Clinical Lead

Mr Antony Bainbridge is and the Head of Clinical Services & Clinical Lead for Resicare Alliance and the Clinical Lead for ICIS

Antony has extensive experience in working with children and families in an array of clinical, community and forensic settings accumulating over 25 years of direct clinical practice. Following the completion of Antony’s postgraduate training Antony became employed by various Health Trusts in the late 1990s before entering into private practice in 2001. Following membership and affiliation to a range of professional bodies, Antony is now Fellow for the Royal Society of Public Health. His history has included working with Child and Family services all over the UK and the Channel Islands in the fields of learning disabilities and pervasive developmental disorders, child trauma and attachment, capacity to protect issues, parenting capacity, mental health, addictions, psychological treatment, and interventions, working with offenders, with sexually harmful behaviours in children and young people. Antony has acted as expert witness since 2008 in Child & Family proceedings and been overview author in Serious Case Review work in both children and adult services.

Antony holds The Cardiff University Bond Solon (CUBS) Expert Witness Family Certificate (2021) and is on the national register for expert witnesses in family law proceedings. Antony is also an Accredited British Psychological Society Approved Clinical Supervisor at Level 4 – Clinical Proficiency.

Antony delivers extensive training in child welfare and development, safeguarding practice, mental health and learning disabilities and acts as a visiting lecturer for a number of universities in the fields of postgraduate training in health, clinical and forensic psychology.

He has worked extensively in the field of pervasive developmental disorders with emphasis upon Profound Autism, Autistic Spectrum Disorders, Asperger’s syndrome, and Pathological Demand Avoidance Disorder in regard to Mental Capacity Act issues.

Clinical Model within Resicare Alliance

Children and young people, at times, are unable to live with their birth families for a variety of reasons including for their protection from harm. The first goal is to achieve reunification as quickly and safely as possible. Child welfare agencies commonly implement multifaceted strategies that build on strengths and address concerns. Returning children home often requires intensive, family-centred services to support a safe and stable family.

Reunifying a child with his or her birth parents is not a one-time event. Rather, it is a process involving the reintegration of the child into a family environment that may have changed significantly from the environment that the child left.

Reunification requires a range of appropriate services and supports from the point that a child first enters care and beyond the return home, to meet the child and family’s needs. Strong engagement and collaboration with the family and amongst the child and family services system are also necessary in order to address the protective concerns to make the process of reunification possible.

Family reunification involves a process of assessment, planning and action. Reunification exists within the continuum from family preservation aiming at preventing placement, through to long term out of home care. All of the intervention and planning options have a place for each child and their family depending on their specific qualities, needs and circumstances, and intend to achieve stability for children.

For the majority of children in out of home care, the benefits of pursuing reunification are irrefutable. The guidance on promoting children’s stability argues that the child’s best interests and assessment of the child’s developmental needs, present and future risk of harm and parental capability, should be at the core of all decision making for family preservation, reunification or long term out of home care.

The primary aim of Resicare Alliance is to work alongside the Local Authority to achieve optimum results for the young person placed within the residential service. Each child coming into one of our services may be admitted into a tier 4 service, a secure placement or a solo placement. If the young person does not require solo provision then they will access a group home environment with the aim of a reunification plan being put in place.

Our mission with regard to reunification will be reunify the young person with the birth family and/or extended family or a foster family where appropriate. For those young people who are 16+, their plans will aim towards a reunification plan of independence moving towards adult development.

The journey of reunification will last approximately 18 to 24 months in duration once admitted to our service. We will continue support if the timescales need extending to accommodate a protracted transition plan for the young person.

Clinical Services Provided

All young people coming to live with us will experience an initial assessment, to complete a therapeutic assessment of the young person’s needs. This will identify what the plan will look like for each individual child/young person entering the service, whether they have entered one of our smaller placements or group home environments. We work towards reunification for all our children, however this is not always appropriate for some.

The aim of the service is to provide therapeutic support and input for each young person that will utilise a multisystemic approach using an eclectic range of psychosocial therapeutic modalities The cornerstone of the approach that underpins the working model will comprise of PACE and Dyadic Developmental interventions from staff supporting each young person. Each placement within the service will be up to 18 to 24 months in duration to assist young people to move on either back to a familial environment or foster care placement.

Following the initial assessment process a therapeutic plan will be implemented that will consist of a psychosocial model of intervention that will utilise a range of approaches that will create a bespoke package for each child. The interventions used will predominantly consist of motivational interviewing, solution focused practice, cognitive behavioural interventions, and dialectical behavioural interventions. The initial work will consist of some life story work to ascertain what the young person understands about their own history and what they want going forward.

Each child, once it is decided what the plan of reunification will look like will also commence with the reunifying family whether this be family members or foster carers once they have been identified.