Initial contact
I will follow up initial enquiries with a telephone call to identify the needs of your child/teenager, address any immediate concerns or queries and establish whether I am in a position to help your child. If I am not in a position to help this time, I will do my best to signpost you to a colleague who can.
Our initial meeting will involve: –
- A very warm welcome, and where appropriate (i.e. for younger children) a playful and creative approach to help your child feel comfortable.
- Working together with your child/teenager to define achieveable areas for change that they would like to move towards
- Getting to know your child/teenager for who they are, their interests, and the strengths and resources they can utilise to bring about desired change
- Asking questions and using other assessment measures (e.g. questionnaires, cognitive assessment) to help make sense of your child’s difficulties within the contexts that shape their experiences, including family, school, developmental stage, and hospital/medical teams where relevant
- For older children/teenagers it is likely that the meeting will be split into time with your teenager alone as well as with family members they have chosen to bring with them
Where appropriate, I will liaise with relevant professionals who are involved with your child in different contexts to strengthen the assessment
Developing a shared understanding (‘Formulation’) and plan for intervention
- The information gathered will help us to develop a shared understanding ‘formulation’ of the factors contributing to the development and maintenance of difficulties, as well as identifying the strengths and resources your child/teenager, family and systems supporting can harness to help them move towards their desired goals. This will inform our plan for intervention which will draw upon evidence based/informed research and may include aspects of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Systemic and Behavioural approaches
This might include:-
- ‘Psycho-education’ – written material/web based resources to help your child/teenager and the family understand better the difficulties experienced
- Identifying and trying out new/more helpful ways of responding in order to move towards goals
- Developing strategies for coping with difficult feelings
- Learning ways of thinking differently
- When necessary, working with adults within the system (e.g. family, school, hospital) to encourage new ways of understanding and supporting your child/teenager
- Please see information in EcoPsychology Section for what to expect if you are seeking to engage in accessing Clinical Psychology support in a nature based setting