How Does The Scheme Work?

How the Child and Family Bibliotherapy Scheme works

This scheme aims to address, in part, the deficit in psychological support for mild to moderate difficulties in primary care. It is widely acknowledged that such difficulties may serve as precursors to more profound mental health issues in later life. The scheme provides a way of being able to recommend a self-help resource with confidence, knowing that it has been reviewed by both professionals and parents. Books from the list can be used directly as an intervention, or as something that can be offered to those on a waiting list for more specialist support.

All of the resources on the recommended list for this scheme aim to promote the psychological well being of children and families. The range of resources incorporates a variety of styles and approaches and aims to account for different preferences. The current list is predominantly made up of books for parents or carers, with a few books for children or young people themselves. The selection process also highlighted a number of resources for professionals. A set of professional resources has been provided to key professional groups within each borough, to aid their work in supporting families.

The scheme will not be suitable for all families. It is aimed at those for whom problems are causing mild to moderate distress and requires that they be able to exercise a fairly high degree of independent action. Although care has been taken to ensure that all of the books are easy to access, written material will not be suitable for all parents. The books that are easier to read are highlighted on the book list.

Professionals who think that the scheme might be helpful for children and families that they know will be asked to:

• Select the most appropriate book from the list through discussion with the family

• Fill in a recommendation slip and give the top copy to the family, keeping the carbonised copy for their records

• The family can take the recommendation slip to their local library and borrow the resource

Some parents may wish to buy the book and nearly all of those on the list are still available from mainstream suppliers. Some libraries have also put the books on the list on general releases to be borrowed by families in the usual way.

Running the Scheme

There are currently no staff employed specifically to run the scheme it is therefore done through Working Groups. Each borough within the Trust has a representative who takes the lead in rolling the scheme out accross their borough. They do this by organising working groups made up of people from different agencies and services within the borough, importantly including a library represenative. Each representative also sits on the Trust-wide working group. Each working group discusses the scheme, the tasks at hand, the dilemmas and glitches and divides the tasks up accordingly.