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Work and wellbeing: Individual and team development
No full textAs part of the celebration of our first 100 years, we will host two connected events exploring the Trust’s contribution to education and training and its legacy. This is the first of two sessions in a series of events exploring mental wellbeing at work and examining what circumstances enable individuals, groups, organisation and systems to thrive. The sessions will be co-chaired by Brian Rock, Postgraduate Dean and Director of Education and Training and Chris Caldwell, Director of Nursing and System Workforce Development who will host a panel of speakers. Session two will focus on organisations and systems.
Our mission today remains true to our founding mission ‘to help, to understand more and to teach our work.’ From training individual learners, to organisations systemically, we will describe the contribution that the Tavistock and Portman has pioneered in learning and teaching and its contribution to the wellbeing of the health and care workforce.
Our approach develops capabilities and fosters confidence that equip students and practitioners to make thoughtful and relevant contributions to their work in health, mental health, social care, education and criminal justice. We encourage our learners to recognise their feelings, connect with the dynamics of relationships, and to learn how to work with emotions and use theoretical constructs, how to hold complexity and uncertainty, and how to operate in groups and multi-disciplinary teams to meet the emotional and psychological needs of the people we strive to help.
We are at the forefront of workforce transformation within mental health – both training people to deliver mental health services and in ensuring the mental health of the whole health and care workforce. We offer assessment and design and delivery of interventions to support small and medium sized businesses to address worker mental health and psychological wellbeing. Within health and care we have led the establishment of a system-wide approach to supporting worker mental health and wellbeing in response to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Session one - Individual and team development
We enable practitioners to understand themselves as leaders and the impact their work has on them and they on it. Rooting the session in the Trust’s experience as an education provider, we will engage our speakers in their own stories about the challenges delivering mental health care. Our speakers will reflect on their personal and professional development. We will end by bringing a contemporary lens to explore current applications of our theory and practice and future possibilities, as we widen participation in our student cohort and reach beyond our core student constituencies.
This session will aim to enable participants to join the panel in reflecting on the experience of being in work and to think about the core requirements of the workplace and the individual to enable people to continue to thrive in work, even under difficult circumstances. This session will connect our long experience of supporting individual learners and teams with our work with organisations and the wider system through a common thread of reflective practice.
There will be a unique opportunity to draw on all of our experiences and challenges together with the particular issues of delivering health and mental health care and social care through the pandemic.
This talk will appeal to people working in the NHS and care sector, education, and more widely in the public sector, with an interest in their own wellbeing and the mental health of the people who are at the centre of their service provision. It will also appeal to leaders from any sector who are keen to improve the wellbeing of their staff, teams and organisations
Primitive anxieties and the small group: multi-agency working and the risk of collaboration
No full textThis paper explores some of the unconscious group processes that multi-agency teams face in the development of emotionally engaged collaborative relationships. Here, the term multi-agency team is used to refer specifically to groups of professionals drawn from different organisations who come together and disband around work with a specific young person and their family. Through the close analysis of observational material taken from a multi-agency meeting concerning a young person in temporary foster care, there is an exploration of the acute emotional pressures and unconscious processes present in this small group. Drawing together Bion’s and Canham’s work on group functioning, in conjunction with Lacan’s formulation of the mirror stage as central to ego development, the very particular and problematic nature of the anxieties provoked by the loss of individual coherence in multi-agency teams is explored. Consideration is given to how an increased awareness of the nature of the anxieties provoked by work in small groups, and of the unconscious processes that become operative in them, can offer professionals working in multi-agency teams an additional perspective from which to view the emotional vicissitudes present in this type of work. It is suggested that a greater awareness of the specific emotional challenges posed by the small group can improve the potential for emotionally engaged collaboration in multi-agency working
