Sean Cameron: Thoroughly Top Chap
The Pillars of Parenting Social Enterprise
Workshop for Hampshire Residential Homes Care Staff, Managers and their Psychologist Consultants
Date: Monday16thApriland Wednesday 18th April 2012.
Times: 9-30am to 4-00pm
Venue: Falcon House, Winchester.
Workshop organiser: Sean Cameron.
PoP Consultants: (April 16th) Caroline Feltham-King and Julia Alfono
(April 18) Lisa Hobkirk and Sue Ingham.
PROGRAMME
09-30Welcome, household arrangements, introductions
and an overview of the day.
Improving outcomes for children in care: how are we doing?
A new approach to childcare: how it all began.
The Pillars of Parenting, components
The need for a ‘mind-shift’ in corporate care.
10-40Morning break.
11-00Experiencing the three main components of the
‘Emotional Warmth’ approach to professional childcare.
12-30 Plenary session
01-00 Lunch
01-30Issues arising from the morning session.
Experiencing the first consultation session (split-sessions
with the two Psychologist Consultants, Colin and Sean).
03-00Afternoon break
03-30Getting it all together: a fresh look at professional childcare.
Group and personal action plans
Looking ahead…
03-50 Final comments.
04-00End of PoP Workshop
The Pillars of Parenting Social Enterpris
About this workshop….
Workshop title: Achieving positive outcomes for children, who have been rejected, neglected and abused: The emotional warmth dimension of childcare.
Presenters: Seán Cameron, University College London and Pillars of Parenting
: Colin Maginn, Pillars of Parenting
Summary: For the past seven years, the Pillars of Parenting organisation has been developing, implementing and evaluating a different approach to residential and foster care. Our starting points were: what are the psychological needs of these vulnerable children and young people and how can applied psychologist enable carers to meet their subtle and complex needs?
An extensive review of the psychological literature led us to focus on four major areas:
• the parenting needs of these children;
• the sensitive support for the post-trauma stress that frequently results from parental rejection, neglect and abuse.
• the children’s signature strengths and how they can utilise these in
their everyday lives;
•The support that residential and foster carers require to maintain the up to date knowledge, emotional stamina and professional motivation needed to achieve positive outcomes for this at-risk population of children and young people.
The resulting “Emotional Warmth’ model empowers carers to provide insightful parenting, support adaptive emotional development and build on the child’s signature strengths. This approach, which uses a psychologist consultant to support the practice of professional child care, is able to support residential carers and foster parents in tackling the everyday problems experienced by children and young people in public care.
We believe that this combination of skilful parenting, sensitive support for post-trauma stress, building upon the child’s signature strengths and using a psychologist consultant to bring applied psychology into professional child care represents a new approach to tackling the roots of the problems experienced by children and young people in care, which we now refer to as the “Emotional Warmth’ model.
Objectives for this workshop-
- To provide the background to the ‘Emotional Warmth’ approach to professional childcare;
- To describe this approach and the research that underpins it;
- To outline the reciprocal and distinctive roles of the Residential Care Managers and the Psychologist Consultants;
- To discuss some of the benefits of using this approach to empower residential and foster carers;
- To finalise plans for rolling out this new approach to professional child care in Hampshire children’s homes.
Sean who…?
Dr Seán Cameron is founder and now Co-Director of the Professional Doctorate in Educational Psychology programme at University College London. He is also a director of the Pillars of Parenting Social Enterprise.
His publication record includes 6 books and more than 50 journal articles on child psychology including the empowerment of residential and foster carers responsible for vulnerable children and young people.
In 2005 he was given the British Psychological Society’s national award for distinguished contributions to the teaching of Psychology and in 2010 he received their annual award for his distinguished contribution to Educational and Child Psychology.
Sample publications:
Cameron, R.J. (2006) Educational Psychology: the distinctive contribution.Educational
Psychology in Practice, 22 (4), 289-304.
Cameron, R.J. and Maginn, C. (2008) The authentic warmth dimension of professional childcare.
British Journal of Social Work. 38 (6), 1151-1172.
Cameron, R.J. and Maginn, C. (2009) Achieving Positive Outcomes for Children and Young
People in Public Care. London: Sage.
Cameron, R.J. and Maginn, C. (2011) Living Psychology: The emotional warmth dimension of
professional childcare. Educational and Child Psychology. 28 (3), 44-62.
Dr R.J. (Sean) Cameron, BSc, MSc, Dip. Ed, C.Psychol, CSi, FBPS, FAHE, PhD.
HPC Registered and BPS Chartered Child and Educational Psychologist.
E-mail:
So, who is Colin Maginn, then?
Colin Maginn is a Director of The Pillars of Parenting, which is a social enterprise working to improve outcomes for children in public care. With Seán Cameron, he co-authored the book ‘Achieving Positive Outcomes for Children in Care’ (2009) published by Sage. Colin Maginn has published many articles in the Social Care media, including peer reviewed journals like the ‘British Journal of Social Work’ and ‘Educational and Child Psychology’.
Colin Maginn believes that we have the knowledge to improve the psychological wellbeing of children in public care, but for the most part, this is overlooked or ignored by decision makers. Earlier this month, he returned from the USA where he presented a lecture entitled ‘Healing emotionally traumatised children with psychologically informed parenting’ at the annual conference of ‘The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation’.
For over thirty years, Colin Maginn has been working directly with children and young people in public care: this experience has included managing a secure unit, being a team leader in a regional assessment centre and the director Ingleside Children’s Home where, with Sean Cameron, they developed the ‘emotional warmth’ approach to professional child care which is based on psychological theory and research and which can now be taken as a professional qualification with the Open College Network
Sample publication:
Maginn, C. and Cameron, R.J. (2012) The Emotional Warmth approach to professional childcare: Positive psychology and highly vulnerable children in our society. In: Proctor, C and Linley, A (eds.) Positive Psychology: Applications and interventions for children and adolescents. London: Springer.
Contact information:
Colin Maginn
Director
The Pillars of Parenting
Business & Innovation Centre
Wearfield
Sunderland
SR5 2TA
Tel: 0191 516 6634
Mobile 07983 544899