traumatised personalities’.

Based on Jay Levy’s  ‘Pretreatment’ principles, together with my counselling colleagues and ex-service users, I am in the process of co-developing, and validating a stage appropriate model of psychological intervention, increasingly known as ‘Pre-treatment Therapy’. This  takes into account not only the chaotic nature of homelessness, but also trauma specific modes of adaptation and coping.

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