How do clinicians respond to the faith identity of young Muslims in a London Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) clinical context? An interpretative phenomenological analysis
Get PDFThis research project explores how a multi-disciplinary group of CAMHS clinicians in a diverse London borough think about the faith identity of their Muslim patients, and how this might affect the therapeutic relationship. The researcher focuses on what the clinician brings to the room, both consciously and unconsciously, rather than locating issues of difference solely in the patient. This is important because the clinician is a participant in an inter-subjective process, rather than a neutral, objective observer. The researcher acknowledges the impact of her own identity as a Muslim on the research process. Following a literature review bringing together relevant papers from psychoanalytic literature and beyond, the researcher notes the lack of qualitative and quantitative research in this area. The researcher argues that CAMHS engagement with Muslims deserves further thought, particularly in the current socio-political climate, and discusses why the area of faith identity in general, and Muslim faith identity in particular, might be difficult to explore in the therapy room. In order to reflect the concerns of young Muslims in the interview schedule, the researcher consulted focus groups (Advisory Groups) of Muslim adolescents. The data from the subsequent interviews with clinicians, analysed using IPA, is presented here. Three overarching themes are selected for detailed exploration: what difference stirs up, the clinician as ‘other’, and tension around knowledge. The researcher seeks to understand how far clinicians’ responses are specific to working with Muslim patients, or reflect wider tensions around working with difference, in the context of the relationship between generalities and specificities in clinical work. The eventual objective of this research is to contribute to enhanced engagement with Muslim families and young people in CAMHS. Possible areas for improvement in training and service delivery are suggested, and potential areas for further research
Passionate about social change: An IPA study exploring the experiences of young people engaged in community action
Get PDFRecent years have seen a rise in the prevalence of mental health problems, with children and young people from socially and economically disadvantaged areas particularly affected. To address these difficulties, there is a shift in favour towards community psychology interventions which work at multiple levels to improve well-being and to challenge the status quo, addressing the systemic and social conditions which contribute to psychological problems occurring. Following a systematic literature review which identified considerable gaps in the literature, particularly in the UK context, this study aimed to add to the research base on community psychology interventions through an exploration of youths’ experiences. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with six young people (aged 16-25) who had taken up roles with a youth-led Young Advisors (YA) organisation operating according to a community psychology model. The organisation was located in an ethnically-diverse London borough with high rates of child poverty and gang-related youth violence. Interview transcripts were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. A community psychology lens was used when exploring the analysed interview data, with themes emerging for each participant. These led to the identification of six superordinate themes occurring across the participant group: conceptualisation of the YA role, YA and the construct of self, personal growth through YA involvement, factors attributed to the effectiveness of the role, challenges in role, and factors contributing to continued involvement. The findings were discussed in the context of the existent literature. Implications for practice for Educational Psychologists were considered, including ideas for future research. It is argued that community psychology interventions offer an attractive and effective model for engaging youths, including those from marginalised and disadvantaged communities, offering alternative solutions to the individually focused, professionally driven interventions for mental health and wellbeing that currently dominate in the UK
It is time to dispel the myths and metaphors around Covid and learn to live with it
No full textMetaphors help us to make sense of what we don’t know and understand. Many metaphors surround coronavirus - particularly military ones - but if we overuse them we can lose sight of reality. Psychologically speaking, living in a world with Covid requires reducing the unhelpful metaphors that surround it
Treatment for perpetrators of intimate partner violence: What is the evidence?
