Ilse Herath-Schugsties is a Psychologist (Friedrich Alexander Universität, Erlangen, Germany) and Psychoanalytical Psychotherapist (Alfred Adler Institut, DGIP) who focuses on Children and Youth.
Herath-Schugsties spent her whole working life in Munich. After working in a Social Psychiatric Ambulance and ten years at a Children’s Home for Remedial Education as psychologist and manager, she moved to an institution of Educational Guidance and Counseling in a socially disadvantaged district where she cooperated with different educational institutions, e.g. crèches, kindergartens or schools for more than 25 years.
The rate of migrants is especially high in this part of the city. Very often they are refugees and their families, in part traumatised by war, with different residence status. Due to this it is not unusual to have children from up to thirty different nations in kindergartens and schools, and classes without native speaking Germans. Herath-Schugsties started a successful project in cooperation with some kindergartens to empower the migrant parents, e.g. by reflecting cultural differences in bringing up children and in family life.
Through individual psychological counselling and open courses for intercultural dialogue she spread information using handouts or visual material as the basis, encouraging confidence in intercultural learning and communication to help them adapt to a different way of living.
Media and communication have been important “ingredients” for this project as well as in the rest of her work. Although retired she still works as case supervisor or speaks at parents’ evenings for those multicultural crèches and kindergartens .
