Parental Mental Health and Child Welfare Network

October 2009 Newsletter

 

Welcome to the October’s re-energised Newsletter for the Parental Mental Health and Child Welfare Network!!

You´re probably thinking to yourselves, ”Wow, where have you been?!! ” And quite rightly so!! We have experience a great deal of challenge and upheaval in the last six months.

However the resilience and commitment of the team has pulled us through each challenge and we are once more raring to go. In this month´s issue of our newsletter, we´ll update you on the long awaited parental mental health and child welfare guidelines from our friend and close ally SCIE.

We´ll also give you more information about our November Study day coming up on the 25th.

Even though the Network took a back seat in the shadows over the summer months, there has still been a lot going on and we will include a number of useful bits of information to keep you abreast of key happenings in parental mental health and child welfare.

SCIE Guidelines Launch

The official launch took place on 7 July with a lively conference at which delegates took the chance to celebrate the achievements of the many organisations and individuals involved in developing the guidelines, and looked forward to what promises to be an inspiring four-year programme to implement and review the guidance.

We co-hosted a workshop with colleagues from LB Tower Hamlets and the national Safeguarding Children´s Leads Network which was warmly received.

Examples of local reactions to the guidelines locally and plans for supporting their implementation include the London Boroughs of Southwark and Lewisham, from where Daphne McKenna and Chris McKee reported that:

• Great that it will add much needed national support, it cannot be ignored now! It´s so much work we will need to continue to take it in stages.
• How can SCIE help with the implementation
• It will be hard work getting all agencies to sign up and made aware of this guidance
• Wish some of these ideas could be pulled together nationally
• Set up a small multi-agency group to review existing provision/ procedures in the light of guidance
• Identify key drivers in Lewisham
• Presentation to LCSB re. aspects to implement and consider details
• Agree with SCIE how these can be measured to provide an evidence base for future guidance.

SCIE has further details of the event on its website including inspiring audio versions of the views of several people involved in the day. Follow this link : go to SCIE

The PMHCW Network is working with our steering group on developing training support – short courses, potentially training for trainers and brokerage of a package – that will work cooperatively with the e-resources being developed by SCIE.

Keep checking our website for updates on these developments over the coming weeks and months. For copies of the summary and full versions of SCIE´s guidance follow this link: http://www.scie.org.uk/news/events/pmh09/index.asp

Study Day on Personality Disorders and Parenting

Following the roaring success of our last study day held in Leeds in March which was attended by over 80 people and received very positive feedback (failures in technology notwithstanding), we are repeating this event which aimed to support improved parenting for and by people with diagnoses of personality disorders, this time in London on Wednesday 25 November 2009 (hopefully without the technical difficulties this time).

The day will be opened by Professor Eddie Kane Director of the Personality Disorder Institute and embrace a variety of workshops and presentations including from the national DH personality disorders programme, the Anna Freud Centre and perspectives from parents who have personality disorder diagnoses, as well as some space for creativity.

If you would like to get involved or to book a place please contact Tayo Richards Don’t delay as places are limited and we are offering an early bird discount for places booked before 31st October.

A joint report from the two events will be published online following this study day.

Think Family toolkit – improving support for families at risk.

Think Family means securing better outcomes for children, young people and families with additional needs by co’ordinating the support they receive from children’s, young people’s, adults’ and family services.

The DCSF has now published a Think Family toolkit which sets out some of the ways in which these practices can be developed ’on the ground’ and potentially offers an important bridge between its own overarching guidelines and those from SCIE, and how these can be made a reality in day-to-day practice. Much of what it contains has been developed locally and reflects the enormous commitment and ingenuity of those working with children, mothers, fathers and families.

The Toolkit is a ’living’ document and will be updated when required. For further details and copies of the toolkit go to:
Family toolkit

Islington Family Pathfinder – example of progress implementing systems change from Think Family toolkit.

