Display Patient Information Leaflets

Date issued: May 2024 

For review: May 2026

Ref: D-301/child health/EL/Visiting a Wellbeing practitioner parents v4

PDF:  Visiting a CWP leaflet (for parents) v4.pdf[pdf] 232KB

 

Visiting a Wellbeing Practitioner at The Child Development Centre (CDC). 

What is a Children and Young People’s Wellbeing Practitioner (CWP)?

The CWP works alongside the Psychology team at the CDC and supports young people, or their parents, with programs based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).

CBT explores how our thoughts, feelings and behaviours all affect each other. The Wellbeing Practitioner will help your child to gain some understanding of this by introducing different recommended techniques to try out during the week. We also work directly with parents, suggesting strategies to try out at home.

Why might your child see a CWP?

Your child has already been referred by another practitioner at the CDC which may be because they…

• Have worries and fears

• Feel sad or unhappy

• Feel agitated or angry

• Find it hard to get along with people or coping with school

Parent telephone call

Our first contact will be a parent-only telephone call which was recently booked in by a member of the appointments team. During this time, you and one of the CWP team will discuss any difficulties your child may have.

The parent telephone call usually lasts 30 to 40 minutes, where we will decide together whether CWP intervention is the most appropriate support.

What happens in the first meeting?

The first meeting is where we usually meet the young person to complete the assessment process, it can take up to an hour. The aim of this meeting is to hear about the difficulties and concerns from your child’s perspective. It is also a chance to get to know you and your family. It’s also quite normal for the young person to feel anxious during this first meeting so your child is welcome to bring a toy or activity, so they feel as comfortable as possible.

What happens at the end of the first meeting?

Together, we agree on a plan of how best to help you and your child and agree on next steps. This may involve:

• Arranging sessions with you and/or your child (we will usually meet for about 6 to 8 sessions)

• With your permission, it can also be helpful to involve other people who know you, for example the school

• We may decide that there is no need to meet again

• We might suggest another service that is better suited to your child’s/family’s needs

• We may signpost you to additional resources such as websites, apps and books.

It is important to note that we can only help your child if they want to engage with the interventions. If they don’t want to work directly with us, then we can often work with you.

Are discussions with the CWP confidential?

Wellbeing Practitioners have strict guidelines about confidentiality. We have weekly supervision to discuss all cases with a clinical supervisor at the CDC as an important part of our role. Apart from this we do not discuss your child’s difficulties with anyone other than the medical team who referred you and your child’s GP. It is important for you to know that we will be writing about our appointments in shared notes which will be available to other health professionals seeing your child. If there is something you do not want us to share within this team, just let us know and we can discuss this.

We have a responsibility to protect children from harm and are legally bound to share any information regarding children at risk of abuse with relevant agencies. If your child wants to talk to us privately, it is our duty to respect this. However, we would share any significant concerns with you and/or relevant professionals.

We look forward to meeting you and your child.