Joint Statement by the Directorial Team
The Anna Freud Centre aims to be a leading centre for developing models of mental health treatment for children and families in Europe, at the same time carrying out cutting-edge research, high quality training for fellow-professionals and maintaining a tradition of excellent clinical services within the local community.
The need for our work has never been greater. The UNICEF 2007 Report Card on Child Well-Being in Rich Countries places UK and US children at the bottom of the ranking table, highlighting the emotional poverty of children in the UK as well as the US. The World Health Organization estimates that by 2020 mental disorders will become one of the five most common causes of serious ill-health among children.
At AFC we work within a psychoanalytic developmental model that simultaneously embraces the findings of neuroscience, experimental developmental and social science research, the primacy of social relationships in child development and the depth and complexity that is offered through the consideration of unconscious as well as conscious mental processes.
We are committed to the values of an evidence-based approach, and wish to be at the forefront of evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of psychoanalytically informed psychotherapies. Click here to read more about the Anna Freud Centre's approach to evidence based practice.
We aim to identify the particular groups of problems for which the psychoanalytic orientation is particularly effective at the same time as creating innovative modifications of this approach for children whom we are unable to reach in these ways.
Our efforts are rooted in a tradition of excellence at this Centre. The Anna Freud Centre was the first to offer a comprehensive child psychotherapy service and training, and for this it acquired deserved international recognition and acclaim.
While continuing the tradition of intensive psychotherapeutic work with children, the Centre's current work is community-, family- and systems-based (nurseries, schools, homes).
The Centre's leadership believe that the widespread and complex problems of children and young people require imaginative approaches to prevention and intervention. This involves evaluating what works and in what circumstances, and providing a range of options to suit different needs. It also involves working to identify the common features of good practice across treatment modalities, and enhancing these at all levels of mental health practice. This work requires a flexibility much harder to achieve within statutory NHS, social or educational provision, and increasingly the Centre is looked to by those statutory providers to give a lead in the development of new ways to help children and families more effectively.
To this end, the Centre carries out innovative clinical programs and cutting-edge research, engages in national and international leadership concerning child mental health and research policy, and offers advice to legal and childcare professionals concerning issues of diagnosis and management of complex cases.
We strive to create effective partnerships with the National Health Service, Local Authority Social Services Departments and schools, as well as other voluntary service providers in the community, to enable childcare professionals to be ever more effective and efficient in the services they offer to families.
Our research, theoretical expertise and treatment development work are made widely available through training and are also disseminated and enriched by collaborations nationally and internationally with universities and other centers of excellence in children's mental health services.
The Centre is part of a vibrant international network of academic excellence in social development and cognitive neuroscience and the integration of these within the general field of developmental psychopathology. The Centre as a whole and the Directorial Team in particular thrives on discourse and interchange with professionals in related academic disciplines as well as non-psychoanalytic mental health professionals in psychiatry, psychology, education, nursing and social work. We pride ourselves on remaining open to suggestions, ideas and criticism and want to see ourselves as reflexive and able to modify our approach in the light of emerging evidence and new ideas.
A vital part of the Centre's work is cutting-edge research in other areas of crucial relevance to psychoanalysis. This includes neuropsychoanalysis, attachment research, and basic research on the development of social and emotional relatedness. All of these deeply inform our thinking about how psychoanalytic treatment may be made more effective and widely available. Through clarifying the neuropsychological, emotional and social processes that underpin psychopathology, we hope to sharpen psychoanalytic understanding.
We are building on the Centre's powerful connections with the Yale Child Study Center. The Chair of our Directorial Team is a distinguished member of the Yale faculty. We have added to this already powerful alliance through our contact with the Child and Family Program at the Menninger Department of Psychiatry at Baylor Medical College. These collaborations are rooted in the Centre's extensive collaborations with University College London which is our partner in Master's and Doctoral degrees.
These academic centers are linked to form a consortium of scientific psychodynamic prevention and treatment research.
We hope that the international multisite programs we have forged will serve as a model of interdisciplinary and international collaboration in child mental health.