The Anna Freud Center, London and the Know-Cow Center for the Alternative Care for Children, New Bulgarian University invite you to participate in the online training AMBIT in the Deinstitutionalization Reform - How to Work With Young People and Children Who Do Not Want Our Help?. The duration of the training is a total of 35 astronomical hours, starting on November 4, 2020.
The Problem
Children cannot build a secure attachment
Children who grow up and are raised in residential services often carry the marks of separation from their families and the anonymity of the care they receive. The absence of a significant adult in their lives can lead to attachment disorder. Their experience of rejection brings a sign that predetermines the difficulty of forming and maintaining close relationships with others.
A lack of secure attachment to an adult in early childhood hinders the development of socio-emotional and cognitive skills. This makes children vulnerable to the development of many secondary problems, ranging from social exclusion to problems with the law in adulthood.
There is no standard in the methodology for assessing needs and requirements
There is a lack of standardized methodologies to assess the needs and wants of children living under protection, as well as children living at risk of abandonment and neglect. Often, individual child care plans are formal, with no practical value.
In addition, the lack of research and data assessing the satisfaction of children's individual needs in the new residential services leads to their moral devaluation. There is also no data on whether the needs of children are met within the newly opened services. As a result, the quality of care is questionable.
Specialists working in the field recognize the need for standardized practices that take into account the effectiveness of care for these children. The lack of specific guidelines with clear indicators of measurable results, combined with the lack of regular supervision and teamwork skills often lead to a feeling of lack of preparation and burnout among professionals. This is true for most professionals, regardless of their level of training and professional qualifications. The results of these factors are:
- Instability of foster care;
- High turnover;
- Demoralization of staff;
- Maintaining a high number of children placed in residential services; and
- Decreased expectations for future development of both children and professionals. These "results" are barriers to the deinstitutionalization reform.
The Solution
What is AMBIT?
Adaptive Mentalization Based Integrative Treatment (AMBIT) is a framework for teams working with the complex needs of clients (young people or adults) and their problems with the formation of close emotional relationships.
The approach offers standardized tools and principles for the use of mentalization skills in people who work closely with disadvantaged children and their environment.
Mentalization
Mentalization is the ability of a person to give meaning to the behavior of other people based on assumptions about their motives. Mentalization is the basis of human curiosity, the ability to ask questions and seek answers related to what behaviors and emotional reactions of others reveal to us. Mentalization is an extremely important skill for the development of other socio-emotional and cognitive skills. The ability to mentalize is formed by experiences in early childhood and is influenced by the current mood of the person. For example, the way we interpret another person's behavior and intentions may, on the one hand, reflect past experiences of violence and/or neglect. On the other hand, this ability can reflect our current state - of happiness or anger. All this affects the way a person connects with others, forms and maintains close and intimate relationships with others and in the community as a whole.
Clients and professionals often find it difficult to mentalize (to understand the meaning of behavior) their own and other people's behaviour. This violates the establishment of trust between the child and the specialist, which leads to negative psycho-emotional results for children and professionals. This also blocks their future development.
AMBIT helps teams of professionals maintain and develop mental skills in four key areas of practice:
- Work with clients;
- Team work;
- Work within multidisciplinary teams;
- Practical training aimed at maintaining the team's ability to continuously train and improve performance.
Who can apply for the training?
The training is suitable for all specialists who work in close cooperation with the most vulnerable groups of children. This includes psychologists, social workers, early childhood development specialists, employees in family-type accommodation centers, foster families and others.
The training is available for teams representing various social services (NGOs, CPC, CNST, CPG, state and municipal centers).
Participants in this training will acquire: 1) Skills to apply AMBIT in their current role; 2) Skills to train and disseminate AMBIT among other professional teams. Training will allow learning ideas to be shared and integrated across a range of teams and organizations in a way that is adapted to the local context and needs.
Places are limited to 30 people. Organizations wishing to participate in this training need to do so in a team of three specialists, but this number can be renegotiated depending on the scale of the training plans that the organization wants to achieve after the training. The members of each group should consist of professionals who work directly with children and one team leader. The aim is not only to increase the professional competencies of the staff, but also to train team leaders to become local facilitators of AMBIT. As a result of the training, managers will be able to encourage change within their organizations and integrate mentality-based tools and principles into their existing practice.
*** Individual applications of specialists working in the field will also be accepted, but as an exception. These candidates must send a CV and a cover letter, which the trainers from the Anna Freud Center for Children and Families together with the Know-how Center for the Alternative Care for Children will evaluate.
You can find the structure of the training, what it includes, its price and any additional information on the page of the Know-how Center for Alternative Care for Children.
If you are interested, you can register until October 20, 2020 by sending a request to the following email: galina.a.markova@gmail.com
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