WEBINAR: Working with children and young people with complex needs

It has been recognised increasingly that there is a group of young people (often described as having ‘complex needs’) which routine services find it difficult to help. This may be for a variety of reasons but is most frequently because the young person has a range of needs which span a variety of services (education, health, social care, education, youth justice and others). Such needs may mean that numerous services become involved with the child or young person or alternatively that services feel that the individual needs do not ‘meet threshold’ for involvement. This situation can lead either to multiple and piecemeal service involvement with a child/young person and family or a lack of service provision.

The development of the 'Thames Valley Link programme' has been made possible by the identification of a national gap in service provision for children and young people sometimes referred to as having ‘complex needs’. Funding has been made available within the NHSE ‘Long Term Plan’ (LTP) and Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust has been awarded ‘Vanguard Status’ to develop a dedicated programme across the Thames Valley (Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire).

The ‘LINK’ clinical teams will consist of practitioners experienced in working with children/young people in complex situations and will have access to a range of clinical and youth-work expertise allowing a flexible approach to differing presentations and needs.

This course for multi-agency practitioners (qualified or unqualified) is delivered by LINK team workers who are the members of the new CAMHS team that has been set up to support young people who have complex needs and the professionals around them.

The course will cover:

• Understanding of complexity in children and young people
• Developing a shared language for working with complexity
• Developing skills to work with complex young people including:
• Engagement strategies
• Working with systems and professionals
• Trauma informed approaches.
• The challenges of working with complexity