SOLIHULL APPROACH TRAINING

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Background:  

MULTI-AGENCY TRAINING IN THE SOLIHULL APPROACH FOR PROFESSIONALS WORKING WITH CHILDREN, YOUNG PEOPLE AND THEIR FAMILIES

The Solihull Approach is designed to be used as a brief intervention for those working with children, young people and their families and is supported by a comprehensive resource pack.  It offers an integrated psychodynamic/psychotherapeutic and behavioural approach for professionals working with children and families who are affected by behavioural and emotional difficulties.  It allows for the integration of other techniques and provides a useful set of resources for practitioners to make use of.  The theoretical model has been developed from three concepts: containment, reciprocity, and behaviour management, taken from psychotherapeutic, child development and behavioural models respectively. 

The Training Programme:

The Solihull NHS PCT offers training in both the 0-5 years and school years training packages.  Each of these courses is offered as a two-day package and each participant leaves with a Resource Pack, which not only covers the approach but also has many useful resources, activities and fact sheets relating to issues relevant to the particular age group. 

The aims of the training are:

• To help practitioners become reflective in their work with children and young people and their families
• To help them acquire the language to describe and shape practitioner thoughts and experiences
• Increase practitioners understanding of how emotional and behavioural difficulties develop within families
• Provide a coherent model for assessment
• Build confidence and skill level
• Provide reference to evidence based practical advice and resources
• Develop a more consistent approach
• Identify trigger points for early referral to other specialist services
• Contribute to clinical governance

The Solihull Approach and its resource pack fit well with the boarder Child and Adolescent Mental Health training and development initiatives being developed across Kent.  It is also inline with the development of frontline staffs’ skills in terms of development of emotional well being as outlined in Every Child Matters and the Children’s National Service Framework.  It will also provide support to the achievement of the CAMHS PSA2 target. 

CASCADING OF TRAINING AND LOCALITY BASED SUPPORT:

Core Group of Trainers:

It is proposed that a multi-agency core group of Key Workers will be trained in the School Years Solihull Approach and the Early Years Solihull Approach.  They will form a locality based core trainer group, which will roll out the training to other frontline practitioners. There will be one for each age group in each district.  The planning of the rolling out of the training will be co-ordinated by the Consortia CAMHS Local Implementation Groups (where these exist).  The support will be based at the local Specialist CAMHS Team in each district, with the Primary Mental Health Worker (where these exist) driving the process.  Where CAMHS LIGS and PMHW are not in place, or are not appropriate, other local resources will be used. 

Quality Assurance of the trainers

In order to assure that the core group is able to cascade the training there will be an initial need to ensure that all of them are fully skilled in the approach as well as in training skills.  This will need to be assessed in each locality and arrangements made locally to ensure they are all skilled adequately.  There is also a need for support for the core group and this will happen both through peer support and from the Specialist CAMHS Team. 

Rolling out of the training:

The rolling out of the training needs to be done in a planned and strategic way targeting key workers and ensuring multi-agency working.  Need to review the way in which it is rolled out.  This planning, co-ordinating and reviewing can happen through the consortia CAMHS LIGs.

Ongoing Support:

There will be regular support in place for those people trained by the core group.  This will ensure they have a place to bring ideas and issues about the training and how it links to their practice.  The Specialist CAMHS teams in each locality (in East Kent) have committed to provide support for those who receive the training.  This support will need to be negotiated with the teams in West Kent. 

Last edited 10/06/2004