Children's psychology

Who are we?

There are a number of psychologists who work within the Children’s Services in the Trust, in different teams. These teams are the paediatric psychology service, the CAMHS LD Team, and specialist parenting psychology provision. We are all managed by a lead consultant clinical psychologist who represents us, and we meet and work together regularly to support each other’s’ work.

Psychologists reach a “formulation” about what is happening for a particular child, young person or their family by thinking with them about a whole range of issues - these include thinking about life experiences in general, the childs' development, their temperament, and their family situation, parents and how they have chosen to bring up their family, and school/college life. In this way psychologists do not “diagnose” a difficulty, but try to come to a wider and fully-informed understanding of the particular issues for the child/family, in the context they find themselves in, and adjust this understanding as things change and progress.

Each of the teams within which we work have slightly different arrangements regarding the people they work with - for example, most work with children and young people resident in Telford and Wrekin and/or Shropshire aged 0-18 and their families. But for some services there are different arrangements regarding age range and/or geographical areas covered. Details about this can be found on the relevant service page.

What type of professionals work for the service - who you are likely to see and why

We are either clinical psychologists or other applied psychologists trained to work with children and young people. We are trained to Doctorate level, and have specialised in working in these services.

Psychologists are trained to work across the lifespan and with different groups of people, and so although we have specialised to work with children and young people, we have a broad understanding of adults and parents as well. A clinical psychologist is someone who has been trained to help people make sense of their difficulties and think about the best way of dealing with them. This will include thinking about the background to their situation, perhaps learning to develop different ways of coping and sometimes having to make difficult or painful changes. Discussions often involve all those people in the family who are concerned, as long as they are happy to be involved.

Psychologists will not make decisions for you, but will take your difficulties seriously and, where appropriate, offer some help in dealing with them. Clinical psychologists are not medically qualified.

Our services

We all work within other teams, which are the paediatric psychology service, the CAMHS LD Team, and specialist parenting psychology provision.

Sometimes we meet together and work on shared projects, or deliver training or supervision to other professionals.

See the relevant page for the specific service you are interested in:

• paediatric psychology
• CAMHS LD
• Specialist parenting psychology

The people we see

Our teams work with children and young people resident in Telford and Wrekin and/or Shropshire aged 0 to 18 and their families. Some also have arrangements to see some families from Powys and other areas by prior agreement with commissioners.

As a team we have developed a set of core principles and values. In the work we do with all of our teams, we:

• Are accessible to clients and colleagues on basis of their need
• Do not base our work on diagnostic criteria (“diagnoses”) but try to reach “formulations” which summarise the problems and pull together a range of factors which are contributing to the problem
• Take an “interdependent and inter-relational model” (relationships drive behaviour, learning and feelings)
• Offer input which is centred on the needs of the client and is age appropriate
• Work using collaborative/partnership models so that everyone pulls together on the basis of a shared understanding
• Are concerned with an individual’s functioning in cognition/affect/behaviour and not solely based on statistical cohort/categorical data
• Offer input based on voluntary engagement, consent and a confidentiality agreement which protects privacy and dignity
• Offer input based on a thorough and broad contextual assessment, a psychological formulation, and an intervention plan, using the available evidence base and a theoretically coherent approach
• Understand that change can be helpful either within client but also in their wider context - hence we sometimes work with professionals and other people to address what they contribute to the situation
• Try to offer a flexible service that “reaches out” to engage with clients, so is not too controlled limited or hampered by missed appointments (DNA’s), solely clinic based appointments, and we believe that people sometimes need/want to see us when they are “ready” or even if they find organising getting to sessions difficult
• Believe that it is important to think and talk about how people can be resilient, how they are coping and making adjustments to difficult circumstances, and look at their and psychological well-being not just at problems, pathology and distress
• Try to get involved at the most helpful time, not just when things get really bad
• We believe in reflecting on what we do all the time, and make sure we all have regular ongoing supervision
• Provide input in an appropriate and safe environment
• Make sure we review and audit our services with service user input where possible

We work directly with children, young people and their families, and also at times we might work instead with other professionals, contributing to the discussion and making sure that the psychological (meaning things to do with behaviour, thinking, feelings or the impact on a person of their context) issues are included in the understanding of the problems and its potential solution.

New patients

Our referrals come through a variety of routes, depending on which team we are working with. Please see the details for those teams for further details:

• paediatric psychology service
• CAMHS LD Team
• specialist parenting psychology provision

Services we do not offer

Paediatric Psychology: This service is not a mental health provision and children with primarily mental health needs would be seen by CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health service) rather than this service. The service does not accept referrals for areas other than the targeted ones listed above (see "Our Services").

CAMHS-LD: This service is not for children or young people with learning problems, rather than learning disability. Children with learning problems should be referred via the Single Point of Access to other services in the community.

Parenting Psychology: This is a service offering individual advice and support to professionals or specific teams, and is not a service directly available to children and young people and their families.