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Author Archives: Staff writer

1. Post-adoption work: how early intervention can make all the difference for a new family’s future

   25th March 2019 3:51 pm Leave a Comment

   At JSA Psychotherapy we provide services for a diverse array of clients, utilising many different therapeutic models to do so. One that is particularly close to our heart, however, is the work we do to support parents of adopted children. Post-adoption work is, at its simplest, a means of assisting families in dealing with the unique challenges that the process of adoption can bring.

   Our provision of this assistance begins with an initial psychological assessment. This allows us to determine what the most suitable programme of therapy will be to utilise. Typically, this would be a course of Play Therapy, a non-directive means of working with the child’s issues and concerns in an environment that is designed to be approachable and engaging for them. Parent-Child Relationship Therapy is also a common choice. This course is run specifically just for the adoptive parents and lasts for 10-15 weeks.

   The assessment is of significant benefit to the overall period of intervention as it allows us to begin therapy with an integral understanding of the child’s unique needs. This ensures that subsequent practice is suitably evidence-based, with a trauma-informed approach maintained throughout. Sometimes however, the client or presiding local authority has a desire to commence a specific programme of therapy without conducting the assessment first. This is something we are able to accommodate upon request.

   Additionally, many of our referrals for post-adoption support come from private agencies who operate under a strict budget for each adoption case. For this reason, we are able to provide comprehensive breakdowns of all costings involved upon request, inclusive of all expenditures.

   All assessments conducted at JSA utilise the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics, and those that precede post-adoption work are no exception. Indeed, the use of the NMT metric is of vital importance in these cases. In simple terms, the NMT is a means of mapping the impact of trauma and other adverse childhood experiences on a child’s brain development. It can be used to pinpoint where they may be struggling to meet their expected milestones in terms of age-appropriate relationship skills and cognitive ability.

   This is of particular relevance because many children who have been adopted or enter foster care are likely to have previously lived through traumatic circumstances that have hindered their development. The specific issues that this may have caused will be unique to each child and are something that parents and carers will need to be mindful of. This is to say nothing of the trauma and attachment difficulties that may have arisen from breakdowns of any prior failed adoption or fostering placements.

    

   

    

   Our psychotherapists have an established format for conducting the NMT within the assessment, which we use to compose a comprehensive formulation for further intervention. This includes two sessions with the adoptive parent(s) and an additional two sessions with child, conducted separately. This allows us to gain a full picture of background circumstances and understand the family dynamic at present. The remainder of the work is conducted by the therapist outside of sessions, ensuring that a maximum of four hours in total is necessary for allocated appointment time.

   A recent report published by the British Association of Adoption and Fostering’s report in December’s edition of the quarterly adoption & fostering journal provides a sobering reminder of how essential it is to ensure that adoptive parents are able to access support where they need it. The study, titled ‘What do we know about the impact of stress on foster carers and contributing factors?’ identified that the multitude of stressors that apply to parents who adopt are a pervasively frequent cause of placement breakdowns.

   It has been demonstrated that timely intervention helps immeasurably to ameliorate what is easily the most prominent factor in placement breakdowns. It is for this reason that clinical therapeutic support for adopted children and their carers is of vital necessity. Not only does this avoid the emotional distress and disruption that a failed placement will cause, but it also means that for the sake of a relatively minor investment, local authorities and private agencies are safeguarded against the extreme financial burden of having to source an entirely new placement.

   If you would like to learn more about our service, or the therapeutic models involved in our practice, be sure to follow the links in this article to other areas of the site where they are elaborated on in further detail. More specific queries and any inquiries for referral may be addressed to office@jsapsychotherapy.com

2. JSA Psychotherapy to attend trauma informed care event in Durham

   21st March 2019 4:55 pm Leave a Comment

   There’s great excitement at JSA Psychotherapy at the moment, as this time next week we will be making the journey North to attend the Academic Health Science Network’s latest networking seminar and collaborative workshop, hosted on this occasion in Durham. The event is titled ‘Creating a Narrative for Trauma-Informed Service Transformation’, and will be taking place at the Ramside Hall hotel in Carrville. 

