OUR MISSION STATEMENT
Empowering professionals and parents to enable children and young people to thrive
Functions of The Centre for Child Mental Health
- To support anyone working to improve the emotional health of children and young people with practical tools and techniques
- To provide child professionals with greater insight, awareness and depth, where constraints often mean that key theory and practice has not been sufficiently addressed in previous training
- To empower professionals to work more effectively and confidently with children, young people, parents and families
- To address the urgent need for many more people to be trained to work effectively and ethically with the unmet emotional and relational needs of children, young people, parents and families. (In the UK, there are over 30,000 children and young people on waiting lists for mental health services)
- To broaden the impact of the most up-to-date research about the emotional well-being and mental health of children and young people. This knowledge is derived from a wealth of scientific and psychological studies and the clinical expertise of the broadest possible spectrum of researchers,clinicians and organisations in the field of child and family mental health
- To present to professionals and parents, top international speakers, all of whom are involved in groundbreaking work with troubled children and young people. Over the years, hundreds of acclaimed child and family mental health professionals have presented lectures, trainings andworkshops at the Centre.
Dissemination of Research
- To promote positive social change through disseminating the latest research in child, parent and family mental health
- To make available to parents, teachers, child-care professionals, providers and custodians of services, politicians and the lay-public at large, a comprehensive up-to-date knowledge base in child and family well-being
- To fund an effective dissemination of psychologically and neurobiologically based research. Organisational isolation can be costly: ...wasting time slowly re-discovering what is already known (Baron Peter Slade, 2000)
Networking and Communication
To provide a forum for discussion and debate, and to facilitate a dialogue between professionals and organisations in the field of child, parent and family mental health. This is with the hope that creative linking will stimulate the formulation and elaboration of new hypotheses that could generate vital research programmes.
Conference Chairs
Ellie Baker
Registered Integrative Child Psychotherapist, Senior Lecturer: MA Integrative Child Psychotherapy and Parent-Child Therapy (The Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education, London). Consultant and Trainer in Parenting and Communication Skills.
Professor Brett Kahr
Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Psychotherapy and Mental Health, The Centre for Child Mental Health. Winnicott Clinic Senior Fellow in Psychotherapy. Visiting Clinician, Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships. Author of many books including D.W. Winnicott, A Biographical Portrait (which received the Gradiva Award for Biography).
Andrea Perry
Integrative psychotherapist, consultant, writer and broadcaster. Former Chair of the British Association of Dramatherapists. External examiner on the Gestalt programme at the Metanoia Institute for five years. Ground-breaking books in the areas of overcoming procrastination and claustrophobia. Commissioned the Attachment in the Classroom series for Worth Publishing, and is the Editor of Teenagers and Attachment (2009). Regularly asked to comment on psychological issues in the press and on national and local radio.
Roz Read
Director, MA Integrative Child Psychotherapy IATE. Senior UKCP registered child psychotherapist with very troubled children and teenagers. Also worked for years with adopted and fostered children and their families, within a multidisciplinary post-adoption support agency as well as a psychotherapist with troubled children/adolescents.
Dr Margot Sunderland
Director of Education and Training, The Centre for Child Mental Health. Integrative Child Psychotherapist. Author of over 20 books on Child Mental Health, including What Every Parent Needs to Know. BMA Founder of Helping Where it Hurts (therapy programme in North London Primary schools).
