We have been mainly concentrating on the abandonment and self harm, with extensive counselling. We work on her confidence issues and encourage her to participate in confidence building activities such as acting, which she's very good at! Her peers at school are aware of her issues and are very supportive, as is the school. We don't dwell on her mother, far from it, and we are all much happier when there is no contact from her!! Interestingly, last October (2012) we heard that mum had been given a year to live if she carried on drinking, and at that point SD hadn't spoken to her or seen her for months. So, we decided that we should try and encourage contact in case mum died and SD found herself in a situation of deep regret. We supported supervised contact between them (we supervised contact), but SD never really responded to her mother and treated her with coldness and contempt. It was shortly after this contact commenced that she started self-harming, so clearly we made the wrong decision. All of our efforts and decisions are centred around what is hopefully best for SD.