   We have spoken before about our involvement with the AHSNs in previous blog posts summarising past events hosted by our regional body, Health Innovation Manchester. The upcoming occasion has been organised by their counterparts in the Academic Health Science Network for the North East and North Cumbria, in association with the North of England Mental Health Clinical Network. 

   The AHSNs form part of a government initiative to innovate and revitalise the quality standards for practice across the UK’s health sector. They aim to achieve this by uniting and facilitating the flow of ideas between the public, academic and private practitioners of healthcare. Unsurprisingly, it’s the mental health sector that is of particular interest to us. Within the scope of our own work, we endeavour to push ourselves to refine our process for assessment and intervention wherever possible and stand out as a leading example of care. 

   This particular event will serve to address the topic of trauma-informed care, which has become an increasing priority for care providers in recent years. This follows substantial exploration into its importance, and the development of therapeutic models that support its implementation. Discussion is set to take place between all of the UK’s top experts in the field of mental health research and implementation who are committed to refining care to improve the experiences of our service users. 

   Already incorporated into our programmes of therapy at present, the principle of trauma informed care is that any therapeutic work performed with a client must be cognisant of their prior adverse experiences to be suitably effective, as must any external inter-agency support that may be provided in other areas of their life. Crucially, the impact of trauma is such that certain therapeutic interventions that are ordinarily well suited to a presenting mental health issue, may be inappropriate for individuals whose ability to engage has been inhibited by early life experiences that have hindered their cognitive and emotional development. 

   For the purposes of achieving the full picture of a client’s presenting issues, we are one of very few sites in the UK to utilise the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics. This specialised metric is what allows us to gain a suitably thorough understanding of these traits as part of our assessments, and formulate a bespoke package of clinical psychotherapy that will yield evidence-based, trauma-informed results for our clients. 

   We look forward greatly to being able to meet with other industry pioneers and seize this opportunity to make our contribution to a much needed advancement of client care that will be felt throughout across the country in years to come. 

   

    

3. Mindfulness in Manchester: Alastair Barrie distributes flyers for new programme

   15th March 2019 4:31 pm Leave a Comment

   We make it a priority to develop our delivery of care at all our sites throughout the Northwest. As well as our offices in Burnley and Liverpool, we also have consulting rooms in Manchester. CBT therapist Alastair Barrie often works at this site, and recently has set his sights towards building upon the work we already do in the city. This month, Alastair has emerged from the confines of the clinic and started hitting the streets to drum up interest for our new regional programme of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

   We are currently promoting sessions of CBT in Manchester to provide help with approaching common daily struggles in a healthier and more productive way. This is guided through techniques of mindful thinking which can be practiced to help the client ground themselves when faced with adverse situations. The sessions are also beneficial as a means of reframing our perspectives about the issues and challenges we face, as well as addressing how we perceive ourselves in a constructively critical manner.

   If you’ve spent much time in Ancoats or the Northern Quarter recently, you may have seen him out and about. Alastair has been visiting cafes and community centres in the area to discuss the project with people and post copies of our flyer which explains its benefits. Next on his list are the inner city hubs of Deansgate and Spinningfields, where he hopes to generate even more excitement for proactive emotional wellbeing.

   Should we receive a sufficiently enthusiastic response, we are prepared to host group CBT sessions at a reduced rate. One possibility we are exploring would be to run this support group within one of the spaces that we are currently signposting from, since this would bring the benefits of mindfulness to an environment our clients are already comfortable with and familiar in.

   This project is important to us at JSA, because we’re perpetually invested in increasing the scope of understanding about, and access to, help for common mental health conditions. If you are curious to know more about the techniques in this article, please feel free to follow the attached links to more comprehensive sections of the site.

   If you are based in the Manchester area and would like to make an appointment to get involved with our service, you can contact us at office@jsapsychotherapy.com for general enquiries, or pose a question to Alastair directly at alastair.barrie@jsapsychotherapy.com

    

   

    

4. Katy Walker exceeds goals for half marathon

   14th March 2019 2:52 pm Leave a Comment

   Last month, we announced that adolescent therapist Katy Walker was raising funds for charity by preparing for the Liverpool half marathon. We are delighted to announce that she has not only succeeded at running in the event, but also in surpassing her original target for donations.