No full textIntimate partner violence (IPV) is recognized as a worldwide health issue that calls for urgent interventions to prevent the significant physical and mental harm it poses to the individuals involved and to reduce its wider deleterious impacts on society. Despite 40 years of research in the field, incidence rates of IPV have not significantly declined and treatment services for perpetrators of IPV are scarce. Empirical research has been hindered by ideological disputes, and the most commonly used treatment approaches—the feminist-oriented Duluth approach and cognitive-behavioral treatments—lack evidence for their efficacy. This introduction to this issue of In Session reviews these ideological controversies and the current state of empirical evidence for the treatment of perpetrators of IPV; and summarizes the five papers, commissioned from different countries in Europe, North America, and Africa, comprising this issue, each of which presents a novel therapeutic intervention for this heterogeneous population
“It shows we felt safe because a few of us had tears”: Exploring how perceptions of the group space can influence experiences of parenting programmes
No full textHow parents navigate the physical, social, and emotional geographies of parenting groups, particularly when considering safe and unsafe spaces, has been little studied. This paper examines how a parent's perception of a parenting programme as a safe or unsafe landscape influenced whether they completed the programme or dropped out. Transcripts from interviews with 42 parents who had attended a parenting programme, primarily a recent Incredible Years (IY) group, were thematically analysed. We describe parents' narratives in terms of four main themes: 1. The group as a safe space; 2. Composition of the group matters; 3. How a parent is referred matters; and, 4. The group as an unsafe space. Parents' perceptions of whether a group space felt safe and cohesive (or not) were key influences on whether they attended the group at all, whether they continued attending, and for those who did continue, whether they felt IY was beneficial. Examining how parents navigated a parenting group space has highlighted the importance of emotional safety and connections to the facilitator and other group members, and the role of good facilitation in fostering safety and connection for parents. Our findings also indicate the importance of exploring parents' experience of a group throughout the programme and allowing them to leave a group that does not feel safe
Encounters in the Claustrum: An exploratory study of the Claustrum in contemporary psychoanalytic child and adolescent psychotherapy
Get PDFClinical encounters involving the Claustrum are complex, elusive and often feel almost impossible to decipher. This qualitative study explores how Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists experience clinical situations in which they feel that Meltzer's concept of the ‘Claustrum’ (1992) is helpful in understanding the patient’s internal world. The literature review explores the place of the Claustrum within contemporary Child Psychotherapy and the experience of clinical encounters with hard to reach patients. The study’s methodology is Thematic Analysis. Data was gathered from semi- structured interviews from members across the Association of Child Psychotherapists. Four themes were devised relating to the participant-clinicians’ clinical experience and thinking. These were Symbolic Representations of Phantasy, The Therapist’s Experience, Knowing How to Respond, and Clinical Practice and Clinical Theory. Clinical experience is viewed as paramount in making sense of Claustrum encounters. These clinical experiences include the counter-transference as containing a particular quality of inclusion and exclusion, the Claustrum as one aspect of the patient’s presentation, clinical theory as helpful but secondary to clinical experience and its integration within one’s clinical thinking. This study includes various examples of Claustrum-like clinical encounters which may facilitate further discussion amongst colleagues about this clinical phenomenon. The Nowhere Place featured as an aspect of the both the patient and therapist experience of the Claustrum. The clinical implications of the study include that a sensitivity to clinical technique is paramount until more sophisticated stages in a treatment, and how dream analysis can help illustrate the Claustrum experience. The study also captures an experience of an aspect of the Tavistock’s tradition of Child Psychotherapy training regarding Meltzer’s continued influence on it. Personal experience as a Child Psychotherapy trainee and working with Claustrum-like patients allows reflexivity as a clinician-researcher
“If you don’t have anyone in school that’s like you, regardless, you won’t feel like you belong there”; What it means to belong for secondary-aged pupils from ethnic minority backgrounds, an emancipatory study
Get PDFIntroduction: Belonging as described by Baumeister and Leary (1995) is a fundamental psychological need. When one does not feel they belong, this can be correlated with negative outcomes such as poor mental health, stress, physical illness and suicide (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). In schools, Goodenow and Grady (1995) defined belonging as the extent to which individuals feel accepted, respected and included in school. They also noted that adolescents who experience high sense of belonging also experienced high academic motivation and engagement in learning. This was especially true for Hispanic and African American students (Goodenow and Grady (1995). Aim: This research aims to explore young peoples’ (secondary-aged) experience of belonging in a school setting and the contributions that shape their experience. Method: The researcher used an Emancipatory research paradigm and opportunistic sampling to recruit seven participants who were from an ethnic minority background. Five of these participants were male and two were female. Semi-structured interviews were conducted as well as a questionnaire completed with their primary parent/caregiver. Interviews were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (RTA). Results Two dimensions of school belonging were found, general and ethnic belonging. The protective factors that contributed to these seem to be connected to how strongly one relates to their ethnic identity. Two other contributions to the experiences of belonging were: being different from the majority and the school ecosystem. This highlighted the external and internal responses to being different from the majority as well as the influences from the school system such their policies and ethnic representation. Conclusion: Feelings of belonging in school are influenced by one’s connection to their ethnic identity and being from an ethnic minority background in a school system that is Eurocentric. Implications of these findings are considered in relation to educational psychology practice and support that schools can provide