CPCS Aims

• To help facilitate the development of holistic and effective child and family services through theory- and evidence-based practice within all health, social care, education and voluntary agencies.
• To disseminate to service designers, commissioners, managers and frontline staff an explicit understanding of the core helping processes, their implications for service design and training, and strategies for implementing effective help.
• To work in partnership with other agencies to facilitate their ability to involve and engage service users (children, parents, carers and families), to listen to and explore their needs effectively, and to negotiate service strategies that take account of and promote the psychological and social well-being of all family members.

Service and Policy Context

High levels of psychological need in children and families are not being systematically met by current services. Promotional and preventive service strategies are emerging in many countries (e.g. Sure Start in UK, home visiting in Australia and the USA) and policies are becoming more responsive to the views of children and families and their psychosocial needs (e.g. National Service Framework & Every Child Matters in the UK). Since such changes potentially involve the whole of the children’s workforce, all practitioners have to consider the nature of their relationship with families. This requires the development of family-centre practice, including an explicit understanding of the processes involved in working in partnership with families and the skills to put this into practice. To help meet these workforce needs, the Centre has been developing evidence-based practices and training, based upon an explicit theoretical model of the core helping processes.

Theoretical basis

All the services provided by the Centre are designed to take account of an explicit understanding of the helping processes. The theory is known as the Family Partnership Model and is described in detail in the text which accompanies our training (see Davis, Day & Bidmead, 2002 in Research and Publications). For simplicity, the model can be represented diagrammatically as a set of interconnected boxes each containing a small number of explicit points.

Click here for presentation depicting model.

CPCS Activities and Services

• Conference organisation.
• Presentations, seminars, and workshops on request.
• Commissioned training courses based upon the Family Partnership Model for frontline staff, supervisors, facilitators and facilitator trainers.
• Supervision for staff at all levels implementing and working within the model.
• Consultancy in relation to service development, evaluation and research.
• Research into service processes and outcomes.

Governance

CPCS is part of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Directorate of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust. It was set up in January 2001 with generous funding from the Guy’s & St. Thomas’ Charitable Foundation. Our offices are at the Munro Centre on the Guy’s Hospital site at London Bridge. We have close links with King’s College London through the Florence Nightingale school of Nursing & Midwifery and the Institute of Psychiatry.

Staff:

Permanent Centre staff

Dr Crispin Day, Centre Director, Consultant Clinical Child Psychologist	Ms Christine Bidmead, Training Facilitator, Health Visitor
Dr Michelle MacGrath	Ms Soni Mutschelknauss, Centre Administrator
Ms Gee Gordon, Centre Secretary	Ms Megan Ellis, Training Facilitator

Freelance Facilitators

Liz Andrews, Counsellor and Health Visitor.

Linda Buchan, Consultant and Lecturer in Clinical Psychology.

Paula Corredor Lopez, Clinical Psychologist and Training Facilitator.

Rosalind Dixon, Training Facilitator.

Maureen Gallagher, Training Facilitator.

Ruth Hind, Clinical Child Psychologist.

Candida Hunt, Training Facilitator.

Judy Hunter, Training Facilitator.

Michelle MacGrath, Specialist Teacher and Education Consultant.

Gill Markless, Psychotherapist.

Lorraine Meltzer, Early Years Specialist and Consultant.

Anne Murray, Training Facilitator.

Rosey Singh, Consultant Clinical Psychologist in Childhood Disability.

Diane Vincent, Specialist Teacher for Children with Hearing Difficulties.

Sarah Walker, Training Facilitator.