   The run went on as planned despite truly dreadful weather conditions caused in the wake of storm Gareth last Sunday. Katy and the other runners bravely endured freezing cold, gale force winds and near-constant downpours of rain, sleet, hail and snow.

   She remained steadfast throughout this adversity in order to encourage financial support for the continued operation of Grimsargh village pre-school in Lancashire. The ‘Aunties’ who organise this educational community provision are already set to receive £420 as a result of Katy’s generous efforts.

   This total makes up a substantial 140% of the original £300 goal. It’s clear just how much the contributors have been encouraged to donate by Katy’s actions for the cause. If you have felt similarly inspired by this story and are interested in making a contribution to stretch the funding drive even further, you can do so on the cause’s crowdfunding page.

   

   

5. Challenges of Lent: Are you being too hard on yourself?

   7th March 2019 1:48 pm Leave a Comment

   The blustery showers of Spring are now with us once again, and with the advent of the new season comes the period of Lent. According to a Twitter tracker, which analysed over 18,000 tweets, the most popular things being given up for Lent in 2019 are; social networking, alcohol, chocolate and, (as is often the case) Lent itself.  

   Whilst many are planning to make the most of Lent to forgo a significant part of their lives, it also presents an excellent opportunity to take up a new hobby or activity instead to sublimate a feeling of absence. Whilst there are a range of excellent community activities available, from group exercise to learning a new specialist skill, Lent provides a chance to build a new mental health routine. 

   It’s unfortunate that we often treat ourselves harshly when practicing abstinence and can struggle to ‘give ourselves a break’. This can be after an honest mistake, failing to meet a personal standard or even as part of a natural thought process. Though perfectly ordinary and sometimes a helpful motivator to begin with, this degree of criticality compounds stress over time, until it becomes a significant hindrance to meeting our goals. Without even realising it, we can lose sight of why we originally wanted to improve in the first place while still mechanically pushing forward on willpower alone. Unsurprisingly, this behaviour has its limits and is not sustainable long term. 

   If you find yourself regularly putting yourself down for failing to meet the expectations you believe you should be meeting, offering yourself a moment of rest or kindness can help to restore the balance of motivation and aversion in your mind and renew your confidence. Over Lent, why not do one thing a day to offer a bit of kindness to yourself and say ‘I’m doing my best’?

   

   

   Cognitive Behavioural Therapist Alastair Barrie has provided several suggestions for easy ways to do this below. If these don’t seem that appealing though, feel free to get inventive and come up with some of your own that are better suited to you!  

   • Bring yourself a moment of warmth. This can be a brew, another jumper, a tactile blanket or even a hot shower. Heat soothes our tense muscles and helps us relax physically. As this happens, our mind tends to follow. 
   • Have a brief rest. It’s often calming to rest your hands on your stomach if laid down or folded in your lap if sitting. Just take a moment to notice the feelings of contact between yourself and the object you’re resting on as well as changes on your breathing, feelings of warmth and the gradual relaxation of your muscles. Even a short, five–minute ‘kind pause’ like this can be enough to help ground your day. 
   • Mindful journaling. This can be done on your phone, in a designated book or anywhere you can find the space to jot some notes down. Spend a moment noticing how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking. Don’t try and evaluate or refine these thoughts, just write them down. Acknowledge any difficulties you’re having, perhaps with phrases like ‘This is stressful’ or ‘I’m struggling here’. Gently remind yourself that everyone has these kinds of experiences, perhaps with a phrase like ‘It’s not just me, others react this way too’. Finish up with a short, kind word to yourself, perhaps ‘I’m doing the best I can’. Again, this can be as long or short an activity as you would like.  

   These techniques are examples of tried and tested means to improve emotional regulation, build emotional resilience and promote emotional wellbeing. Most of the time, this is enough to relieve the distressing or overwhelming emotions that can arise throughout a typical day. 

   If you find that practicing mindfulness in this manner is not helping you to feel better, it is likely that you are experiencing a more burdensome mental health issue. If you suspect that this may be the case, but are unsure of whether your difficulties warrant clinical psychotherapeutic help, this simple guide that can clear up common sources of confusion about accessing the service.

