Helping Families Team

Location: Maudsley Hospital

Contact information: 

Michael Rutter Centre
De Crespigny Park
London 
SE5 8AZ

Call: 020 3228 3810

Email: HelpingFamiliesTeam@slam.nhs.uk

Web: www.cpcs.org.uk

            

If you would like to know any more about the work of the Helping Families Team or would like to make a referral, please do not hesitate to get in touch. We are based within the Centre for Parent and Child Support.

Mode: Outpatient

Referrals are accepted from: Trust adult mental health teams, Trust child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), children’s services (local authority)

Key areas: Family wellbeing, parental mental health, child welfare, parenting, think family, Empowering Parents, Empowering Communities (EPEC), Family Partnership Model (FPM), Helping Families Programme (HFP), Centre for Parent and Child Support

Overview

The Helping Families Team is an innovative team that has been developed to improve the outcomes and protection of families in which parents are affected by mental health difficulties.

Bridging the gaps that so often exist between CAMHS, adult mental health and children’s services, the team aims to provide:

• Early intervention and support alongside existing services and practitioners
• Specialist parenting assessment and intervention to parents with mental health difficulties and complex psychosocial needs
• Specialist advice, consultation and training

The Helping Families Team commits to:

• Working in close partnership with social care, mental health and other practitioners involved in case management and support to ensure families receive well-coordinated, synchronised, effective care
• Using a proactive outreach and therapeutic approach to positively engage families.
• Directly involving children and young people, where appropriate
• Working in partnership with related programmes developed by the Centre for Parent and Child Support, for example Empowering Parents, Empowering Communities; Family Partnership Model; Helping Families Programme; promotional guides

The Helping Families Team specialises in:

• Possessing cutting edge knowledge, skills and expertise in parental mental health, family functioning, child development and safeguarding
• Using their expertise to conduct holistic family assessments, early and intensive interventions with parents affected by mental health problems and their children
• Working closely and jointly with multiagency colleagues to improve the effectiveness and coordination of care plans and family support
• Sharing skills and expertise and providing case consultation, training and support to multiagency colleagues and teams across sectors

The Helping Families Team will provide earlier access to holistic family assessments and effective care plans, intervention and support that promote safe, effective, nurturant parenting, build social and family support and make best use of appropriate community resources.

The Team’s work uses a whole-family approach that:

• Improves the life chances of children, builds family resilience and reduces risk
• Recognises the inter-related needs of children, parents and the family as a whole
• Uses partnership-based and family focussed approaches that share and enhance the knowledge and expertise of the family and the workforce
• Tailors effective invention, care and support to meet the needs of the family