The Children's Emotional Health Team

The Children’s Emotional Health Team (CEHT) provides information, advice, consultation services and training for staff and families on emotional well being and children’s mental health. Our staff come from different professional backgrounds (social work, teaching, educational psychology and clinical psychology) and have a wealth of experience working with families to promote emotional well being and positive mental health.

We aim to promote positive mental health by supporting children, families and workers when emotional health and well being is a factor in the child being at risk of not reaching the Every Child Matters 5 Outcomes.

What services do we provide?

Direct work with families and children
We can offer direct therapeutic work when a child is aged 6-13 years old, and is experiencing mild-moderate mental health difficulties, that are likely to be helped by brief (i.e. 6 sessions) therapy. For instance this might be a problem that has recently begun (such as a response to a recent trauma or accident, or increased temper tantrums). Alternatively it might be a mental health problem such as a phobia, mild anxiety or moderate depression. As the therapy offered is brief, it is most appropriate for children having difficulties at Levels 2 and 3 of the Family Support Model).

Courses for Parents
If parents are finding children’s behaviour difficult to manage, we offer several group-based programmes. The Coping with Kids course consists of three sessions (held weekly) for two hour sessions and is informal, friendly and accessible (some crèche places can be offered for parents), and gives parents support and advice about managing behaviour.  These are currently being held in Warrington Children Centres.

The Webster-Stratton ‘Incredible Years’ Programme is a longer course (12 weekly sessions) which is more intensive, but is designed to be highly effective for parents who find their children can sometimes be highly oppositional, aggressive and defiant. This course is recommended by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) as the recommended treatment for behavioural problems. Parents attending this course get considerable support from members of the CEHT in addition to the weekly sessions.

The CEHT also contributes several training sessions to the course for parents of children with ASD (‘Coping with Anxiety in ASD’ and ‘Coping with Depression in ASD’).

Consultation
Our consultation service is available to all staff who have concerns about a child’s emotional wellbeing or mental health, irrespective of the severity of those concerns. This includes social workers, teachers, SENCOs, behaviour support workers, paediatricians, voluntary agency staff, educational psychologists, speech and language therapists and specialist nursing staff.

Consultation can offer a range of opportunities: information and sign-posting for other services; access to specialist mental health knowledge and skills; the chance to discuss, analyse, reflect on and understand complex situations; greater multi-agency working.

Consultation can be offered via telephone, in person and as individual and group based consultation services. While individual consultations may evolve into joint working specifically with the CEHT, group consultations also offer increased chances for information sharing and joined-up working across agencies.

Training
The CEHT offers formal and informal training for all staff working with children and families. We are currently offering general mental health awareness training and specialised training for anxiety and depression problems associated with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. We will consider any requests for training in areas relating to children’s mental health and emotional wellbeing. Information booklets and tip sheets that accompany our training will also be made widely available.

HOW CAN OUR SERVICE BE ACCESSED?

Professionals
If you think that a child or family might benefit from our service, or if you would like to access consultation yourself, then it is best to first telephone or email to speak to a member of the CEHT. This can help clarify what type of service might be most helpful before going ahead with requests for direct work.

Requests for direct involvement can be made at Service Allocation Meetings, and families will have already given you consent for our involvement. We will need a Common Assessment Framework (CAF) form or FSM01 to be completed for us to respond. The CEHT may also be invited to Family Support Meetings directly, where our involvement is needed.

Training events will be widely publicised, and staff can always contact the team to find out about upcoming training.

Families
If you think that your child might benefit from our services, then you can either ask someone who knows your child well (teacher, support assistant, social worker etc.) to contact us. Usually, a lot of people can offer some help, and it is most useful if we can coordinate that help through the Family Support Model. In rare cases, you may not be able to think of anyone who might help you access the Service Allocation Meetings, or contact us directly. If you can’t think of anyone, you can ask your GP for a referral to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health service based at Guardian House, who we have close links with.

WHAT RECORDS AND INFORMATION DO WE KEEP?

The CEHT will keep a record of consultations and casework in line with data protection legislation. If staff wish to discuss a specific, named family or child then you’ll first need to obtain their consent. However, general advice, eg about services and organisations, and about typical mental health problems, can be given without specific consent.

We also audit our work, which means that we ask people for feedback on their experiences of our service. This feedback is anonymous and will be put together several times a month to help us adapt our service to the comments and needs of our service users. We ask families to complete several brief questionnaires (help can be given when literacy is a problem) when we first meet them and when we last see them. This gives us a clear idea of whether problems have improved or not, and whether we have been helpful. Again, this individual information is kept private.

Confidentiality
When we see a family, parent or child the information that they choose to share with us will remain private, in line with therapeutic practice, UNLESS child protection concerns require us to break this confidentiality. This is made clear and obvious to the family before beginning a therapeutic relationship. Where the family, parent or child share information that is relevant to others, but not a child protection concern, we may try to facilitate them sharing that information with others, but we cannot break their confidentiality without risking the therapeutic relationship.

HOW TO CONTACT US

If you want to arrange a consultation or to find out more about us please contact:

Children’s Emotional Health Team
Children’s Services
3rd floor New Town House
Buttermarket Street
Warrington
WA1 2NJ

Tel. 01925 443175
Fax: 01925 443153
Email: ceht@warrington.gov.uk

Further Resources for Parents and Staff who have concerns about emotional well being and mental health

www.youngminds.org.uk
Lots of information and resources for parents, for young people and children about mental health problems.

For information on children’s services in Warrington:
www.warringtonchildren.org.uk

For issues about ASD
www.nas.org.uk