This section is for Social Workers and other professionals who wish to know more about contracting Psychological Pathways to work with a family known to Social Services.
We provide:
- Consultation to the professional network involved with a family
- Psychological Assessments and Reports on children, young people, and/or their parents (for contracting expert witness work please see our Legal Services section).
- Neurocognitive and Psychological assessments of parents
- Therapeutic Intervention for children, young people, and/or parents
- Therapeutic Support and Training for Foster Carers and Residential Carers
- Training for Social Workers – please click here
- Training for foster carers and parents – please click here
- Facilitation of Reflective Practice forums
- Mentoring/support for professionals in complex areas of work
How do I make a referral:
To make a referral please email: admin@psychologicalpathways.com
What happens when we receive your referral?
You will receive a referral acknowledgement via email. Your referral will be reviewed by our team, one of whom will then make contact with you. They will undertake a brief needs assessment with you which will enable them to generate an estimate of costs for the proposed work. Once we have received email confirmation that the estimate of costs and terms of business have been accepted, we will:
- Seek background information from you that will enable us to create a client file
- Allocate the case to one of our Specialist Clinicians (Clinical Psychologists, Therapeutic Practitioners, Nurse Therapists).
- Arrange an Initial Consultation
What happens at an Initial Consultation?
Usually, we begin all our work with a consultation with the Social Worker and others within the professional network (as advised by the Social Worker). Consultation is helpful in that it provides an opportunity to:
- Test our understanding of the issues described within background reports
- Seek answers to any questions that have arisen in the course of our reading
- Get an update on the family circumstances
- Hear the views of the various professionals within the network about what they believe is in the best interests of the family
- Discuss the options for therapeutic intervention in this case
- Generate a formulation or shared understanding of the issues and identify how best to proceed
Our Clinician will keep a record of the meeting and provide a brief note of the key outcomes. Therapeutic intervention can be with:
- The child/young person
- The child/young person and their parent
- The caregivers
- Systemic
Typical Interventions we provide include:
- Improving the parents capacity to collaborate with Social Services in the best interests of the children
- Motivational Interviewing work with parents
- Improving parental emotional sensitivity and attunement to their child(ren)
- Helping adults better support children through challenging conversations (see narrative model)
- Helping adults support children with transitions (from short term to long term care/adoption)
- Improving the quality of access/contact between children and their families
- Supporting children in the context of high conflict parenting post-separation
- Therapeutic Parenting work with Foster carers
Re-Contracting
Upon completion of our work any additional pieces of work outside of the original contract, for example, attendance at meetings or staff liaison, will need to be re-contracted.