SCIE Guide 30: Think child, think parent, think family: a guide to parental mental health and child welfare

Published July 2009

About this guide

This guide is about working with parents who have mental health problems and their children. It provides guidance on policy and practice and makes recommendations for key areas of professional education, workforce development and research. It also provides links to useful resources and contact details of relevant organisations.

Why have we written this guidance?

Parents with mental health problems and their children are a group with complex needs. Not all parents and children will need the support of health and social care services but those that do can find it difficult to get support that is acceptable, accessible and effective for the whole family.

This guide identifies what needs to change and makes recommendations to improve service planning and delivery, and ultimately to improve outcomes for these families.

Who is this guide for?

The guide has been written for staff in adult mental health, child and adolescent mental health and children services from all sectors. It is also relevant for those delivering pre- and post-qualifying education and training to health and social care staff and others responsible for workforce development.

People who use services and their carers will find useful information on what they can expect from services and where they can go for more information.

The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) will be producing additional resources, including training materials, to help embed the recommendations into everyday practice.

How was the guide developed?

This guide is based on a synthesis of the evidence from a number of reviews of the published literature in the last 20 years (1985–2005) and a practice survey (a review of existing practice in adult and children’s health and social care services) carried out in five sites in England (2006–2008).

Full and summary reports of each review and the practice survey are available in the Appendices

A project advisory group of various stakeholders with a range of experience in the delivery or receipt of health and social care services for parents with mental health problems and their children advised on the development and content of this guide.

An external consultation took place during March/April 2009.

How to use this guide

The SCIE website is divided into three columns. The topics that are covered in this practice guide are listed in the left-hand column. Click on these to access the topics.

Within each topic there are several pages of information, which you can skip to using the navigation in the middle column. All the links are in blue. The right-hand column also has links in the lozenges, either to a PDF of the practice guide so that you can print it out, or to other relevant information. The links may also repeat those listed in the middle column so that you don’t miss anything.

Practice examples are included. We have set these out within the SCIE Good Practice Framework model. The Framework sets out the rationale for practice and intended outcomes, provides a description of actual practice and a measure of outcomes achieved. These criteria help people audit their own work and present it in a transparent and transferable way. It should also help others to decide whether and how to adapt and implement good practice .

Your feedback

SCIE welcomes comments on any aspect of this guide, which will inform future updates. We are also interested in collecting examples of good practice. Click here to use the feedback form.

A note about terms used

We use the term ‘parent with mental health problems’ to refer to those parents with a primary diagnosis or need, identified as a mental health problem (mental illness or mental disorder). This does not exclude the possibility that these parents may experience other health problems or disabilities, alcohol or substance misuse, learning difficulties or domestic violence. The term includes parents who are known to children’s services but do not have a formal mental health diagnosis, and parents who have not come to the attention of secondary mental health services.

The term ‘children’ is used to refer to all children 18 years or younger, some of whom will be young carers.

The term ‘young carer’ is used to refer to a child or young person under the age of 18 carrying out significant caring tasks and assuming a level of responsibility for another person which would normally be undertaken by an adult. Young carers undertake a variety of tasks for parents with mental health problems, including advocacy, help with correspondence and bills, liaising with professionals, administering medicines, emotional support and domestic tasks.

We note that different services use very different language to describe the processes they follow for assessing need and delivering support. However, essentially they all operate a basic care pathway that involves making and receiving referrals, screening clients, assessing need, putting together a care plan and reviewing existing care plans. We have therefore used these terms to describe a generic care pathway throughout this guide, based on the assumption that whatever service is providing care and whoever receives it, they will typically go through a process which includes these components.