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Family Trauma Series: Building Bridges - a reflective care approach in social services to support separated children & young people

Our “Building Bridges” project seeks to address some of these underlying issues through training and supporting social workers to work with a mentalizing approach, deepening their understanding of the mental health and emotional needs of these young people, thereby ensuring the help offered to them is most suited to their needs and provided early on.

About this webinar

The Anna Freud Family Trauma team’s new live webinar series provides expert practice insights into key clinical practice areas affecting families and children and young people. More than 45% of children in care (CiC) have a diagnosable mental health disorder – five times the prevalence among children in the general population. Due to high levels of trauma, grief and suffering, separated children and young people (CYP) are likely to have even higher prevalence of mental health disorders, but there is little evidence or best practice available to support their complex needs. There is a significant gap in how best to support these young people, and with a significant rise in separated CYP in the UK over the last ten years, it is a gap that needs to be addressed. Our “Building Bridges” project seeks to address some of these underlying issues through training and supporting social workers to work with a mentalizing approach, deepening their understanding of the mental health and emotional needs of these young people, thereby ensuring the help offered to them is most suited to their needs and provided early on. The project is informed by young people with lived experience of forced migration to ensure young people’s voices are heard and the project developed accordingly – cop-production is at its core. This project offers a transformative lifeline to an otherwise highly vulnerable and often forgotten group in society. This webinar will look at the benefits and challenges of setting up a reflective care framework for separated children.

Aims of this webinar

This webinar aims to explore:

  • How to implement a reflective care approach based on a mentalizing framework training and imbedding a virtual mental health lead for separated children and young people.

  • Supporting social workers to identify the (mental health) needs of separated children and young people.

  • Supporting social workers to draw out the strengths and hopes of separated CYP

  • The benefits and challenges of creating a reflective care framework in a local authority

Who is this webinar for?

  • Solicitors and professionals working with families, children and young people.