6. JSA Psychotherapy attend charity fundraiser in Gorton

   4th March 2019 12:51 pm Leave a Comment

   Over the weekend, JSA Psychotherapy and our sister company Life Change Care were fortunate to be invited to the Together Trust ball, a fundraising event hosted by the charity of the same name. The night saw the team not only enjoying the occasion for its festivities, but also connecting with many other industry professionals in support of an excellent cause.

   The Together Trust are a charity operating in Greater Manchester and across the North West who provide a variety of services for children and young adults with special needs. These include residential care, support for families and fostering, community services and many more. With an obvious parallel to the work that we provide in our own sector, we were delighted to attend and show our support for their ongoing efforts to improve the quality of life for so many in the region.

   The venue for the ball was Gorton Monastery, fully renovated in recent years to serve as a spectacular event space. Over the course of the evening the hosts conducted a raffle and an auction to raise further funds for the running of the services that Together Trust provide. There was also a gallery of paintings created by the service users themselves that were up for silent bids throughout the night. Live music followed a short video that detailed the value and impact of the charity’s outreach work.

   The majority of the attendees arrived representing Manchester’s thriving legal sector, many of whom we recognised from previous cases and other, similar events which we have attended in the past. Over the last 30 years, Julie has had extensive liaison with the courts, for whom we provide a significant quantity of assessment work and mandated clinical intervention, especially within the family justice system, as well as public and private law.

   Overall, everyone from both businesses had an excellent time, made all the better by the knowledge that the proceeds will help to facilitate such a vital function in supporting those at need in our community.

    

   

7. JSA Psychotherapy develop team with brain development and dissociation training day

   28th February 2019 12:21 pm Leave a Comment

   An area of business development that we’re particularly enthusiastic about at JSA is our ongoing commitment to developing our team with training. This helps us remain up to date with the leading edge of psychotherapeutic practice. It’s not only an inherent part of our ethos, but also a critical component of our clinical framework. Every model of therapy and assessment that we conduct within the practice is underpinned by a shared understanding of the most effective techniques available to the contemporary industry.

   Last week, Principal Psychotherapist Julie Stirpe ran the first of two days of training for members of our staff team. The course explored and contextualised the ways in which cognitive development and early attachment impact a child’s ability to interact with the world and engage with targeted therapy later in life. These processes set the foundations for all subsequent emotional and cognitive growth, informing personality as well as prospective susceptibility to mental health issues.

   This can be measured in terms of an individual’s emotional resilience factors. Where clients have been unable to build strong resilience, they will be less able to withstand adversity without developing unhealthy and damaging coping strategies. In cases where a client has faced pronounced adversity early in life, especially chronic trauma, without receiving the necessary developmental support to endure these and recover, the brain will often resort to dissociation as a defence mechanism.

   Dissociation is the brain’s main method of avoiding the overwhelming negative experience of trauma and is linked to the primal ‘freeze’ response when facing a threat, as opposed to ‘fight or flight’. Cognitive withdrawal in this manner provides temporary relief from the impact of the event to ease the burden that the mind is not equipped with the necessary resilience to deal with. There are however, significant repercussions for this behaviour, as the state of disconnection will then be maintained until the individual develops the emotional resilience to become able to process the trauma that first necessitated it.

   We use this understanding to tailor our models of therapy. After assessing a client to make sure that we understand their unique strengths and weaknesses, we can formulate the most effective model of clinical psychotherapeutic intervention to resolve their mental health issues. It may sometimes be the case that we learn that it’s necessary to first use a different model of therapy to help the client build resilience, before attempting a more direct trauma recovery method.

   The development programme will lead on from this point into Julie’s next training day, in which she will explain how we use the NMT metrics in our practice for a more advanced and bespoke application of this principle.

    

   

8. Burnley FC push for awareness: Why mental health matters

   25th February 2019 2:47 pm Leave a Comment

   Every year Burnley FC in the Community, the charitable branch of Burnley Football Club, utilise the group’s influential social platform to promote mental health awareness. This project is titled and advertised with the hashtag #MentalHealthMatters. These are far from being the only steps that the charity have taken to improve the emotional wellbeing of people in the Burnley. Throughout the remainder of the previous year, they have used their resources to provide mental health support workers in local schools, and currently run a free community drop-in support group called Claret and Brew for men suffering from anxiety and depression.

