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Understanding Children’s Needs and Timescales within the FDAC Model
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Dr Mike Shaw Consultant Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist & Co-director FDAC National Unit and Nick Isaacs Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist London FDAC
In this seventh blog in our series of blogs about FDAC we look at how children’s needs and timescales for children impact on the plan developed as part of the FDAC process.
Level of children’s needs
All children have similar needs but inevitably when a child’s health and life chances have been damaged their level of need increases.
For example where a seven-year-old child has a mother who is a chaotic user of illegal drugs and in addition the child has been repeatedly exposed to domestic violence it’s likely that this situation has made the child feel extremely helpless frightened and angry and also that she will have experienced her mother as preoccupied and unavailable to help her cope with these difficult feelings. As a consequence she will have an increase need
to be safe and feel safe. Even if the domestic violence stops and the mother becomes abstinent...
Read the full article here.
