Mental Health and Family Functioning

Mental health problems are very common affecting about one in four people in Britain.

However there is still a lot of embarrassment, shame and confusion, even about the more well-known forms such as depression and anxiety.

Consequently people often try and hide their problems and muddle through. Sometimes the difficulties can be significantly underestimated.

Being able to identify and understand the meaning of a mental health difficulty for that individual, at that time in their life is essential to working with that person. The likely impact upon the family is also important for professionals to understand when working with families.

Our training will:

• Explore the reasons why mental health difficulties arise in families
• Enable professionals to identify difficulties
• Enable professionals to adapt their work to take account of difficulties and improve their effectiveness with families

We can tailor training to take account of professionals at different stages of their knowledge and experience, as well as their different roles with family members, such as educators, primary health workers, social care professionals or mental health practitioners.

Training can consist of a general overview of difficulties or focus on specific problems.

Impact of Parental Mental Health

We recognise that parental mental health difficulties impact directly on the well-being of their children and in turn child care is an added pressure and stress for the parent.  

We therefore believe that helping parents improve their own mental health and emotional well-being is often the most effective intervention for improving long term outcomes for children

Our training focuses on the implication of parental mental health difficulties for children, with a specific focus on:

• Personality problems
• Addictions
• Domestic violence

Working with complex families

We offer more in depth training for those working with families with complex needs, where individuals are struggling with more than one difficulty impacting more than one member of the family.

 

 

Typically these include having a predisposition to mental health difficulties alongside a difficult family history and coping with difficult social factors including domestic violence, addictions, personality problems and abuse.

Understanding all the factors that are impacting upon the family and understanding how these interrelate and influence each other is essential to being able to determine what support to offer and when.

Psychologists call this a formulation to help with treatment planning. This enables clarity of role and co-ordination of provision across services.

Working with families in significant difficulty can be a challenging and an emotional process for the workers as well as the family.  It is therefore important for professionals to consider their own support and well-being.  How to take care of yourself is always an essential component of all our training.  

We are also able to offer on-going support through consultation to help facilitate professionals putting the theory into practice.

Advances in observational skills

Fundamental to all professionals work with families is their observational skills.

Their ability to be able to discriminate between normal interactions and concerning responding is essential.

To be able to make sense of what has been observed in terms of whether interactions indicate underlying mental health difficulties or the emergence of problematic relationships or parenting problems are core skillsfor all professionals working in child services.

These observational skills are particularly useful for professionals who are involved in assessing the attachment relationship between the parent and child as well as supporting parents in their ability to provide structure and manage challenging behaviours safely.

We at Family Focused have developed specific training to help practitioners enhance their observational skills:

• To be able to identify the interactional style of parents with their children
• To be able to identify areas of strength and difficulty in the parents skill base
• To be able to identify targeted areas for work and be able to share this knowledge and understanding with the parent in an easy to understand format breaking down the interactions for the parents into their component part.

This course is especially useful for professionals involved in parenting assessments, parent skills training and contact supervision.

Advances in Attachment and bonding

The importance of a child’s attachment formation on their neurological development and future mental health as well as social and educational development is now widely accepted. More recently the impact of abuse, neglect and loss on children’s attachment formation are being understood in terms of developmental trauma.

Attachment is a dynamic process that continues throughout our lifetime with different emphasis at different stages in our life.

We offer a range of training courses focusing on different aspects of attachment theory and practice, including:

• Attachment theories and implication for practice including recent neurological developments
• Attachment development and types of attachments in children, adolescents and adults
• Attachment and psychopathology, including understanding personality problems in terms of an attachment framework
• Developmental trauma and the implications for parenting a traumatised child
• Developmental trauma and the implications for parenting a traumatised adolescent
• Therapeutic parenting

Risk assessment and risk management

Having extensive experience of working within the forensic and child protection arena we at Family Focused are well placed to offer support and advice around risk and risk management.

Risk is something all professionals working with children and families are concerned with and forms the basis of all safeguarding guidance. However it remains a complex and anxiety provoking area of work for many.

Risk is a multidimensional issue that needs to consider a wide range of issues. Regardless who the focus of the work is with, risk assessments need to consider, the individual (child, adolescent or adult), their family, social network and the community in which they relate to.

