The Family Education Service has two branches providing help for children and their families via problems that the children are showing in schools. The Family Education Centre runs an intensive, four mornings a week, multi-family programme for children who are presenting serious behavioural or emotional difficulties and who are frequently at risk of being excluded from their school. The Centre is staffed by experienced teachers who are also fully trained systemic psychotherapists. The Centre’s approach is to work closely with groups of families in collaboration with each child’s teachers in their own school in order to bring about rapid and sustained behavioural change and improved academic performance. The Family Education Centre has also developed an Early Intervention Service whereby Centre staff work directly on school sites to encourage better coordination of practice between CAMHS and schools. Their remit is to improve accessibility for children and families by setting up and running school-based multi family groups in partnership with school colleagues.
The location for delivering these services is flexible, using, in addition to the base in St. John's Wood, local Westminster Day Nurseries, clients' homes, schools, GPs' surgeries, as well as an outreach base for a Chinese service in the Soho Centre for Health and Care . This is an all age referral service, which covers mainly North Westminster, but specialist services may go beyond geographical boundaries. This may have funding implications.
Current languages spoken by staff include Arabic Bengali Cantonese French German Japanese Hakka Hindi Pashtu Punjabi Spanish Urdu. We also work closely with professional confidential interpreting services.
The model of practice is ‘systemic’, which means that close attention is paid to the context of problems such as the family, school/nursery, work, culture, economic conditions and oppressions of different kinds.
There are also two day assessment and treatment programmes offered by the service:
The Family Day Unit is a multi-family setting, which specialises in intensive assessment and therapeutic work, over an extensive period of time. (Assessments are tailor-made and specific to individual need and requirements. Attendances may vary from a series of days to a number of weeks, over a period of 2-3 months. Up to eight families can attend at the same time. Real life situations are recreated around everyday issues, enabling observation of problematic family patterns and interactions, as well as helping families to address these.
The Education Centre, where a small group of school-age children who need intensive help are seen with family members in a classroom setting on a daily basis. The centre also provides services to children in their mainstream classroom setting and training and skills exchange is provided for teachers.
Referrals for the out-patient service are accepted from other professionals. Self-referrals are also taken. Referrals to the Family Day Unit must be in writing. Referrals to the Education Unit can be made by Local Education Authorities alone.
PALS Link Worker:
Rivka Freilich Tel: 020 7624 8605