Therapeutic Support for Residential Children’s Homes

Psychological Consultation provides a safe space to explore the needs of the young people you support alongside the challenges of looking after young people who have experienced significant trauma. These sessions can include intervention planning, safeguarding and risk management sharing resources that will support you in your service. Utilising psychological theories of attachment and trauma informed principles we will provide you with therapeutic strategies and support. 

Psychological formulation is a structured process used by psychologists and mental health professionals to understand an individual’s difficulties within a broader psychological framework. Through our support we will work with you to understand a young persons story and begin to tentatively make sense how these experiences have influenced their beliefs about themselves, others and the world, how they have developed strategies to keep themselves safe and how their underlying feelings shape the behaviours we see. Psychological formulation provides a way for us to understand the complex interplay of factors contributing to a young person’s difficulties, it also helps us to guide therapeutic interventions. Finally, formulation provides a shared language and framework of understanding so teams are able to work consistently to support the psychological needs of young people.

We want to work closely with you to understand your service and teams. Our MPS consultants will embed into your homes and get to know the staff teams. We work relationally and know that the greatest outcomes will be achieved when we work together and understand each other.

Reflective practice enables teams to reflect on key themes and challenges in their work, and understand the emotional impact of working with children who have experienced trauma. Everyone brings their own experiences into working with children and sometimes we can experience our own relational triggers in work. It is helpful to understand these. We thread reflective practice through all our work in residential children’s homes but also offer reflective spaces. 

We understand that working in residential care is both a rewarding and challenging journey. We offer staff wellbeing services to support the emotional needs of staff teams. This can include training around supervision, embedding a supervision framework, wellbeing days, check in calls, 1:1 support and signposting to appropriate services.

We understand the critical importance of clinical and reflective supervision in promoting professional growth and enhancing the quality of care. We can provide a supportive and collaborative environment where practitioners can explore complex cases, reflect on their practice, and gain valuable insights to inform their work. Through a combination of clinical expertise and reflective practice principles, our supervision sessions empower practitioners to deepen their understanding, refine their skills, and enhance their effectiveness in supporting clients. 

A psychological assessment is a structured process for gathering information, and understanding a young person’s psychological functioning, cognitive abilities, personality traits and emotional and social wellbeing.  We utilise a variety of assessment tools including both standardised and idiographic measures. We have practitioners including forensic psychologists who specialise in the assessment of complex risk including risk of violence and assessment of harmful sexual behaviour. 

Our team of consultants have extensive experience working with young people who have experienced significant attachment disruptions. We understand that establishing safety within the therapeutic relationship is paramount and, as such, the approach to, and pace of, therapeutic work is carefully planned in accordance with a young person’s psychological assessment.

All the services we deliver are supported by a robust outcomes monitoring framework to ensure that we are able to evidence the impact of the work we are completing with you and to be able to provide you evidence to your commissioners, social workers of the therapeutic input you are embedding.

We are proud to be able to offer a large resource bank for your service. This includes keyworker tools such as workbooks, mental health information and guides, resources for you to complete direct work, and resources for staff.