Team Ethos
Using a therapeutic approach that focuses on the child’s attachment needs highlighting the child’s past experiences and how present care and educative experiences can address such needs.
Using a therapeutic and assessment approach that adopts a systemic perspective in understanding how the different parts of the child’s family and / or care set-up fit and how each influence each other in a recursive circular pattern. Thus intervening with all different parts of the system rather than just with the child, would be seen as crucial and most desirable.
Using an overall sensitivity towards co-working with the different professionals involved in the child’s care plan.
Having an action research base that seeks to measure efficacy and understand what has been most and least helpful in meeting the therapeutic needs of children at St. Patrick’s. Such research would contribute to local knowledge on children in care and would lead to the potential adaptation of the service being provided along indicators emerging from research.
Context and development
Since St. Patrick’s embraced a vision that sought to assess and meet the child’s individual needs and move away from an institutional set-up and a ‘one size fits all’ idea, it asked for a differentiation of services to suit the individual child’s needs to replace one that resorted to long term institutional care. The setting up of a dramatherapy service at St. Patrick’s in September 2000 was the first step on a journey to set up a Support Services Team composed of a multi disciplinary team, aimed to develop further into a trans disciplinary team, which will work in harmony with the other units in order to identify and meet, through intervention and evaluation, the therapeutic needs of children at St. Patrick’s.
The trans disciplinary team consists of a dramatherapist, a gestalt psychotherapist, a counseling psychologist, an educational psychologist, a family therapist and a Consultant clinical psychologist.
Services Offered
Individual psychotherapeutic interventions with children in a St. Patrick’s residential placement and children attending the school
Systemic therapeutic interventions conjointly with teachers, residential social workers and unit leaders / care workers;
Family therapy interventions with families of children in short or medium term residential care especially where family reintegration is seen as a desirable goal in the child’s care plan;
Educational psychological assessments and interventions;
Coordinating efforts for the setting up of Individual Educational Programs / Plans;
Setting up training and staff development;
Support to care and school staff; Designing in collaboration with other workers specific skills based training and other interventions (e.g mentoring, support group, issue specific therapy groups).
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VERZJONI BIL-MALTI
Min ahna?
Ahna numru ta’ persuni imharrga professjonalment f’hiliet differenti. Ghalkemm il-hiliet taghna huma differenti u specjalizzati ahna nahdmu bhala tim sabiex noffru ghajnuna psikologika li-tifel u lill-familja li jigu bzonn is-servizzi tad-dar residenzjali jew l-iskola ta’ St. Patrick’s.
X’ghajnuna noffru?
L-ghajnuna li noffru hija ta’ diversi tipi skond il-bzonnijiet tat-tifel u l-familja.
Noffru servizz ta’ ‘Dramatherapy’, ‘Educational Psychology’, ‘Family Therapy’, u ‘Gestalt Psychotherapy’. Barra minnhekk nahdmu hafna ma’ professjonisti ohra bhal ghalliema, ‘social workers’, ‘care workers’, u professjonisti minn agenziji ohra. B’hekk inkunu nistghu nilhqu l-bzonnijiet tat-tifel b’mod aktar shih.
Dramatherapy
Tip ta’ terapija li tghin li-tifel fil-problemi psikologici u emozzjonali tieghu bl-uzu ta’ l-arti kreattiva u d-drama.
Educational Psychology
Il-psikologu fl-iskola jghin lit-tifel billi jaghmel interventi fl-iskola u jaghti l-appogg mehtieg biex it-tifel jikber u jizviluppa skond il-kapacitajiet u t-talenti individwali tieghu
Gestalt Psychotherapy
Din hija tip ta’ terapijja li tghin lill-persuna tikber b’mod shih billi taghraf aktar lilha nnifisha u kif tirrelata ma’ l-ohrajn .
Family Therapy
It-terapija tal-familja tghin billi jsir xoghol terapewtiku mal-familja biex b’hekk jittejjeb l-ambjent familjari li fih tkun qed tghix il-familja.
