Self-referral
Contact us directly if you are interested in psychological therapy with a PartnershipProjects associate. We ensure a high professional standard in the provision of psychological therapies, which are specifically directed at overcoming aggression and violence in the family – Non Violent Resistance (NVR), or for very severe trauma – Resource Based Trauma Therapy (RBTT).
Psychological Interventions and Therapy for Social Services, fostering, and other social care agencies
Family preservation
Children and young people are often accommodated when parents experience depression, post-traumatic stress and substance misuse. Young people may also go into care due to their own aggressive and violent or risk-taking behaviour. We use brief interventions to address these difficulties: Non Violent Resistance (NVR) is a very effective systemic approach that has been developed specifically to help parents overcome their children’s serious behavioural problems. We use this time-limited intervention to prevent young people from becoming accommodated. With Resource Based Trauma Therapy (RBTT), a combination of psychological therapies aimed especially at helping traumatised individuals and families, who have had a long history of Social Services involvement, we enable parents to alleviate their mental health or substance and alcohol misuse problems. Our service not only addresses the therapeutic needs of families in brief and outcome-focussed ways - it brings therapy and child protection together by tailoring each single intervention to maximise its effectiveness, with intensive contact between social worker, family and ourselves as psychological therapists.
Preserving foster placements
Foster placements break down at great human cost to Looked After Children and their carers. The financial burden on Local Authorities, when expensive residential placements or even secure accommodation are required, inhibits the growth of preventive services such as family support. We address the most common reasons for foster placement breakdown - risk-taking or controlling, volatile, and often violent behaviour - with an intensive 3-month NVR intervention. This entails working closely together with carers, the young person’s social worker and the fostering social worker. Where necessary, school is involved in the intervention, to prevent exclusion and the resulting pressure on the placement. ’Preserving foster placements’ can also be used to enable a young person’s return back into foster care from a residential or secure placement or from respite care. This service will effectively maintain Family and Friends Placements, as well.
Return to family
Families move on, while children and young people remain in care. Early rehabilitation back into the family may often be the better option. However, parents might worry, that the child’s return to the family would upset the delicate balance they have been able to achieve with the younger children, and the Local Authority may not have the specialist therapeutic resources required to achieve a return to the family. Using similar psychological approaches to those for ‘family preservation’ and ‘preserving foster placements’, we enable a supported rehabilitation when viable and appropriate. This is then linked to a care plan with agreed responsibilities and time scales. As the psychological therapists, we take responsibility for leading the entire process, working intensively with parents, social worker, fostering social worker and foster carers, and facilitating their close cooperation.
Therapeutic assessment of parents’ ability to change
Our ‘pre-post birth’ model provides expert assessments of parents’ ability to change in therapy within their child’s time scale. The intensive therapeutic programme begins as soon as the Local Authority learns of the pregnancy, within an agreed contract between parent, Social Services and us as therapists. Individual, couples and parent-child interaction therapy enable us to provide an interim report after six weeks, and a conclusive report three months after the child’s birth.