Child and Family Training win the Lionel Hersov Memorial Award 2023

Child and Family Training is delighted to announce that we were the winners of the Lionel Hersov Memorial Award for Teams at the ACAMH awards 2023. The awards aim to recognise high quality work in evidence based science, both in publication and practice, in the field of child and adolescent mental health.

Lionel Hersov Memorial Award

This team award is for a practice team that has demonstrated the use of evidence base (research, audit or service evaluation) into clinical practice. Or a team that has evaluated the outcome or measures either the clinical impact or demonstrated quality improvement (can be efficiencies of time, money or reduced ‘waste’).

Submission

Child and Family Training (CFT) was established as a not-for profit development and training organisation in 2000. It supported implementation of The Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (DH et al. 2000), the Family Pack of Questionnaires and Scales (Cox and Bentovim 2000), Family Assessment (Bentovim and Bingley Miller 2001) and HOME Inventory UK Approach (Cox and Walker 2000). CFT developed The Safeguarding Children Assessment and Analysis Framework (SAAF: 2010). These assessment and analysis tools are used nationally and internationally.

CFT in collaboration with Liverpool and Manchester Universities developed In My Shoes, and the Apps This Much, This Feeling and Backdrop for communicating with children and young people and vulnerable adults. 

In 2014, CFT collaborating with Professor Chorpita, University of Los Angeles, and PracticeWise used the Modular Approach to Children with Anxiety, Depression, Trauma and Conduct Match-ADTC (MATCH: 2009) to develop a range of intervention resources to promote positive parenting and prevent the recurrence of abusive and neglectful parenting. The resulting Hope for Children and Families intervention resources integrate evidence-based practice resources, and include training materials and courses, consultation and development work, delivering the knowledge, skills and values required for effective practice in organisations working with children and families in social care, health, education, youth justice across a broad spectrum of roles: from newly qualified to experienced practitioners; working from early help to work with children in need and their families; on the edge of care or who are looked after or adopted.

These developments have paralleled the development of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs: Fellitti et al. 1998) which extends the field of early adversity to include a spectrum of cumulative stressful contexts in the family, school, and community, including Covid-19, poverty, migration, prejudice, and climate change. The Hope for Children and Families library of modular, trauma informed, multi-focal therapeutic approaches help practitioners meet the challenge of addressing cumulative adversity.

Training materials have been translated into Arabic, Estonian, Finnish, Latvian, Spanish, Turkish, Romanian and Russian in partnership with national agencies, for use in multi-disciplinary training and training trainers e.g. with the Fundación JUCONI, Puebla, Mexico, working with street children and families, and the Turkish Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.

UK Team Members: Dr Arnon Bentovim, Dr Samaa El Abd, Prof. David Glasgow, Jenny Gray OBE, Fiona Gren, Sheila Groth Larsen, Cheryl Hood, Phil Jimmieson, Carol Jolliffe, Stephen Pizzey, Carla Thomas, and Dr Eileen Vizard.