Therapeutic services in England
Action for Children is growing its services for children in care, including the provision of care placements as well as therapeutic support to improve the emotional health and wellbeing of children.
Our Vision
To support the growth of quality and sustainable therapeutic care environments, offering children in care across the spectrum of need the opportunity to recover and thrive in their daily lives. We would like to instill confidence in every child’s network of adults and professionals, in understanding the value and importance of their role in the child’s therapeutic journey of recovery, through the establishment of ‘Therapeutic Parenting Teams’.
How?
We will do this through offering a range of services available for spot purchase which include:
- Direct Therapeutic Interventions with children and their carers;
- One off bookable consultations to enable children’s networks to better understand need and take away advice for how best to support that need;
- Trauma, Attachment and Therapeutic Parenting focused Training courses, equipping professionals and carers with the knowledge and psycho-education that provides the foundational understanding for their care of children;
- Trauma informed Reflective Practice – a bespoke offer that can be tailored to teams or groups of professionals and/or carers, providing a reflective space to explore how the therapeutic ideas can be put into practice and enhance the care children are provided.
- Residential children’s homes support for staff understanding and responding to children’s needs in these settings.
Action for Children as a national charity is committed to the need for quality therapeutic and trauma informed practice, care and nurture for children in care across the country. The charity’s Residential Growth Strategy also highlights this as a priority area of work, as well as developing its fostering and adoption and mental health and emotional wellbeing services. The existing homes situated across the UK within Action for Children all share an ethos of DDP, therapeutic parenting and trauma informed practice, and so are well aligned to the practice principals and vision of The DECC.