Our Services

The team is committed to a collaborative approach to psychological support informed by the latest research and tailored to the individual needs of all children and adolescents. These approaches have demonstrated efficacy in deepening children and young people’s understanding of themselves and their behaviours within the context of their developmental histories to improve wellbeing.  Our psychologists engage in ongoing professional development and training to ensure they are skilled in trauma-informed evidence-based therapeutic techniques and modalities. Psychological supports and modalities include:

• Schema Therapy for children and adolescents
• Emotion Regulation Therapy
• Mindfulness
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapies
• Dialectic Behavioural Therapy
• Solution Focused Therapy
• Play Therapy
• Art Therapy
• Stabilisation Based Therapy
• Play Therapy

These approaches have been used successfully with children and adolescents presenting with a range of needs including:

• Childhood trauma and attachment issues
• Emotional dysregulation
• Mental health issues such as depression and anxiety
• Adjustment issues and school transitions
• Dissociation
• Impulsive behaviours
• Relationship problems
• Addictive and compulsive behaviours
• Social isolation
• Grief and loss

Emerging symptoms in children and adolescents have been monitored through annual mental health check-ins. We aim for all children aged school age and above to complete an annual mental health check with a psychologist. To date, 97.9% of school aged children and young people under the care of Abcare have engaged in this service. The results of these check-ins continue to identify children and young people experiencing distress for the first time. These young people are then offered ongoing psychological support and appropriate steps have been taken to ensure their safety.

Our Contracted Clinician provides 24-hour support to Carers. This support provides Carers with high needs children the support outside of office hours to deal with behavioural challenges or to seek support with issues that may be impacting on the placement. The Contracted Clinician shares additional strategies to support carers to implement psychological strategies. Support is also provided to carers to promote coregulation and to support placement stability for children and young people under the care of Abcare.

Our expanding program of research supports the development of evidence to support best practices and allows us to assess whether services and programs are effective and to identify support needs. Our research aimed at identifying rates of neurodevelopmental and mood conditions experienced by children and young people in out-of-home care indicates very high psychological and neurodevelopmental symptoms. The cognitive skills most affected include attentional control, emotion regulation, planning and organisation, goal-directed behaviour, social connection, memory formation, and empathy. The results of this research have informed our therapeutic approaches.