Therapeutic Model for Service Delivery:
Over the past 3 years the EPS have identified that one of the most challenging aspects of service delivery is in supporting schools to meet the needs of learners with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. A needs analysis, on a case by case basis, has shown that there may be a gap in service delivery for children and young people in East Ayrshire who have experienced and/or are experiencing developmental trauma. In the last decade there has been a growing recognition of the use of therapeutic interventions in EP practice with a range of therapeutic approaches being applied to an extensive array of problems and contexts (Mackay, 2007; Atkinson & Bragg, 2012). Recent NICE (2015) guidelines on attachment difficulties in childhood recommend the use of Video Feedback and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy as therapeutic interventions. Our criteria for inclusion in therapeutic intervention is typically for those at high risk of exclusion from an educational and/or care placement as the result of developmental attachment trauma and/or their social and emotional functioning.
The service has focused on:
- training and supervision for EPs in attachment based therapeutic approaches
- practicing these skills with individual cases under supervision from within the service and more recently with external supervision
- collating evidence for implementation to develop a more formalised therapeutic model.
