Child and Family Clinical Psychology Review 2025 – call for papers

We're putting out a call for papers for the next edition of our flagship journal, The Child & Family Clinical Psychology Review, which will be titled: 'What good looks like for children who may be neurodivergent'.

As a committee, we've been discussing the increasing numbers of children and young people being referred for assessments for ASD and ADHD.

This poses a challenge for services that aren't sufficiently resourced to meet the demand, and means that some families turn to private providers where there can be varying levels of quality assurance.

Children and young people who have, or are waiting for a diagnosis, are also being referred to a variety of other services due to mental health difficulties or physical health concerns, prompting discussions about how services can be adapted to better meet their needs.

Alongside this, we are concerned that the current focus on ASD and ADHD means that other neurodevelopmental difficulties may be being overlooked and that children who may have learning disabilities or attachment difficulties may be misdiagnosed.

We're aware that these issues are also a concern for our members and are encouraged that at a local level there are examples of good practice and innovative approaches. In the Child & Family Clinical Psychology Review, we hope to explore a variety of ways of improving the psychological wellbeing for children and young people who are neurodivergent or where this has been queried. 

We would like to encourage a broad range of papers covering direct and indirect assessment, support and intervention and multi-agency work, but also consideration of what is needed at a systems level and papers that capture some of the challenges and debates around these issues.

We are interested in hearing from a range of settings and authors and would encourage papers co-produced by young people or parents/carers as well as from professionals.

Please send us a short expression of interest before writing your article. The editorial team is also happy to discuss possible submissions. We can be contacted via Rachel Bradley [email protected]

Articles should be around 2,500-3,500 words, and no longer than 5,000 words, including references. Please include a 250-300 word summary box of up to five bullet points outlining the key points of your article and 5-7 key words.

Submissions should comply with the BPS style guide.

Please ensure that your contact details (email and/or postal address), are included at the end of the article. Also:

• Include the first names of all authors and any relevant job titles and affiliations
• Please include a word count at the end (including references)
• Do not include tables and figures unless they are essential and save space or add to the article. All figures should be in black and white and easily reproducible
• We reserve the right to shorten, amend and hold back copy if needed

Our target publication date is November 2025, so please send in your submissions by Friday 30 May 2025 to [email protected].

We look forward to reading your submissions!