Risk is a dynamic process and assessments need to be viewed as on-going. It is important to distinguish between dynamic factors, static/stable factors as well as protective factors that may mitigate or reduce the probability of risk. It is important to understand the interrelationship of each.  

We offer training which provides an overview of risk assessment, useful tools, and risk management principles, including:

• Defining risk
• The cycle of assessment, monitoring and review  
• Identifying vulnerability factors
• Identifying resilience/protective factors
• Determining dynamic v static factors
• Models of analysis
• Risk management and evidence based practice, working within a multi-agency context

Preventing and managing violence / aggression - In Adults

Most people immediately think about breakaway and physical restraint when considering managing aggression and violence and of course these skills are necessary at times.

We at Family Focused are particularly interested in strategies that help prevent situations from escalating to the point where control and restraint techniques are required.

Aggression and violence poses a serious risk to the person as well as those around them and professionals.

Our training focuses on minimising the risk of violence and aggression through staff maintaining their knowledge base and being able to implement the guidelines recommended.

Training provides methods of anticipation and de-escalation and coping with aggressive and violent behaviour. Every effort is made to avoid confrontation.

Specifically we focus on:

• Environmental factors
• Prediction through risk assessment, warning signs and antecedents
• Client centred approaches to working with families
• De-escalation techniques which are various psychosocial short term techniques aimed at calming behaviour and preventing aggressive behaviour from occurring
• Observation skills

• Knowing when and how to leave
• Reviewing and reflecting on practice, including the practitioner monitoring their own verbal and non-verbal behaviour
• Multi-agency approach and information sharing

Preventing and managing violence / aggression - In Children

Everyone has angry feelings, and they are a normal reaction to frustrating times and this is the same for children and adolescents.

Toddlers and young children often have temper tantrums when they don’t get their own way or feel frustrated as a means of letting us know they are unhappy. Adolescents tussel for independence from their families and can appear defiant and challenging of rules.

However some young people struggle more than others. It is when these feelings and behaviours become more extreme and the child or young person displays aggression and violent behaviour that concerns are raised.

Violent and aggressive behaviour can be very hard to deal with. It can have a significant impact on family life. Those around the aggressive child can feel uncertain how to react and respond, for fear of the situation escalating and can feel scared for their own and other family members safety. In turn the child will feel out of control and as if no-one can help them and may well feel frightened themselves and full of self-loathing hidden behind a defiant facade.

Some young people get involved with violence and aggressive behaviour through friends and other associated activities such as crime.

Our training looks at:

• The difference between anger and aggression
• Understanding the violent / aggressive child
• Differential diagnosis for other developmental and mental health problems such as autistic spectrum disorder, ADHD
• We look at vulnerability factors at the different developmental stages for children and adolescents
• Factors that increase the risk of violence
• Violence / aggression prevention strategies
• Disciplining aggressive behaviour

Motivational working: families who struggle to engage

Many of the clients that we work with struggle to engage with services for a range of reasons. Some are not able to acknowledge the difficulties they are experiencing due to their own way of coping; others appear overwhelmed and hopelessly resigned to whatever happens.  

Some will not understand the concerns due to their own experiences. They may have heard frightening stories of others experiences or be compromised by other more immediate threats.

Some families appear to work collaboratively with professionals but change does not occur.

Being able to understand the reasons behind why families are not willing or able to engage is essential to being able to target responding to help build a working relationship that can promote positive change.

This training provides help in identifying difficulties with engagement and understanding the motivation behind this as well as implications for practice.

The training provides strategies to help foster trust and openness as well as increase the potential for clients to be able to acknowledge concerns and consider change, increasing their motivation and belief in change being possible.

The training provides opportunity for participants to practice skills for facilitating motivation to change.

Theory in practice

Learning the theory is the easy part!

We are able to provide a range of training opportunities from one hour to 5 day day events, focusing on putting theory into practice.  

These can focus on using specific psychological principles including:

• Attachment theory
• Systemic Theory and practice
• Cognitive behaviour therapy

Consultation to support theory into practice

Following any of our training courses we would suggest booking a series of consultation meetings which will focus specifically on how professionals integrate their recent learning with everyday practice.

This will be achieved through refreshing key theoretical principles, case discussion and shared learning opportunities.  

Used in this manner, consultation enables professionals to consolidate theoretical learning and generalise skill development beyond the classroom setting and embed new skills into their everyday practice.