Building a therapeutic relationship with children, young people and their families.

The therapeutic relationship is central to the delivery of professional standards in nursing and integral to theories of nursing practice, notably those of Dorothea Orem and Hildegard Peplau. However, the concept is relatively ambiguous compared with others such as family-centred care. In this article, the author reviews the meaning of the therapeutic relationship in children's nursing, exploring the tenets of therapeutic relationships and discussing how these can be shaped by different care contexts. The author also considers some principles of communication nurses that might use when building therapeutic relationships and uses case examples to discuss how nurses might initiate, build and progress therapeutic relationships with children and their families in practice.