Multi-Agency Psychological Support (MAPS) for Looked After Children

Who are we?

We are a small team of professionals from health, social services and education, and our role is to respond to the mental health needs of children and young people who are looked after by Sheffield City Council.

How do we work?

We are a specialist team who understand the complexities in the lives of looked after children and young people.

Children’s mental health affects and is affected by a number of different factors.  These include their ability to make sense of what has happened in their past, access to formal education and the stability of their foster or residential placements. We therefore take a holistic and systemic approach to our work and consider interventions at multiple levels.

What Services do we offer?

We take a tiered approach to offering services, depending on a child's need. If you wish to refer a child or young person to us, then we may begin by inviting you to a face-to-face consultation. At this meeting we would discuss your concerns regarding the young person’s experiences so far. We would consider a way forward which may require additional involvement from us. You may not require any further input from us after this stage, or we may agree to move to the next tier.

Brief intervention

For those children and young people who have specific needs or issues, we can offer a brief intervention of up to four sessions, during which one of our team would meet with you and other key people in the child’s life, such as the foster carer, residential keyworker and manager, and teacher.

Multi-systemic intervention (MSI)

For those children and young people with profound needs and long-standing chaos and instability in their lives, we offer a multi-systemic intervention. We bring together all the professionals involved with the child in a network meeting or intervention where we share information about the child’s background and history, think about how the child’s difficulties can be understood in this context and plan together how to take things forward. This network approach may be our intervention or we may decide to also include specific therapeutic work with the child, carer, school and family.

Network review meetings are held every three months and the input of the child’s social worker into these meetings is crucial in progressing the work.

How can you access our service?

We have several different access points to our service:

Advice Line

This is available between 10 am and 12 noon on Monday mornings, and is open to any professional or carer working with a looked after child. You can discuss your concerns with a worker from this team, or discuss a referral.

Face-to-Face Consultation

We offer face-to-face consultations to social workers wishing to think about a particular young person or make a referral. Social workers can book one of these appointments, held on Tuesdays – 12.30 pm and 1.30 pm; and Wednesdays – 3.00 pm, by phoning our office on 0114 226 0876.

Referral Line

Our referrals co-ordinator is available on the telephone to discuss potential referrals on Fridays between 10.30 am and 12.30 pm. 

Adoptive Families

 
We have a limited remit for work with adoptive families. Adoptive parents can access our Advice Line or a brief intervention if that would be helpful.
Please telephone 0114 226 0876 to access any of the above.