This book explores the importance of effective multi-agency and multi-disciplinary partnership work for the mental health of children and young people in care and adoption. It takes an overall systemic perspective, but the co-authors contribute different theoretical approaches. It focuses on practice, showing how practitioners can draw on their varied theoretical approaches to enhance the way they work together and in partnership with carers and with professionals from other agencies. The book provides a context that looks at the needs of children and young people in the care and adoption systems, the overall importance for their mental health of joined up 'corporate parenting', and national and local approaches to this. It then moves to focus on practical ways of working therapeutically in partnership with others who contribute diverse skills and perspectives, using specific case examples. Additional chapters look at collaborative ways of working with key carers to enhance their therapeutic role. Finally, some of the main elements of partnership collaboration are explored, as well as the challenges of work across agencies and disciplines.

Series Editor's Preface , Foreword , Introduction: Why partnerships? , Perspectives on the world of the looked after and adopted child , The views of adoptive parents and a foster parent on partnership working , Partnership with birth families , Therapeutic multi-disciplinary collaboration , Helping children with challenge and change: partnership working in transitions and education , Working together with the stories of children's troubled lives , Finding a future beyond the crisis: looked after children in secure care , Working in partnership with adolescents in care who have experienced early trauma , Postscript