Thinking Psychologically About Children Who Are Looked After and Adopted: Space for Reflection

Kim S. Golding, BSC (Hons), MSc (Clinical Psychology), DClinPsy
Kim is a chartered clinical psychologist, employed by Wyre Forest Primary Care Trust inWorcestershire, providing clinical leadership for the Integrated Service for Looked After Children (ISL). She was part of a small group who developed the Primary Care and Support Team (now part of ISL). The team provides support and training for foster, adoptive and residential carers. Kim has a longstanding interest in parenting, and collaborating with parents or carers to develop their parenting skills tailored to the particular needs of the children they are caring for. Within ISL she has developed a group for foster carers based on attachment theory, and has carried out research exploring the use of the consultation service.Kimcoordinated a national network for clinical psychologists working with looked after and adopted children for a number of years. Additional to her clinical work Kim was, for 15 years, an associate lecturer for the Open University teaching Introduction to Psychology and Child Development.
Contact details: Integrated Service for Looked After Children, The Pines, Bilford Road, Worcester, WR3 8PU.
Email: [email protected]

Helen R. Dent, BA (Hons), MPhil, PhD
Helen is a chartered clinical and forensic psychologist, currently employed as Programme Director of the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the Universities of Staffordshire and Keele. Her previous post was Consultant Clinical Psychologist in an Inter-Agency team with children looked after by the local authority. She is continuing her work in this area, and has a contract with North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS trust as Honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist. She is particularly interested in strategic and systemic interventions,andin neuropsychological development. Prior to training as a clinical psychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry, Helen gained a PhD from the University of Nottingham, for which she carried out pioneering research into children as witnesses. She has held various academic and clinical appointments and has edited three previous books, including Children asWitnesses (1992) with Rhona Flin, published by JohnWiley & Sons.
Contact details: Shropshire and Staffordshire Clinical Psychology Training Programme, Faculty of Health and Sciences, Staffordshire University, Mellor Building, College Road, Stoke-on-Trent ST4 2DE.
Email: [email protected]

Ruth Nissim, BA (Hons,) MEd, PhD
Ruth is a consultant clinical psychologist and UKCP registered family therapist who has been in practice since qualifying in 1977. Since the early 1980s she has specialized in children living away from home in substitute families and in residential care. She has worked in all three agencies: Education, Social Services and the NHS, as well as for a private adoption agency. Since taking early retirement Ruth has worked on a freelance basis with a particular focus on supporting adoptive families. In 1999 she completed a research doctorate looking at the outcomes for children placed in adoptive or foster families longer-term.
Contact details: Dores Cottage, 17, High St, Finstock, Oxon OX7 3DA.

Liz Stott, MSc (Hons), MSc (Clinical Psychology)
Liz is a chartered clinical psychologist who has been working with children for the past 16 years. She has worked in both residential adolescent units and outpatient CAMHS before taking up specific posts to work with looked after children and their carers. She is interested in systemic and psychodynamic approaches to consultation and uses these ideas to inform practice when working with larger organizations such as Social Services, smaller organizations such as children’s homes and also in consultation with carers. She is currently employed by Partnership Trust in Gloucestershire.
Contact details: The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, Delancey Hospital, Charlton Lane, Cheltenham, Glos GL53 9DU.
Email: [email protected]