We are two qualified clinical psychologists with a long experience of working with vulnerable and challenging young people and the professionals and carers who support them.

We have spent many years providing consultation and training to teams of professionals from a range of agencies, including social care, criminal justice, education and health providers. Obviously, professionals are keen to intervene most effectively with the problems that their young people display. We find that repeatedly they are using lots of energy and time trying to make a difference but regrettably often lack a specialist psychological understanding of their young people, a knowledge that could make a real difference. This specialist knowledge is not taught on most professional training courses, even on higher degree courses and can only be gleaned from lots of complex reading and understanding of the latest research. Thus even higher level staff cannot be expected to know it.

To assist professionals and carers we have developed a range of training based on the specialist knowledge that we have developed over a long period of time. It is focussed on the type of problems that we are most frequently asked about in our consultations thereby providing knowledge in the areas that will most assist them in their work with vulnerable and challenging young people.

The training is aimed at improving practitioners’ knowledge and skills at working with the psychological and mental health needs of complex young people. This ultimately has the aim of helping them to tackle challenging behaviour through understanding a truly holistic picture of the young person and having the best range of ways to intervene effectively.