What's the alternative for young people on the edge of care, custody or psychiatric units?

In the UK, an increasing number of children are being placed out of home... More than 82,000 children are currently in care and this is predicted to increase to 100,000 in the next 5 years. More than 3500 young people are admitted to CAMHS units every year and there are over 450 in custody at any one time. The figures are shocking, but considering the options available, sadly, it is not surprising.

You can probably imagine the eye-watering costs for out-of-home placements, but allow me to break it down…It is estimated that it costs the government £800 per day for a  CAMHS inpatient bed and £288,000 per child per year in local authority care, this is upwards of 23 billion pounds per year.  

Worryingly, the outcomes for these children are devastating; children in care are 6 times more likely to end up in prison, 32% of children in custody go on to re-offend and more than 30% of children admitted to psychiatric units are readmitted within a year. Perhaps the most devastating reality, is that many of these admissions and out-of-home placements could be avoided. 

Of course, there will always be some children who do need to be removed from their homes to ensure their safety, particularly those who have experienced abuse and neglect, or who are going through acute mental health crises. However, there are thousands of children falling through the cracks, who end up in care or psychiatric units due to a lack of viable alternatives.   These are the children who are reluctantly removed from their families and placed in out-of-home placements where things often go from bad to worse. Children with aggressive or challenging behaviour, often pick up worse behaviours in care homes, not through the fault of staff but because of a lack of funding, inconsistent staffing and rules and legalities that make it much more difficult for care home staff to implement parenting strategies that parents at home would otherwise be able to do. It’s similar in psychiatric hospitals, children who are admitted as a last resort often end up picking up worrying behaviours due to the environment that they are in, and not necessarily because they are psychiatrically unwell. The reality is that admissions 

So what is the alternative? 

ISTAC is not just a viable alternative, it provides real opportunity and hope for young people and their families. The ISTAC model builds on family strengths and affects sustainable change through an intensive systemic approach, where the child's best interests are always central. What this means in practice, is that our therapists meet regularly with parents in their own homes to fully understand the values, strengths and struggles of the family; allowing them to create bespoke plans to directly address identified problems. Therapists focus on addressing the multiple factors that have led to the child being at risk of psychiatric admission, care or custody and work with the entire network including teachers, social workers and anyone else involved in the child’s life to ensure a consistent approach to change. 

Some of the parents we meet and work alongside have histories of trauma or difficult childhoods that left them with no real blueprint of how to parent children. Our therapists empower families to develop and hone the skills necessary to manage their challenges long after therapy has ended resulting in positive transgenerational parenting. ISTAC considers the longer-term gains/impact of intensive treatment; many of the young people who we are referred to have siblings who are sadly, on a similar trajectory without intervention. ISTAC aims to rebuild and support a generation of future families who know how to create structure and security for their children and families, we want to disrupt the status quo of old-fashioned, rigid policies and lead the way for a future of children from stable homes, that are built on love.