FICAPS National Conference 2016

Wednesday 27th January 2016 at BPS Offices, Tabernacle Street, London

FICAPS, the Forum for Inpatient Child and Adolescent Psychology Services, was formed in recognition of the need for Applied Psychologists working in CAMHS inpatient units to have an established professional network. We all know that despite the inherent teamwork required by our jobs, it often feels like we are professionally very isolated in what is a very specialised job.

FICAPS is one of the BPS Division of Clinical Psychology's Children and Young People Faculty Networks and provides a forum that:

• Enables the peer supervision of members
• Shares ideas and best practise within the network
• Identifies and delivers to members' training needs
• Discusses relevant ethical and professional issues faced by members

Over the years, FICAPS have run seven very successful national conferences as well as coordinating frequent local meetings in the North West and South of England. We have also recently contributed to a paper on inpatient CAMHS in a special edition of Child and Family Clinical Psychology Review.

We are now pleased to announce our 8th National conference to be held on the 27th January 2016 in London. The conference is aimed at all Clinical Psychologists (including Assistants and Trainees) who work in, or with inpatient CAMHS services. The conference is also an ideal time to network and meet others working in the same exciting area.

The theme of this year’s conference is how we can work with the challenging issue of adversity that we encounter in our day to day practice on inpatient CAMHS units. The abstracts for the Members submitted presentations can be found in the documents section at the bottom of this page.

Understanding ADVERSITY in Inpatient CAMHS

Adversity, at its simplest, is the experience of an unpleasant event. In the context of our work supporting children and adolescents, adverse life experiences are commonplace amongst the history of young people who come into contact with inpatient services. Adversity can start even before birth; mothers who experience psychosocial stress can present an environment in which the infant become sensitive to threat, predisposing them to a biased view of the world before even verbal thought develops (Davis 2011). In childhood and through to adolescence, young people face a number of challenges, which might comprise adverse life experiences including early pregnancy, trauma, abuse, neglect, poverty and discrimination. Historically, these have been seen as risk factors that transmit problems; irreversible changes. More optimistically, it has been acknowledged that there is an interaction between risk and protective factors (such as secure attachment); resilience can challenge adversity (Fonagy, 1994). This conference is an opportunity for us to consider the adversity that the young people we work with face, and ways we can support them to navigate this successfully. Alongside this, we must acknowledge that the inpatient environment itself can be hostile and confusing for service users (Robbins, 2005). Moreover, staff members’ experience of their working life can include adversity, with high levels of burnout (Jenkins & Elliot, 2004). Exploring the experience of working in this context, we can use novel theoretical understanding, evidence-based practices and input from experts by experience to consider ways to confront and challenge this adversity with compassion; supporting resilience in ourselves and the young people we support.

Submissions

Submissions were accepted until 23:59 Sunday 6th December 2015. Thank you to everyone who has submitted.

Bookings for this event have now closed