Outreach Projects
The Anna Freud Centre runs outreach projects which aim to make our services available to those who for various reasons may find it difficult to travel to the Centre, and to offer support in other settings such as prisons, schools and community centres. Professionals from the Centre spend time at other locations in order to provide their services. Click on the links below to find out more about these projects.
- The Renal Project at Great Ormond Street Hospital
- Parent-Infant Project outreach work at England's Lane Hostel
- New Beginnings course for mothers and babies in prisons
- Parent-Infant Project outreach work at Belsize Priory
- Training in Community-Based Multimodal Treatment for Adolescents and Young Adults with Severe Psychiatric Disturbance
- Sure Start outreach parent-toddler groups (Rowley Way and England's Lane)
- Dorothy Gardner Children's Centre
- St. Mary of the Angels Primary School
Dorothy Gardner Children's Centre
The AFC has two outreach projects running at the Dorothy Gardner Children's Centre, which is a large nursery that provides for children under five years of age in Westminster. The projects are funded by the Dorothy Gardner Centre and Westminster Sure Start.
The first project, which has been running for over five years, involves Carol Broughton, a Child Psychotherapist from the AFC, who spends one day a week at the Children's Centre.
Where staff have identified children who are having difficulties in the nursery, Carol spends time seeing the individual mothers and children concerned. She also observes children in the classroom, and discusses individual children with staff in order to help them understand the children's behaviour in emotional terms, and to develop strategies to help them in the nursery setting.
The second project involves group sessions designed to help the numerous members of the local Arabic-speaking population. A significant percentage of families using the Centre speak Arabic as their first, and often their only, language.
In order to meet the needs of this population, and to help them to integrate more into the life of the nursery, we have provided an Arabic-speaking psychotherapist, Nawal Assous, who runs two parents' groups for mothers of children attending the nursery.
Many of the families using the centre are refugees with difficult and often traumatic histories. The focus of the groups is on parenting and family issues, but the mothers' experiences of living as Muslims in a very different and sometimes hostile culture are often discussed.
The groups have helped mothers form closer relationships with each other, and increased understanding between this large group of mothers and the nursery staff.
Recently the group has produced a children's story book in Arabic. The psychotherapist also advises staff on individual children who are experiencing difficulties in the nursery.
St Mary of the Angels Primary School
This project involves a Child Psychotherapist from the AFC spending one morning per week at St Mary of the Angels state primary school in Westminster. The school is in the process of becoming a Children's Centre for the area.
The school's catchment area has a population with many social and economic problems, relating for example to drug and alcohol use, domestic violence and so on.
The Child Psychotherapist, Norka Malberg, sees individual children for short-term (10 - 12 week) therapy, and also consults the school's staff about particular pupils, meets parents and so on.