Social Care and Fostering and Adoption Professionals.
All who work with children and young people who are not able to live with their birth families are aware that the impact of the breakdown of these primary care relationships can be longstanding. This can be compounded by experience of abuse or neglect, or by living in a home where there is domestic violence, or the abuse of drugs or alcohol.
Securing a sufficiently safe home environment is an essential first step, but often the impact of past experience propels the child to behaviours that are difficult to understand and even more difficult to survive and contain, with the result that potentially nurturing placements break down or become entrenched in complex relationships that are helpful to no-one. These behaviours impact not only on the families of the children but also on the professional network around them.
The Consortium can offer help to understand these unconscious processes and a range of interventions: group or individual support to the professionals in social care to recognise and respond to the impact of the child’s trauma, which may facilitate decisions about where a child can safely live; thought about the impact of contact where separation is indicated, and to think about the placement or separation of sibling groups; support to the carers of children who are struggling to understand why their care is not making things better; specialist attachment work for Looked After Children including Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy and therapeutic interventions where appropriate.
We are also able to provide supervision and training to field and residential staff, and to prepare court reports.
Educational and Residential Staff
Staff have to provide education and care to children with a range of needs and capacities as well as diverse cultural, language and religious backgrounds. School and residential staff are often also faced with a group of children who have very complicated needs, and high levels of emotional distress and deprivation.
The demands of these children can be overwhelming and we can offer support and consultation to help understand individual children who are presenting in disturbing, worrying, puzzling or challenging ways. It may also be helpful to think about the classroom dynamics and the organizational issues that impact upon how individual staff function, and we can offer consultation to help to provide insight into some of the social and emotional issues that are obstacles to the process of learning, making relationships or maturity.
We can offer help to identify children who may need more specialist help and think with staff about who best can provide this. |