Children in Care and Adopted Children
We offer a range of support for adopted, looked after or fostered children and their families and carers; whether it’s an assessment, therapy, parenting, consultation or training for residential homes, support for schools, medico-legal queries or supervision. We have substantial experience of supporting children and families who have experienced significant trauma and attachment difficulties.
Dr Lakshman (Lucky) Ganatra and Dr Manjeet Susch both offer support for Children in Care.
Adoptive and Foster Parents
If you are an adoptive or foster parent worried about your child’s well-being, there are a number of areas we can support you including:
- Adjusting to your new family life
- Understanding your child’s past and how it might be impacting their emotional and behavioural development
- Learning how to therapeutically parent a child who has experienced trauma
- Direct work with the child/young person to cope with
- anxieties, worries, phobias
- difficulties in school
- adjustment
- anger
- trauma
- relationship and identity difficulties
- attachment difficulties
- life story work
Find out more about:
Assessment
Assessment
We start with a bespoke psychological assessment which is designed to help you and your child to understand and manage the difficulties faced effectively. The assessment includes exploring the child’s history and life at home, in both historical and current family life. We also take into consideration any other important information from past, reports, school and other professionals involved to get a well-rounded view of what is going on for the child.
After the assessment, we complete a report which is easy to read which outlines my recommendations and also offer to feedback face-to-face and which gives us time to discuss any concerns. Where therapy is recommended, we can usually offer immediate on-going support.
If would like to commission a specific assessment or would like further details of how we may be able to help through assessment, please Contact us.
Therapy / Intervention
Therapy / Intervention
Where you are seeking therapy or therapy has been suggested through psychological assessment, we can offer on-going work and support for children and families or professionals who are experiencing social, emotional or behavioural difficulties including:
- Anxiety, worry, panic attacks
- Separation and generalised anxiety
- Attachment
- Anger and difficulties managing emotions (emotional regulation)
- Low self-esteem, low mood and depression
- Identity and Culture
- Social/emotional development and skills
- Behaviours that are challenging and difficult to understand
- Sleep problems
- Adjustment to change including life transitions, school changes, family conflict and separations
- Trauma including grief and bereavement
- Therapeutic life story work (usually alongside social workers)
We work with children and young people of all ages, however the work with children can differ depending on the age of the young person and the difficulty they are having. Usually it is the parent/carer who is concerned and asking for support for their child and want to be involved in helping their child feel better. The process of working with children and young people can be complicated for this reason. Therapy for example, may include the child and parent / carer together or individually with a combination of these.
For looked after and adopted children, we draw on a range of models and psychological theory to think and adapt the way we work including:
- Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP)
- Life Story
- Systemic Therapy
- Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)
- Narrative Therapy
- Solution Focussed Therapy (SFT)
- Compassion Focussed Therapy (CFT)
Consultations
Sometimes the young person or family are not ready for therapy. At times, it may be beneficial for parents, carers, or professionals to have consultations. This is an opportunity to explore and discuss worries about the child’s emotional and behavioural well-being and can be around specific topics such as:
- Behaviours that are challenging
- Anger
- “Splitting” of parents or carers / teams
- Dissociation
- Self-harm
Consultations can be either one-off but often, for residential homes/fostering agencies or schools, you may wish for on-going consultation for either the young person or the team. Please see the relevant section for more information.
