We offer training and consultancy

We offer training and consultancy

Amicus provides a wide range of therapeutic services as part of our training and consultancy. These services have been identified as beneficial to those working with vulnerable and traumatised children. As well as providing training and support to our own staff, we are also able to provide this to network professionals and where appropriate to the families and carers of children.

Training available from the Amicus Community

Below is an example of the areas in which we can deliver training – these sessions can be delivered through formal informative training sessions, lectures, or workshops:

  • Child Development
  • Attachment Theory and Disorders
  • Therapeutic Theory, Practice and Techniques
  • Psychodynamic / Psychanalytic Theory
  • Group Relations and learning
  • Therapeutic Containment, Nurturing, and Structure
  • Effective Therapeutic Management
  • Family Work and Systems Theory
  • Effective Care and Placement Planning
  • Dealing with Violence and Aggressive Behaviours
  • Therapeutic Education – working with developmental trauma

The main aim of our training is to learn and understand more about the difficulties and attachment disorders the children are experiencing and how to support them. Children who have been traumatised sometimes show unexpected and frightening behaviour and when a carer understands the reasons and can have ways to support them through structures, boundaries, routines, and limits and reflection and thinking about this with them, then the disturbances can be modified. Through our training, the aim is that those working with traumatised children can also learn how to offer meaningful responses and interventions. Our training also offers an opportunity for families/carers and network professionals to meet others who are sharing similar experiences.

Our consultancy services

We are also able to offer consultancy to network professionals and organisations based on the therapeutic and psychoanalytical model of treatment. These sessions can take the form of:

  • Individual Clinical Supervision
  • Group Clinical Supervision
  • Organisational Consultation
  • Group Process/Relations Sessions
  • Work Discussion Groups

We are also able to offer general consultancy services for organisations working with children such as children’s homes and schools in either setting up/ registering their setting and /or maintaining their provisions and developing practice and standards. As part of our service, we offer monthly Independent Regulation 44 Visits to other homes.

Our Consultants, Rebecca Newton, and Stewart Thompson along with members of our Senior Leadership Team undertake to provide high caliber sessions that meet the requirements of the individuals/organisation. The consultancy we offer is not just for organisations working with children, but we believe can have benefits to all roles and organisations within the health, social care, and education sector. Our therapeutic input can help organisations and their staff to understand the dynamics at play in organisations and roles they may take up, as well as the unconscious processes at play and them beginning to understand these to help them in their roles, relationships, and tasks.

Benefits of our training and consultancy

The training and /or consultancy enables network professionals to provide longer-term sustainable placements and to be aware of their roles and dynamics occurring and how they work with these. If the children are understood by those working with them then placements are more likely to last and be successful, giving the children the important continuity of care, stable adult relationships, and emotional understanding, providing the children with building blocks for healthy development and future mental health.

A key part of good therapeutic consultancy, supervision, and training is giving those working with traumatised children or in this sector, a safe place where their anxieties and experiences can be genuinely listened to and heard. It also enables them to be able to reflect on their work with the children and therefore develop a more effective therapeutic practice.

Children who have experienced trauma and who have serious attachment disorders may push their carers and those working with them into re-enacting the conflictual care and relationships that they experienced with their birth families. Hence, effective therapeutic consultancy, supervision, and training support those working with children to observe this potential, understand its roots, provide appropriate care and education, and therefore avoid a damaging re-enactment of it.

Referral Procedures for Training or Consultancy