Special guardianship and adoption
This specialist team works with families to complete multi-disciplinary assessments that focus on attachment and trauma.
Overview
The team consists of therapists with backgrounds in social care and CAMHS settings and includes social work, play therapy, child and adolescent psychotherapy, family therapy and clinical psychology. The team has developed expertise in mentalization based work with children and families affected by developmental trauma. Our work with adoptive and special guardianship families involves parents/carers as well as children and young people and whole families as we aim to improve the child’s experience in their relationships with parents and carers, as well as in their wider families and schools.
We work with families with children across the whole age range. If you are a Special Guardian or adoptive parent of a child under five, please go to our Who We Are page to discover which of our clinicians can help.
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Multidisciplinary
Assessments of special guardianship and adoptive families involve carers, parents and children being seen by two clinicians in individual and joint sessions. These assessments are multidisciplinary (the clinicians being from different training backgrounds and/or being supported and supervised by the multidisciplinary team).
Attachment
Assessments explore the child’s attachment experiences and current relationships. These can include the use of specialist assessment tools such as story stem assessments (for children aged 4-9), or a Child Attachment Interview, which give the clinicians, carers, parents and relevant members of the network detailed information about the child’s attachment patterns and can inform therapy plans and approaches.
Trauma
Assessments explore the child or young person’s trauma history and consider how this has impacted their development. Where relevant, assessments screen for Post-Traumatic Stress symptoms, which can support carers, parents and relevant members of the network to better understand and respond to the child or young person’s needs and can inform therapy plans and approaches.
Cognitive
Clinical psychologists in the team can undertake an assessment of children and young people’s cognitive functioning if a possible learning difficulty or disability is identified.
Neurodevelopmental
Assessments can include screening for attention difficulties (ADHD) and full assessment of autistic spectrum conditions (ASD) using the ADOS.
Self-harm and suicidality
We recommend that if a child or young person is seriously self-harming or experiencing suicidal thoughts that might put them at risk, their needs will be more safely met within a CAMHS setting where there is psychiatric oversight. We may therefore redirect enquiries that include these concerns to local NHS services.
Therapy
Packages of therapy are recommended based on the needs identified in specialist assessments. This almost always includes carers/parents, as well as children and young people. Therapy is influenced by mentalization-based approaches and can include:
reflective Parenting psychoeducation groups for adoptive parents;
reflective Parenting psychoeducation groups for special guardians;
multi-family Local Exchange for Adoptive Families groups (LEAF);
child and adolescent psychotherapy;
play therapy;
filial therapy;
systemic family therapy;
couples therapy (to address issues affecting co-parenting);
mentalization-based therapy for children (MBT-C);
mentalization-based therapy for families (MBT-F);
reflective parenting consultation;
eye-movement desensitization reprocessing (EMDR);
trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (TF-CBT).
Costs
Until the end of the financial year 2021 to 2022, the Adoption Support Fund (ASF) covers up to £2,500 per child per year for specialist assessment. To make an application for ASF, please speak with your allocated Social Worker who will be able to make the application on your behalf. The majority of applications to the fund fall within these limits. In exceptional cases, where there is an urgent need for higher-cost support, LAs or RAAs are asked to match-fund applications.
Contact us
To make a referral, please complete our online referral form.
We accept referrals directly from parents, or through a third party such as healthcare professionals, social workers, or GPs (family doctors).
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Overview
The multi-disciplinary team in the Family Trauma department accepts referrals from all recognised referrers of children and young people’s mental health services as well as self-referrals if you are a parent, carer or young person seeking specialist support with your or your child’s mental health. We are different from a CAMHS provider in that we are a project-based service and therefore our referrals are accepted on the basis that the mental health needs of the child or young person are a result of family trauma; that is a result of significant instability in the relationship between the child or young person and their primary caregiver.
Our service will offer therapeutic support to help children and young people achieve a greater sense of stability in their closest relationships in order to increase their sense of safety and security. The Family Trauma team offers the following specialisms and interventions to work with these families.
Family Therapy
Child Psychotherapy
Mentalization-based therapy (for child, family or parents/carers)
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)
Adult psychiatric support for parents with mental health needs
Play therapy
Filial Therapy
Costs
The cost per appointment for therapeutic work in the Family Trauma team is £150 per appointment.
Contact us
To make a referral, please complete our online referral form.
We accept referrals directly from parents, or through a third party such as healthcare professionals, social workers, or GPs (family doctors).
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Overview
Mentalization-Based Treatment with Children (MBT-C) is a time-limited approach to working with children in middle childhood (ages 5-12) and their parents. MBT-C is an integrative approach, which brings together psychodynamic principles with findings from attachment and affect-regulation theory, systemic family therapy and empirical studies of mentalization. Children attending MBT-C may have problems with anxiety, depression, behaviour or relationships. MBT-C may also be suitable for children with traumatic experiences or children who have experienced loss.
‘Mentalization’ is a psychological term that refers to the ability to recognise and understand our own thoughts, feelings, intentions and behaviours, those of others, and the interaction between the two. Children with a high capacity to mentalise are generally better able to manage their feelings and behaviour. The aim of MBT-C is to:
Help children ‘mentalise’ better
Help carers ‘mentalise’ in relation to their child
Help carers develop further their child’s mentalising capacity
Therapeutic work takes place with the whole family together, with the child individually (through play, art and talking) and with the child’s carers individually. Parents and carers are seen in parallel to their children over 12 weeks, at which point a decision is made about whether further treatment is needed.
We have found MBT-C to be a particularly helpful approach when working with children who have experienced early relational trauma and who are having difficulties post-adoption. The flexibility of the approach, the focus on emotion regulation and attachment, the support that is put in place for the parent, and the way the therapy with the child can use play, making it less dependent on verbal exchanges where children find this difficult, all make it a particularly good ‘fit’ for this group. Within the Family Trauma Team, we offer MBT-C following an initial assessment, where both the family and clinician agree that it would be of benefit.
Costs
Until the end of the financial year 2021 to 2022, the ASF will have two fair access limits
£2,500 per child per year for specialist assessment
£5,000 per child per year for therapy
The majority of applications to the fund fall within these limits. In exceptional cases, where there is an urgent need for higher-cost support, LAs or RAAs are asked to match-fund applications.
Contact us
To make a referral, please complete our online referral form.
We accept referrals directly from parents, or through a third party such as healthcare professionals, social workers, or GPs (family doctors).
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Nurturing Change is a national therapeutic service offering specialist support to foster and kinship carers, adoptive parents and special guardians and their children between 0-6 years.
Nurturing Change is particularly suitable for young children who have had a difficult start in life, to prevent the emergence of more serious difficulties.
We support foster and kinship carers, adoptive parents and special guardians where:
the child is aged between 0 and 6 years;
the parent or carer and child live anywhere in the UK;
the child is living with the parent or carer;
the child has been living with this parent or carer for any amount of time;
the person(s) with parental responsibility is aware of and agrees to the referral.
For more details, please visit Nurturing Change.