The second reason I decided to develop I Matter Training was the sheer numbers of children with mental health difficulties and challenging behaviour in schools, clinics and in my own community, and the growing numbers of young people entering our criminal justice system. Click here to see a recent summary of Mental Health Statistics from Young Minds UK. Notice the important link between mental health issues and children who are ending up in the criminal justice system. I felt in the context of this, that there was a need to get important ideas to people who really need them. This was not just to the young people, it was the adults who cared for them.
I joined my clinical psychology training course having spent several years working in inner city Birmingham as a primary teacher. I therefore knew first hand the numbers of children with complex difficulties and challenging behaviours that were to be found in every school - and that was more than 20 years ago. I knew that every class teacher and every classroom assistant worked every day with children who were struggling to manage in school or access learning as result of social or learning challenges and/or trauma related difficulites. I knew that teachers often approached teaching with very little training indeed in anything to do with mental health nor even around child development.
As a new parent, I also knew that parenting was a steep learning curve but that if there were any more complex challenges, it was very difficult indeed to find people who were knowledgeable who could really help. So even adoptive parents or foster carers who often lived with the most complex children had very little preparation or support in making sense of what was going on.
I therefore started out trying to teach a class to professionals and parents in my area. There was a great deal of interest, but as finances became tighter it was more and more difficult to reach professionals and parents. Schools had to find funding not just for the courses but also for the cover for supply teachers so staff could be released. When trying to reach parents, we faced all the challenges of trying to support people who have to do the school run, be in at night, respond to the needs of a sick child etc etc. Schools and families were struggling, but how to respond? So, when the internet came along, it seemed that maybe this could be a way to reach people with more flexibility - and this led to the decision to create an online version. But I am moving on ahead too fast - because the third reason I developed I Matter Training (click if you want more information) was because I was interested in the overlaps between the increasing numbers of diagnostic categories that were being so liberally used. Look out for more of this in my next blog...
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So I want to tell you about why I decided to put together I Matter Training and why I think it may be helpful to you. The first and most important reason was that 20 years ago I was trying to understand a very confusing picture myself. I trained at a very interesting time as a clinical psychologist. Ideas were changing and there were fierce disagreements between psychologists about what was the proper task of a psychologist and what was not. How to resolve the confusion was a very personal question. If you have found yourself not sure about to do to help yourself or a complex child, I want to reassure you that this is not surprising, because there really has not been clarity. Professionals have disagreed fiercely, so no wonder parents have had a challenge to work things out. Today however, something has changed, and with the advent of research on the brain, psychologists of different traditions now are beginning to find some shared points of agreement.
I Matter Training represents my attempt to pull a lot of these ideas together into a very practical back to basics approach. I am a parent myself and I was a primary teacher and I know that parents and front-line professionals find psychology fascinating but they need it to be practical. Professionals can still disagree quite vigorously and one of the things that they disagree about in children's services is whether something called CBT (cognitive behaviour therapy) is sufficient to help professionals and parents help children, especially complex children. I don't think it is. I think what is missing is a clear map that ties a wider set of ideas together.
I remember the sense of finally lifting my own head out of the fog when the ideas started to come together. Now I call the I Matter Foundation Course, from Confusion to Clarity as I have seen such a lot of confusion in work with children with complex needs, and I feel that until we can agree as a community about what we are really trying to do when helping a complex child, we probably will not be very effective in helping address the number of children who are struggling. The second reason I decided to develop I Matter Training was the sheer numbers of children who were struggling. More on that in my Next Blog Why I Matter? Reason #2. If we haven't spoken already, but you would like to speak to me further, email me on contact@imatterproject and let's set up a call so that I can understand more about your current interests and concerns! It is always exciting to find people who are on the same page and making a positive difference. Last week I spent a fun morning in Blackburn with Adoption Matters NW, an important local charity. We were sharing coffee and trying to work out how to improve the mental health and confidence of professionals, parents and young people involved in adoption via the provision of psycho-education and support. In the face of the plans to expand adoption as an option for children and families, we all agreed that it is essential for appropriate training and support to be part of the package, not just for the adoptive parents but also for the adults in schools that adoptive children encounter everyday, and for young people themselves. A good model for adoption support should, in my view be like good dental care. Good dental care requires an ongoing relationship with a dental practice with regular check-ups that ensure that development of the child's teeth is progressing in a healthy direction. The child and family and the wider community receive regular education about the importance of good dental care across the life span and when decay or irregularities are identified early, intervention can be supportive, less time-consuming and can avoid unnecessary extractions. When going to see a dentist you are glad to be going to see a specialist, and if there are any complications, you prefer to see someone who knows you and knows the specific details about your teeth. Everyone understands that there are some critical periods, as baby teeth and later adult teeth come through, that benefit from closer attention to ensure that the adult teeth emerge strong and healthy. Why dentistry? There is enough knowledge now about the important phases and tasks of early child development and about the challenges involved in adopting a child who has experienced disruption or trauma, to know that the focus of mental health care and intervention from the very earliest days of the adoption process, should be on prevention and timely education. Intervention cannot be a one time only event, education is needed across the lifespan of the adoption with extra support given at critical phases such as early during placement, at school transition times, or during adolesence. As with dentistry, the goal of an ongoing preventative relationship in adoption support should be, ideally, to provide regular check-ups, and consultations and to maintain the family within a supportive community, so that difficulties can be identified early with a clear goal of preventing unnecessary pain and discomfort, distress or breakdown. Whilst most adopted children are catered for within mainstream education, support and focussed education is needed from people who are knowledgeable about the types of dynamics that can commonly arise. In my clinical work I have seen too many adoption families accessing support too late, when the difficulties were already intense for child and adult. Often in the absence of adequately funded support resources, adopters find themselves having to interface with poorly informed professionals. Trying to provide crisis intervention in such circumstances is very time-consuming and also often difficult and when too little is provided too late, sometimes really difficult scenarios can have become entrenched. Why is such support not already more widely available? First and foremost regular adoption check-ups are often not yet properly funded nor are they required of families, and in my view this is a mistake. The process of becoming registered as an adopter is so demanding that it has been my observation that once approved, some professionals breath a sigh of relief and some families are in turn keen to close the door to the professionals with a hope of being able to create a normal family life. Yet adoption is rarely straightforward and when parents adopt children who have been subject to neglect and trauma the parenting process simply will not be like that involved in caring for a typical child. This is very clear - support is needed and should in my view be built into the whole adoption process from the outset. But it really is not just the adopters themselves who need support and training. For an adoption to be successful, parents need advanced parenting skills, but school based staff also often need advanced understandings of child development and the impact of trauma on learning and behaviour. Understanding and strategies that a typical parent or teacher of a typical child can draw on to muddle through often just are not enough and too often, in the absence of more advanced understanding and skill, adopters and professionals can find themselves at sea and unwittingly exacerbating difficulties that could with more understanding been managed differently. Adoption is more complicated than dental care but our support systems are not yet as well developed. Adoption is multi-leveled and relationship-based with complex developmental dynamics involved. There are therefore very real challenges in delivering life span adoption support. In my view the implication of this is that support models have to actively encourage and support families and professionals to see being part of a community and the task of developing advanced skills as a life-long learning process. If you are interested in learning more about the work of Adoption Matters NW and their Centre for Adoption Support click here. I am looking forward to working further with them. |
Dr Cathy BetoinDr Cathy Betoin The I Matter Prof Blog:
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