Current Projects

The Psychology Consultancy (UK) Ltd

Current Projects

We support innovative practice in the local community by making psychological knowledge and psychology-based services available to individuals and organisations such as local authorities, PCTs and the Voluntary Sector. Here is a short description of some of our recent and ongoing projects, all of which are based in East Anglia:

Autism Training: During 2008, we provided autism training sessions to early years staff across Suffolk for the County Council. Our early years version of A First Workshop on Autism was very well received by attendees who enjoyed the interactive nature of the training and the use of video material illustrating practical ways to support young children on the spectrum.

Looked-after children: We regularly consult to a children’s home’s staff team on the issues they face around the children in their care and working therapeutically with young people in the care system. Our involvement also includes providing annual training sessions relevant to the team. Past training sessions covered attachment and looked-after children, adolescent mental health, and Asperger’s syndrome. Future training in managing anger and working with traumatised children is planned.

Infant Mental Health: We have been involved with an innovative infant mental health project in the Ipswich locality since its inception 12 months ago. Training using a psychological evidence base was provided to equip the staff to work with mothers of young children to foster the parents’ understanding of their babies’ temperament and early communication (“baby cues”). Combining innovative practice with well known techniques such as baby massage, has proven to be of help to a number of families referred to the project. The Psychology Consultancy provides supervision on psychological aspects and we are also involved in the design and management of the project evaluation.

Reflective Practice: Reflective practice groups help staff to become self-aware practitioners who are able to reflect on the emotional impact of their work on them as individuals, and also on their impact on the families they work with. Very rarely do people who provide services to families in need get the opportunity to take a small amount of time out of their normal, fast paced, crisis-driven work-life to share experiences and grow. These monthly groups for family support staff have been commissioned by several provider-organisations in Suffolk to enable their staff to develop their self-awareness as practitioners and become better equipped to deal with the emotional impact of their work with families. Reflective practice groups take participants on a guided journey where, during the early phase of the group, the sessions are very structured, and as the sessions progress, the degree of structure is reduced until the group members are able to spend their time usefully reflecting on their work with an open agenda.