Serious Help and Advice needed - Working with chldren

[drivin_me_nuts]

I need some advice here regarding working with children.

I run a therapy practice that I want to start working with children and families. Now this is an area that's new to me wrt the law and matters of that.

Are you aware of any legal consisderation that need to be in place before I do this. For example, when working with children alone do the parents need to sign a confirmation. The processes I use are interactive and involve touching children in specific places (EFT). I am planning to explain this all first to the parents and provide them with some clear guidance of what I do and how I operate as part of this disclaimer. I don't want to use CCTV or anything like that but is there a way that I can help protect the child, me personally and the reputation of my business.

Now I really want to do this work but I need to make sure that to the best of my efforts all parties feel safe and secure in the process and there is absolutely minimum risk of misunderstandings etc.

Any thoughts on the best way to what would be the most pragmatic way forward with this?


Thanks

[Plotloss]

I would have thought that as long as you have all the professional qualifications and an enhanced CRB disclosure you're pretty much set.

Not sure about on the alone side mind, you take your kids to the doctors and sit in with them etc.

[drivin_me_nuts]

Plotloss said:

I would have thought that as long as you have all the professional qualifications and an enhanced CRB disclosure you're pretty much set.

Not sure about on the alone side mind, you take your kids to the doctors and sit in with them etc.

...the difficulty is that it's often the case that the children won't interact with the parents in the room...because it's the parents that are part of the issue.

[Plotloss]

Gotcha.

In that case there must be some recognised procedure for when other practitioners get involved in this sort of thing??

CRB will be minimum I would have thought.

Do you have a professional body that could advise?

[stuthemong]

I don't know whether you could install CCTV in your office and keep all tapes etc.. If there are EVER any P-bomb's dropped, you'll have timestamped (+independantly verfiied say) videos of the session totally diffusing the bomb.

I'd be very careful, and cover my self over and above the base requirements.

Stu

Edited by stuthemong on Saturday 1st December 15:38

[leeb]

hi mate,

always a difficult one this, i do school photography, which also includes nurseries and pre school, its very difficult to pose little ones without touching their hands to move them etc, i would NEVER even approach them without a teacher/nursery supervisor there. I would just never want to run the risk of anything being taken the wrong way.

a big problem we get is if parents complain that we havent tidied up their clothes, tie etc. but there is such a problem with this area that if they dont want to do it themself, and the teacher wont do it, then i certinally wont make any approach to tidy clothes, which could so easily be wrongly blown totally out of proportion. I am fully CRB checked with the enhanced check.

i appreciate that this is not the same as what you plan to do, but it is always a difficult situation, and having something which will give you a backup if ever it came down to your
word against theirs i would put it straight in place.

Lee

[G1ABB]

Interesting, have you tried OFSTED? They may have some guidlines that you can follow or adapt. I only suggest this as I run a children's Nursery. The amount of regulation and control in place is mind blowing at times, although in general I do support OFSTED and what they are trying to do to raise standards.

Graham

[drivin_me_nuts]

G1ABB said:

Interesting, have you tried OFSTED? They may have some guidlines that you can follow or adapt. I only suggest this as I run a children's Nursery. The amount of regulation and control in place is mind blowing at times, although in general I do support OFSTED and what they are trying to do to raise standards.

Graham

..no I have not tried OFSTED, but indeed now that you have mentioned it I shall have a look around and see what I can kind. Thanks for the tip.

[shadowninja]

When working with children, you shouldn't really work behind a closed door nor should you work one-to-one (having a secretary/PA present could be an option); it's more to protect yourself than anything else. Having a CRB check is useful although that only proves the person hasn't been caught.

Anyway, with EFT, you shouldn't have to touch a client; if they are old enough to locate the points then let them do it; if not, there are simplified points (or at least, ways of tapping) described on the main EFT website (think monkey, gorilla, chimpanzee).

Another thing, why not a video-only feed to a waiting room for the parent, so no sound?

Edited by shadowninja on Sunday 2nd December 18:37

[Don]

Its horribly sad, this. Want to work with kids and the first thing you have to worry about is how to protect yourself from a paedophilia prosecution.

Who would have thought little kids could be so dangerous.

I know someone who is currently suffering due to a malicious complaint made by one of the little feckers. Utterly groundless but mind bogglingly stressful whilst it goes through the process of being seen to be found to be groundless.

Her employer is totally behind her at least and is considering legal action to bring the malicious complainant to justice.

Protect yourself utterly. Apparently this shit goes on ALL the time for Doctors as they spend 1 on 1 time with individuals. So crap...

[catmartin]

I've had EFT, could you not show them how to do the tapping on yourself and they could follow you on themselves, as said above I think.

After every session why don't you get the kid to write up what they thought about the session and what you did? Make sure you do a copy of this too. That way if anything ever came up you would have some sort of record too and it would probably have some sort of therapeutic benefit?

You can also tape record (bit prehistoric lol) your sessions as far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong) but are instructed to never give a copy to your patient. CCTV is a bit dodgy I think because although it could protect you, people might be a bit wary of someone recording their kid.

[drivin_me_nuts]

shadowninja said:

When working with children, you shouldn't really work behind a closed door nor should you work one-to-one (having a secretary/PA present could be an option); it's more to protect yourself than anything else. Having a CRB check is useful although that only proves the person hasn't been caught.

Anyway, with EFT, you shouldn't have to touch a client; if they are old enough to locate the points then let them do it; if not, there are simplified points (or at least, ways of tapping) described on the main EFT website (think monkey, gorilla, chimpanzee).

Another thing, why not a video-only feed to a waiting room for the parent, so no sound?

Edited by shadowninja on Sunday 2nd December 18:37

..even with the shortcut approach there are times when people are too upset to tap. There are many time when I have had to do it for them as stopping would have really left people in trauma..

I think that the idea of having someone else in the room is a good work around ( I work the practice with my partner and we can schedule children around us both being present at the same time) Video feed idea is also a very good idea as well.

Thanks