Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- Part I Basic issues
- Part II Comprehensive assessment and treatment
- Part III Specific disorders: the impact on parent–child relationships
- Part IV Specific treatments and service needs
- Part V Child-sensitive therapeutic interventions
- Part VI Models for collaborative services and staff training
- 23 Keeping the family in mind: setting a local agenda for change
- 24 Are services for families with a mentally ill parent adequate?
- 25 Models of service provision in three countries: Marlboro, New Haven, Sydney, Melbourne and Lewisham
- 26 Overcoming obstacles to interagency support: learning from Europe
- 27 Training and practice protocols
- Afterword
- Index
- References
23 - Keeping the family in mind: setting a local agenda for change
from Part VI - Models for collaborative services and staff training
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- Part I Basic issues
- Part II Comprehensive assessment and treatment
- Part III Specific disorders: the impact on parent–child relationships
- Part IV Specific treatments and service needs
- Part V Child-sensitive therapeutic interventions
- Part VI Models for collaborative services and staff training
- 23 Keeping the family in mind: setting a local agenda for change
- 24 Are services for families with a mentally ill parent adequate?
- 25 Models of service provision in three countries: Marlboro, New Haven, Sydney, Melbourne and Lewisham
- 26 Overcoming obstacles to interagency support: learning from Europe
- 27 Training and practice protocols
- Afterword
- Index
- References
Summary
Without changes in culture and practice within health and social care organizations, there can be little improvement to provision for children and families affected by mental distress. A strategic combination of actions are needed, but the cornerstone of all change must be the participation of children and families themselves. This chapter is an account of how organizations in Liverpool, UK, are working with children and families to implement the recommendations of a recent consultation with service users (Göpfert et al., 1999). A small development project called ‘Keeping the family in mind’ (KFIM) and run by Barnardos Action with Young Carers (see Bilsborough, Chapter 1) has been set up to facilitate and coordinate the change agenda.
Why change is necessary
Adult and child services do not habitually connect and communicate. The following situation illustrates how this separateness can sometimes result in disservice to families. A children's social worker asked the Action with Young Carers project if they would explain to two children why they had been fostered to Liverpool relatives some 100 miles' distance from their home town. One of the children's parents had serious mental health problems, to the extent that the parents were unable to care for their children. The children were already fostered without any of the professionals involved having had this important conversation with the children. Why this omission? The ill parent had a social worker who knew about mental health, but not about children.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Parental Psychiatric DisorderDistressed Parents and their Families, pp. 325 - 332Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
References
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