Care Proceedings & Contact/Residence Disputes

We provide psychological assessments of adults and children in Family Proceedings and Private Law Disputes on a wide range of issues including :

• Parental ability to meet their children’s needs in the short, medium & long term
• Learning disability & impact on parenting
• Capacity to instruct a solicitor
• Personality disorder/dysfunction and mental health
• Family dynamics and relationships
• Impact of domestic violence and / or substance misuse
• Risk Assessments with respect to sexual, physical or emotional abuse
• Capacity to understand risk and to take appropriate protective action
• Therapeutic needs of parents, timescales and prospect of change
• Attachment relationships of children to their parents / carers
• Assessment of harm or likelihood of harm suffered by children with respect to known or suspected neglect and/or physical, sexual & emotional abuse
• Nature and significance of sibling relationships
• Placement and therapeutic needs of children following a care order
• Contact needs following a Care Order

We can also provide therapeutic interventions with children and their families and develop Family Safety Plans to reduce risk and enhance protective factors where responsibility for harm suffered by a child continues to be denied but where reunification of the child and family is desired.

Personal Injury

We regularly prepare medico legal reports on adults and children in Personal Injury Claims assessing for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or other mental health problems following a road traffic accident (RTA), bullying at work or other distressing incidents. We advise on fitness to return to work and/or therapeutic requirements with timescales and costs. We also provide evidence based psychological treatments for trauma using Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and/or Eye Movement De-sensitisation & Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) and medico legal reports with respect to response to treatment.