   One of the ways in which BFCitC have attempted to address the issue of poor mental health this month has been to provide a series of tips for building emotional resilience and fostering a healthy state of mind. These techniques are being promoted in conjunction with the match that the club will be playing against Tottenham Hotspur over the weekend, which has been formally dedicated to the cause.

   Of the methods suggested, most emphasise the critical importance of community and positive, intimate connection with others. Additionally, the value of keeping yourself physically healthy and stimulated with enriching, fulfilling activities is stressed. The tips grouped under the heading ‘take notice’ in particular align very closely with the techniques of mindfulness which we ourselves at JSA Psychotherapy have frequently spoken about in the past, such as in our mindfulness techniques blog from last month.

   These are all excellent techniques to assist with difficulties in wellbeing that anyone can practice to improve their quality of life. However, if there’s still a problem for you or someone you know even after putting these helpful tools into practice, it’s important to consider that there may be a more serious underlying mental health issue to blame for the problem. This can be a very daunting prospect, and those who are struggling with the confidence to take that first step to further help may find our simple guide to accessing support helpful.

    

   

9. Katy Walker prepares to run Liverpool half marathon for charity

   14th February 2019 2:30 pm Leave a Comment

   Many of the team at JSA harbour an enthusiastic love of the outdoors and physical fitness. Often this is combined with their altruistic instincts to get involved with a variety of athletic charity events. Next month, our Child and Adolescent Therapist Katy Walker is eagerly stepping up to the challenge of running the Liverpool Half Marathon.

   On 10th of March, Katy will be participating in support of Grimsargh village pre-school in Preston, Lancashire. Based in the village hall and run by volunteer ‘aunties’, this registered charity provides an invaluable educational community service to local children.

   Katy is currently hoping for more donations on her crowdfunding page, so that she can make her goals a reality and provide the financial security that this independent service needs to continue helping village children to achieve their potential in the early years of life. If you would like to follow her lead and lend the Aunties of Grimsargh a helping hand, please spare what you can.

    

   

10. Alder Hey’s baby cuddling volunteers: The importance of nurture in early development

    8th February 2019 12:49 pm Leave a Comment

    A recent journalistic report into Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool has documented an interesting and exciting method of care that promises to be of great benefit to post-natal support for babies and their parents who are required to stay for prolonged periods at the site’s maternity ward.

    The report in question was broadcast on BBC North West’s regional segment of the ten o’clock news last night, and explores how Alder Hey’s management team are currently recruiting volunteers to spend time looking after babies who are in long-term stay. This helps parents of the babies by giving them the opportunity to take essential breaks from providing care themselves, ensuring that they aren’t placed in the uncomfortable and guilt-inducing position of having to leave their babies unattended for too long.

    What is particularly noteworthy about this programme, is that the volunteers are being asked specifically to make sure that they cuddle the babies to soothe them. This is important due to the impact that soothing and cuddles can have in the recovery of sick babies. Staff on the ward have reported quantitative evidence to indicate that the babies who receive consistent physical nurture and affection at the hospital do in fact recover faster from the early illnesses for which they remain under observation.

    

    Though we at JSA Psychotherapy primarily work with adults, adolescents and children above the age of 3, we maintain the provision to conduct filial therapy as well, with parents of very young infants and babies. It’s because of this that we are so keenly interested in the importance of attachment and nurture at this stage of life. This sentiment is also a key component of the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics that we utilise in our assessments, as well as to underpin and inform the clinical practice of all our therapeutic models.

    As research from Dr Bruce Perry, founder of the ChildTrauma Academy who developed the NMT demonstrates, the rhythmic cuddling and shushing sounds that we instinctively make to soothe babies work because they mimic the sensation of hearing their mother’s heartbeat in utero. As such, this technique provides the baby with a familiar state of comfort and security. Prosaic as it may seem, the value of the care that these volunteers provide to the babies of Alder Hey should not be dismissed or overlooked.