Parental Mental Health and Child Welfare Network - Practice examples

The Cape Project in Greenwich, South East London

is a joint Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust and Greenwich Children’s Services initiative funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. The project provides integrated services to Greenwich families where there is a parent or carer with severe and/or enduring mental health problems. The multi disciplinary project team supports families affected by parental mental illness by offering them a direct work service and by providing a consultation and training service to practitioners who work with adults with mental health problems and with children. The CAPE Project has recently been evaluated by the National Children’s Bureau. Read their evaluation, or contact Richard Anderson, Programme Manager of the CAPE Project for more information.

Family Group Conferencing (FGC)

has been piloted in North Essex Mental Health Partnership Trust. Families were selected for the pilot when an adult with severe and enduring mental illness (including personality disorder) required a care programme approach.

Evaluation findings taken from the Literature Review by the University of Birmingham, commissioned for the Families at Risk Review

Family care Planning is a model of planning that has emerged in Australia in which all family members are involved in drawing up a proactive crisis plan should a mental health crisis occur and a longer term plan identifying family strengths and goals for each family member.

Preliminary evaluations are positive and suggest that this approach also brings about greater discussion and understanding of mental health issues. However this pilot is also highlighting that many mental health professionals in the adult sector feel inadequately trained to work with whole families in this way. (Taken from the literature review by University of Birmingham)

Making it Work: Good practice with young carers and their families (PDF file), by Jenny Frank

Protocol for working with parents: Practice guidance for clinicians in adult services when assessing patients who are also parents (46kb PDF file), by Amynta Cardwell and Adult Mental Health and Children and Families Social Service Departments, Central and North West London Mental Health Trust, 2002.

Storybook Dads (and now Mums) is a charity based in Dartmoor prison to ensure prisoners can stay in touch with their children. Two editing suites are equipped with recording equipment and selected prisoners are trained to be editors. Prisoners record a story which is then downloaded onto a computer. Music and sound effects are added and the final story is put onto a CD. Poor and non readers are not excluded from the scheme because the editing process can eliminate mistakes. This could easily be adapted for parents with mental health problems whilst in hospital.

Whose baby is it anyway': Developing a joined-up service involving child and adult teams working in a mental health trust (83kb PDF file), by Amynta Cardwell and Clive Britten for the journal of adoption & fostering Vol.26 2002 p 76-84 Nov 2002.

Interagency project between Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust and Cardiff County Council, establishing a level 3 training programme designed to bring together practitioners from adult mental health services and children’s services.