Peter Fuggle

Children and young people’s mental health is now recognized as one of society’s most pressing challenges. Rates of distress and disorder have risen sharply while services struggle to keep pace. Long waiting lists and public concern highlight the growing gap between what children need and what professional systems can deliver. Yet there remains an expectation that therapy alone should provide the answer. This book argues that the mental health needs of children cannot be met by specialist services in isolation. Instead, it calls for a new approach that brings together parents, teachers, peers, and communities alongside mental health professionals, each playing an equal part in supporting children’s wellbeing. Drawing on research, policy, and practice experience, the book identifies six principles of effective help: the active involvement of parents and carers; the importance of listening to children’s own wishes; creating environments of psychological safety; recognising that help can come from many sources; embedding support within everyday community life; and building a culture where caring for children’s mental health becomes everyone’s shared responsibility. Written by leading figures in child mental health, this book offers a powerful new framework for rethinking how society responds to young people’s distress. It speaks to professionals, educators, parents, and policymakers alike, showing how families, schools, and communities can work together to nurture resilience and belonging, reducing dependence on overstretched specialist services.

Children and young people’s mental health is now recognized as one of society’s most pressing challenges. Rates of distress and disorder have risen sharply while services struggle to keep pace. Long waiting lists and public concern highlight the growing gap between what children need and what professional systems can deliver. Yet there remains an expectation that therapy alone should provide the answer. This book argues that the mental health needs of children cannot be met by specialist services in isolation. Instead, it calls for a new approach that brings together parents, teachers, peers, and communities alongside mental health professionals, each playing an equal part in supporting children’s wellbeing. Drawing on research, policy, and practice experience, the book identifies six principles of effective help: the active involvement of parents and carers; the importance of listening to children’s own wishes; creating environments of psychological safety; recognising that help can come from many sources; embedding support within everyday community life; and building a culture where caring for children’s mental health becomes everyone’s shared responsibility. Written by leading figures in child mental health, this book offers a powerful new framework for rethinking how society responds to young people’s distress. It speaks to professionals, educators, parents, and policymakers alike, showing how families, schools, and communities can work together to nurture resilience and belonging, reducing dependence on overstretched specialist services.

Socially excluded youth with mental health problems and co-occurring difficulties (e.g. conduct disorder, family breakdown, homelessness, substance use, exploitation, educational failure) attract the involvement of multiple agencies. Poorly coordinated interventions often multiply in the face of such problems, so that a young person or family is approached by multiple workers from different agencies working towards different goals and using different treatment models; these are often overwhelming and may actually be experienced as aversive by the young person or their family. Failure to provide effective help is costly throughout life This is the first book to describe Adaptive Mentalization-Based Integrative Treatment (AMBIT). This is an approach to working with people - particularly young people and young adults - whose lives are often chaotic and risky, and whose problems are not limited to one domain. In addition to mental health problems, they may have problems with care arrangements, education or employment, exploitation, substance misuse, offending behaviours, and gang affiliations; if these problems are all occurring simultaneously, any progress in one area is easily undermined by harms still occurring in another. AMBIT has been designed by and for community teams from Mental Health, Social Care, Youth work, or that may be purposefully multi-disciplinary/multi-agency. It emphasises the need to strengthen integration in the complex networks that tend to gather around such clients, minimising the likelihood of an experience of care that is aversive. AMBIT uses well evidenced 'Mentalization-based' approaches, that are at their core integrative - drawing on recent advances in neuroscience, psycho-analytic, social cognitive, and systemic "treatment models".

This timely book uniquely addresses the application of CBT to children and young people within health, school and community contexts. With the recent expansion of increasing access to psychological therapies (IAPT) CBT is increasingly applied to work with children outside the traditional therapy clinic. This book provides accessible knowledge and practice skills for professional staff working with troubled children and young people in real-world settings. Taking into consideration complex difficulties that do not always fit fixed length treatments, the authors take a much-needed realistic approach to applying CBT to childhood problems. This is relevant and accessible reading for a wide range of specialist child trainees and practitioners, including new IAPT therapists, counsellors, nurses, teachers and social workers. Peter Fuggle, Sandra Dunsmuir & Vicki Curry are co-Directors of the UCL accredited Certificate, Diploma & Masters course on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and other outcomes based interventions (CBTOBI) delivered at the Anna Freud Centre in London.

This timely book uniquely addresses the application of CBT to children and young people within health, school and community contexts. With the recent expansion of increasing access to psychological therapies (IAPT) CBT is increasingly applied to work with children outside the traditional therapy clinic. This book provides accessible knowledge and practice skills for professional staff working with troubled children and young people in real-world settings. Taking into consideration complex difficulties that do not always fit fixed length treatments, the authors take a much-needed realistic approach to applying CBT to childhood problems. This is relevant and accessible reading for a wide range of specialist child trainees and practitioners, including new IAPT therapists, counsellors, nurses, teachers and social workers. Peter Fuggle, Sandra Dunsmuir & Vicki Curry are co-Directors of the UCL accredited Certificate, Diploma & Masters course on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and other outcomes based interventions (CBTOBI) delivered at the Anna Freud Centre in London.