Psychological intervention

What does a psychologist do?

As Clinical Psychologists, we are trained to understand how people think, feel and behave. When a child or family is struggling with emotions or behaviour, we aim to understand why this is happening so that we can find ways to manage this. This work may be directly with the child or young person, their parents, their siblings and/or their carers.

Behaviour support

Children can show behavioural challenges, such as aggression, sleeping and eating problems, for many reasons. By understanding a child's developmental profile, we can unpack how this may be influencing the behaviour they are showing. Alongside this, we aim to work out what is maintaining the behaviour. Once we have explored this we then put together a plan to make changes to encourage behaviour to move in a different direction.

Emotional support

We provide direct therapy sessions for children and young people for a range of emotional needs including worry, anger or upset. We have specialist knowledge in supporting children who are neuro-diverse, for instance children who are on the autism spectrum, have and intellectual disability, attention and hyperactive difficulties, and/or movement disorders such as cerebral palsy.  Children with developmental and health needs frequently have a complex range of professionals who work with them. Where appropriate, we work with children to understand their own strengths and weaknesses, and think about how these may affect their own identity as well as relationships with others.

Family support

When a child shows a difference in their development, a medical condition or disability, this can take time for parents and carers to adjust to and come to terms with. It can sometimes raise difficulties that the parent has experienced in the past. These circumstances may understandably create strains on family relationships. We work with parents, siblings and other important people in the child’s life to understand the whole family's needs, and support them to adjust to this.

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Multidisciplinary working

We plan the course of intervention collaboratively with children and parents, and may undertake liaison and multidisciplinary working with care teams and allied health professionals. Having these close links are key to ensuring that care for a child is supported from the different perspectives of the team.

We always work within guidelines set out by National Institute of Health and Care Excellence, the Health and Care Professions Council and the British Psychological Society.