Short Course: Interdisciplinary Training Course for Professionals Working with Pregnant Teenagers & Young Parents

Project Leader: Professor Joan Raphael-Leff
April 18th - July 25th 2008 (FULLY BOOKED)
& September 2008 (dates for the September course to be confirmed).

Applications for the September 2008 course are now being accepted. The closing date for applications for the September 2008 course is Monday 2 June 2008.

Funded by a Government grant, the Anna Freud Centre is developing and will deliver and evaluate two courses of eight weeks each, designed to train and support professionals working with teenage parents across the nation.

This inter-disciplinary programme aims to facilitate psychodynamic understanding in order to inform professional practice within this high-risk field.

Participants will include practitioners and managers, child protection workers, social workers, midwives, hostel personnel, CAMHS primary mental health care workers, youth group leaders, Sure Start Plus workers, personal counselors, etc.

Background
A variety of professionals across the statutory, voluntary and private sectors are currently engaged in the task of safeguarding and promoting the emotional well-being of adolescent parents and the mental health of their infants.

However, their training and experiences vary. Exploratory investigations reveal that efforts are not always coordinated in meeting the needs of this complex client group, facing the difficult task of dealing simultaneously with the double demands of adolescence and parenthood.

At the very point of hoping to become independent, pregnant teenagers find themselves in a vulnerable and dependent position, and excluded from many activities of their peer group. While trying, as adolescents do, to assert bodily ownership, girls are occupied by a baby growing inside, and subject to all the changes in body shape, body-image and the many fantasies that pregnancy evokes.

The foetus may be at risk as young people are prone to poor eating habits, smoking, alcohol and substance misuse, and are less likely to attend antenatal classes on a regular basis despite a higher risk of pregnancy loss, birth damage and low birth-weight and a twofold rate of infant mortality.

Parenting is extremely challenging and teenage mothers often lack a supportive network and guidance, and some may be estranged from their families. This group has a threefold rate of postnatal depression, and self-proclaimed eating disorders, anxiety, self-harm and risk-taking behaviours.

Aims of the Course
In the light of the above, the course aims to increase practitioners' understanding of the psychological processes of adolescence, pregnancy and infancy, and ways in which these interrelate.

It addresses risk factors associated with parental immaturity, including non-attunement, inconsistent or ineffectual parenting, neglect, violence or trauma leading to cognitive deficits and and emotional disturbance in the child.

The programme offers appropriate skill-based guidelines to help professionals best promote life-course improvements in their clients, including sensitive physical and emotional care of the baby, cultivating support networks and appropriate use of local services.

The experiential component of the course provides time to reflect on practice, and opportunities to discuss individual cases and to develop the capabilities necessary to confront the anxieties and difficulties such work entails.

Through small work discussion groups this course hopes to encourage multi-agency team work, addressing inter-organisational dynamics and effective exchanges with others involved with this complex client group.

The course consists of three components, in which experience can be reworked at different levels:

The course meets the following specified tasks of the recent Governmental policy on Social Exclusion:

  1. Identifying and targeting those at-risk as early as possible.
  2. Bringing together best practice in a Centre for Excellence focusing on infant mental health.
  3. Promoting multi-agency and interdisciplinary work.
  4. Providing a tailored programme of support for a variety of workers with a complex 'at risk' group.

COURSE FEE
FREE

TIME COMMITMENT
8 Study Days (10am to 4.45pm) every other Friday, from
April 18th - July 25th 2008.

DETAILS & REGISTRATION

STUDY DAY STRUCTURE
9.30-10.00 Coffee and free discussion
10.00-11.00 THEORETICAL LECTURE (& questions/discussion) to further
conceptual understanding of developmental processes and the emotional needs and disorders of very young (expectant) parents and their babies.
Coffee break
11.15-12.45 SKILLS-BASED WORKSHOP on relevant themes, including 'listening practice' and role-play to promote self-reflection and appreciation of culture and ethnicity, group dynamics and diversity of childcare practices to facilitate satisfying parent-infant relationships.
Lunch break
1.30-2.50 REFLECTIVE OBSERVATION including small group discussion of live and video material, to enhance observational capacities and containment of the anxieties inherent in working with disturbed and disturbing young families in a variety of different work settings.
Tea break
3.10-4.30 Small interdisciplinary WORK GROUP DISCUSSION providing time to reflect on individual cases, to explore difficulties and increase self-awareness, in order to develop psychodynamic understanding and more effective multi-agency team work.
4.30-4.45 Closure and evaluation questionnaires.

FACULTY
Faculty includes lecturers from the Anna Freud Centre, The Portman Clinic, The Tavistock Clinic & Centre, and a variety of NHS and Voluntary Sector practitioners.

IMPLEMENTATION
The first two exploratory courses are free but entail obligations:

1. Managerial Commitment to release people on a regular basis for the entire course and commitment of participants to attend regularly.
2. At least two professionals to be sent from each participating location for mutual support in training and practice.
3. Recognition that homework, ongoing evaluation of the course and reflection on its effect on one's practice play a crucial part in helping us improve/consolidate it.
4. Each participant would be expected to make a presentation to their own work place after the end of the course to familarise their colleagues with psycho-dynamic understanding of parent-infant relationships.

Since this course is likely to be over-subscribed, we ask that people apply only if they can give this level of commitment and attend all sessions.

For more information, registration enquiries and to be added to the courses and events mailing list please email course.enquiries@annafreud.org.

Alternatively, email the Project Leader Joan Raphael-Leff at jrleff@gmail.com.

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