Our beginnings
In the 1960's, when the Centre was founded, many professionals felt adolescents were too difficult to work with in a psychotherapeutic way and could not be helped until they reached adulthood. Our founders, Moses and Eglé Laufer, felt quite the opposite. They believed that adolescence was the best time to help someone, a ‘second chance’ at development. Moses and Eglé thought that if therapy could be delivered in the right way one could not only help young people with their problems but also help them on the road to a better adult life. Moses drew upon his long experience of working with young people in Canada and USA and also street children in the East End of London to build a service that could meet the diverse needs of young people.
So in 1967 they began what would later become the Brent Centre for Young People. The Centre had modest beginnings, with just a small group offering evening appointments on the top floor of a local school building, on a voluntary basis, while still maintaining full time jobs as psychoanalysts. Since then we have grown and expanded to become internationally renowned and respected.
Other professionals began to join Moses and Eglé and the Centre has become well known as a leader in adolescent mental health. In the 1980's the school no longer had any use for the building and the Centre purchased 51 Winchester Avenue. By this point the Centre had established an international reputation and was attracting staff from all over the world as well as publishing papers and holding conferences. The Centre has always held the individual needs of young people to be of the up most importance and has continually developed additional interventions including Adolescent Exploratory Therapy -AET (or Interviewing) and Outreach Work with an emphasis on improving young people's experience of psychotherapeutic services.
In 2002 Moses Laufer passed away and the building was renamed ‘Laufer House’ to honour his memory. Eglé is still actively involved in the Centre and continues to be a source of knowledge and inspiration to all of the staff.
BCYP Today
BCYP is an internationally recognised centre of clinical excellence, working with young people to achieve profound and lasting change. Each year we help hundreds of young people to enjoy better emotional well being.
We offer services at Laufer House and in a number of schools including Preston Manor High School, Queens Park Community School, Kingsbury High School and Cardinal Hinsley Mathematics and Computing College. We also work together with the Brent Key Stage 4 Pupil Referral Unit and the Brent Youth Offending Service so we can reach as many young people as possible.
Everyone at the Centre is committed to helping young people by:
- Providing help that is timely and flexible
- Listening to the needs and hopes of young people
- Working together to make positive changes
Growing and developing
BCYP is a committed modern provider of specialist adolescent therapeutic interventions. In this climate of public spending cuts and reductions in service we will continue to provide the best quality care that we can to help young people secure a happier and healthier adulthood.
BCYP was founded to innovatively address unmet needs and this ethos still drives us. There are still young people that do not have access to appropriate mental health services and so we will:
- Continue to build and develop new projects
- Seek to inform local and national policy
- Continue to increase understanding of young people's mental health through research and knowledge sharing.
But if we are going to fulfil these ambitions we need all the help we can get. So if you too would like to help young people to achieve better emotional and mental well being please visit our ‘support us pages’ to find out more.
