Other specialist services
The following interventions can only be accessed where a social worker has completed an assessment of need and recommends that additional therapy is required. These interventions may be funded through the Adoption Support Fund (ASF). The ASF criteria are subject to change.
- Clinical Psychology Service
- Creative Therapy
- Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy
- Extensive Therapeutic Life Story Work
- Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing
- Filial Therapy
- Non Violent Resistance
- Play Therapy
- Psychotherapy
- Sensory Integration Processing Therapy
- Specialist Assessment
- Theraplay
Read on to find out more about each service.
Clinical Psychology Service
The ACE Clinical Psychology Service was introduced in October 2021 and will presently be available until 30 September 2025. Complementing the services available from the ACE social work teams, the service can support and advise adopters in the following ways:
- 1:1 consultation for prospective adopters pre-matching with a named child – to help to understand the implications of the child’s past history and what this means for parenting the child.
- 1:1 consultation for adoptive parents, alongside their ACE social worker, to discuss any issue or behaviour of concern. This has the potential to lead to further appointments over the short term if appropriate. This might also be useful where several therapies have taken place but things feel 'stuck' and adopters would value a different professional opinion on what might help their child and family.
- Co-delivery of training with the ACE Therapeutic Team to focus on a range of therapeutic interventions and what might be appropriate in different scenarios. Also, the delivery of training on mental health and self-harm in adopted people and appropriate parenting strategies.
- Specialist assessments where funding has been agreed through the Special Guardianship Fund.
If you feel that your family would benefit from a consultation session and/or wish to attend the training please discuss this with your social worker or contact the ACE duty social worker on 0300 369 0556 and a referral can be made.
Creative Therapy
Arts and creative therapies are treatments which involve creative activities within therapy sessions. They use different art forms, such as drawing, music or dance. And they're provided by a trained professional.
You don't need to have any art skills. And people of any age can benefit from them. Different people will have different experiences of arts and creative therapies, but in general they aim to:
- Allow you to communicate thoughts and feelings that you find difficult to put into words
- Help you make sense of things and understand yourself better
- Give you a safe time and place with someone who won't judge you
- Help you find new ways to look at problems or difficult situations
- Help you to talk about complicated feelings or difficult experiences
- Give you a chance to connect with other people
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy
Adopted children may have had many changes in the people who look after them and find it hard to trust adults. They may believe that parents aren’t safe and can’t always be turned to for comfort and help. They may develop insecure attachments and try to stop their new parents from becoming emotionally close to them.
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy and Practice is a family-focused therapeutic approach which focuses on the relationship between carer/parent and child and keeps the main carer centrally involved throughout. DDP therapy helps the children or young person learn to trust.
The underpinning attitude is use of PACE – playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy, to help the child or young person feel safe to begin to explore some of their experiences.
Extensive Therapeutic Life Story Work
Therapeutic life story work is a piece of work that is used to help children, young people and their families. The aim of the work is to provide a space for the child to talk about the past, this may include drawing, creating a wall paper timeline, helping the child to have a narrative about their birth history. The life story worker works with the child and parent . This work can take between 12-18 months.
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing
When we experience traumatic events the thoughts, feelings and memories we have about those events can remain and it can be hard to move on from them. The aim of EMDR is to help the brain to process these distressing memories, this reduces their influence and allows both children and adults to develop ways to more effectively get on with their lives.
EMDR can also help and support children who experience self-esteem, emotional and behavioural difficulties.
Filial Therapy
In Filial Therapy it is parents who are trained to conduct child-centred play sessions with their children so they themselves are given the skills necessary to become the therapeutic facilitators of change. The broad principles of Play Therapy apply: play is an essential form of communication and healing for children, providing a medium through which the child can express difficult feelings and work through challenging experiences in the presence of a trusted adult.
Filial Therapy combines family and Play Therapy principles and techniques and is structured to enhance the parent child relationship. It is a well researched and empirically validated intervention in which parents learn how to create a non-judgmental and accepting understanding relationship with their children through play sessions conducted in the home.
Unlike conventional Play Therapy, parents are fully involved. It confirms the parents as the most important people in their child's healing and development. Sessions with the parent provide a creative therapeutic process through which the child can safely rework experiences and issues that have influenced and continue to affect the child and sometimes the whole family.
Non Violent Resistance
NVR is an approach for parents experiencing serious difficulties such as child to parent violence or other safeguarding concerns such as children putting themselves at risk of harm. NVR is a way for parents to build or rebuild a strong connected relationship with their child/ren. Non-violent resistance offers you an alternative way to respond which aims to help you to stop your child/ren's destructive behaviour and to prevent escalation and violence.
Play Therapy
Play Therapy uses play as a communication tool to help children understand their world and deal with emotional distress and trauma.
Play Therapy sessions are undertaken with a view to children achieving a sense of being in control within a safe and contained but nurturing environment. Within sessions, children may re-enact or play out traumatic or difficult life experiences enabling them to make sense of their past and build the emotional resilience to cope with any difficult life experiences they may encounter in their future. Children may also learn to manage relationships and conflicts in more appropriate ways.
Psychotherapy
Child Psychotherapy is an effective method of treatment for mental health difficulty in children and adolescents. It is helpful for a wide range of difficulties, from emotional and behavioural problems in young children, to depression and anxiety in adolescents and young adults.
Psychotherapy supports children and young people to recover from trauma, loss and distress, helping them to gain a greater understanding of themselves.
Psychotherapy can help to make the effect of these traumatic experiences feel less overpowering, as a child or young person gradually starts to make sense of themselves. This gradually enables an individual to become more in control of their feelings, thoughts and behaviour, to make thoughtful choices and to find new ways of expressing themselves. Psychotherapy aims to improve and strengthen a child / young person’s relationships with their parents/ carers and other important people.
Sensory Integration Processing Therapy
The Sensory Attachment Intervention (SAI) approach is an integrative approach to the treatment of children who have suffered abuse or severe neglect. Negative experiences in the womb and in early childhood can impact on their capacity to cope with stress throughout life.
Sensory processing work focuses on the five primary senses: hearing, smell, touch, taste and sight plus three additional internal ‘senses’ body awareness (proprioception), movement (vestibular) and interoception (the ability to feel and interpret what is happening inside our bodies and why).
Specialist Assessment
Find out more information on specialist assessments and criteria
Theraplay
Theraplay® is a child and family therapy that focuses on supporting a child’s positive behavioural and emotional responses through the parent-child relationship. Theraplay® helps the child experience previously difficult interactions in new ways, overcoming overcome fear and increasing trust, which creates a positive change in the child’s sense of self. Theraplay® helps the parent to be attuned to the child, understand the motives of the child’s behaviour and the underlying needs, manage environmental stimuli, and carefully challenge the child in a safe place. Theraplay® is appropriate for all ages, from infancy through adolescence.