Islington local authority has introduced a Think Family Programme Board which is chaired by an Assistant Director from Adult Mental Health, and has a Children’s Social Care Service Head as deputy chair. The Board is attended by senior managers from adults’ and children’s services from both the statutory and voluntary sector. The Board drives forward the programme of change via its feedback to the Family Support Strategy Group (FSSG), which leads the early intervention and prevention work for families at risk.

The FSSG reports to the Children’s Board and, ultimately, to the Local Strategic Partnership.

A Think Family service based upon joint working between adults’ and children’s services has been established and agencies referring families to the team are expected to remain involved in the first phase of an intervention with a family. The team undertakes multi-agency, whole family assessments based upon the Common Assessment Framework (CAF). Identified unmet needs and support to build upon family strengths are set out in a support plan, developed at multi-agency ‘Team Around the Family’ (TAF) meetings and regularly reviewed.

An extensive workforce development programme is embedding integrated working practices amongst staff working with children, young people and parents. The Think Family team delivers training on Think Family approaches, services available locally and referral routes into these. ‘Safeguarding Children’ training has also been arranged for adult mental health services and an adult mental health practitioner is working with the Local Safeguarding Children Board to deliver training for new social workers in both adults’ and children’s services. families at risk.

Targeted mental health in schools DCSF programme report published

Improving the mental health of children and young people is a critical priority informing the improvement of children’s services. This summary report draws together the key points of learning from the quarterly action learning set summary reports, and 11 interviews with a range of people involved in delivering Targeted Mental Health in Schools (TaMHS). see: full report.

Participants were drawn from all pathfinders and divided into four groups based on regional lines. Participants included project managers, practitioners from schools and observers from the TaMHS ‘Me and My School’ National Evaluation.

The report structure covers six specific themes. These themes formed the basis of the interview structure, although most are interlinked in some way.

The themes are: partnerships and multi-agency working; choice of interventions and models of practice; engaging stakeholders (schools, children, young people and parents); evaluation; financial planning; and influencing system change in children’s mental health services.

Throughout the report, case studies and examples of good practice are included in text boxes, providing examples of the project impact on children and young people and their families.

Review of Working Together opportunity to comment

On 12 March 2009 Lord Laming published his Report, The Protection of Children in England: A Progress report. In his report, Lord Laming made a number of recommendations to strengthen and clarify the serious case review process. His recommendations were accepted in full by Government with an undertaking to update statutory guidance set out in Chapter 8 of Working Together to Safeguard Children.

The revised guidance aims to improve the quality, consistency and impact of serious case reviews and is directed in particular at Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) who by law undertake a serious case review whenever a child dies or is seriously injured and abuse or neglect is known or suspected to be a factor.

Changes proposed to the guidance include:

• Clearly setting out that the prime purpose of an SCR is to learn lessons both at an individual and inter-agency level;
• Emphasising the importance of undertaking SCRs in a way that promotes learning and;
• Extending the timescale for completing most SCRs from four to six months, given the inter-relationship between SCRs and other processes, such as criminal prosecutions or coroners inquests.

The closing date for comments is Friday 23 October. If your organization is submitting comments we would welcome a copy of them so that we can compile a Network-wide response. Please send to Tayo Richards

For a copy of the consultation document and details of how to respond follow this link: Working together.

Website updates

We are currently updating our website links to sister organisations and their resources. These include the compilation of all of SCIE’s research reviews commissioned to support the development of its guidelines.
link to sister resources.

Finally the Children’s Society has a wonderful campaign on this month to encourage fathers to read to their children. You can listen to stars including Eamonn Holmes and Damon Albarn reading chapters from Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox and get ideas on how to support bedtime reading in your own household and beyond. Go to Children’s society and enjoy!

And finally

Well that’s all for now, but please always remember that we love to hear from you, so please feel free to send us any suggestions, challenges & victories, best practice or any ideas you may have.

Till next time.

Vicky Nicholls & Tayo Richards