Friday 20 July 2018

Asking about suicide does not cause harm, in fact it may help

"There is a fear that when we talk about suicide, we increase the likelihood of suicide. It’s a fear shared by teachers, nurses, academics, commissioners and many others. It’s a fear that’s not only getting in the way of important conversations, but it’s impeding potentially life-saving research too. When deciding whether or not to approve a research proposal, ethics committees must balance up the potential benefits of the study against the risk of doing harm. Because of this, research proposals where participants are exposed to suicide-related content may be rejected on the basis that they may have ‘iatrogenic effects’; which put simply means that ethics committees who aren’t used to dealing with suicide related research may fear that these studies may cause harm."


"A recent meta-analysis by Blades, Strizke, Page and Brown from the University of Western Australia tackled this issue head on in their paper: The benefits and risks of asking research participants about suicide: A meta-analysis of the impact of exposure to suicide-related content."

Link

Monday 16 July 2018

ICO - Consultation


The Information Commissioner (the Commissioner) is calling for evidence and views on the Age Appropriate Design Code (the Code).
The Code is a requirement of the Data Protection Act 2018 (the Act). The Act supports and supplements the implementation of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR).
The Code will provide guidance on the design standards that the Commissioner will expect providers of online ‘Information Society Services’ (ISS), which process personal data and are likely to be accessed by children, to meet. Once it has been published, the Commissioner will be required to take account of any provisions of the Code she considers to be relevant when exercising her regulatory functions. The courts and tribunals will also be required to take account of any provisions they consider to be relevant in proceedings brought before them. The Code may be submitted as evidence in court proceedings.

Further guidance on how the GDPR applies to children’s personal data can be found in our guidance Children and the GDPR. It will be useful to read this before responding to the call for evidence, to understand what is already required by the GDPR and what the ICO currently recommends as best practice. In drafting the Code the ICO may consider suggestions that reinforce the specific requirements of the GDPR, or its overarching requirement that children merit special protection, but will disregard any suggestions that fall below this standard. 

https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/ico-and-stakeholder-consultations/call-for-evidence-age-appropriate-design-code/

Guidance - 
Information Commissioner’s Office
Consultation:
Children and the
GDPR guidance
Start date: 21 December 2017
End date: 28 February 2018




Tuesday 10 July 2018

Discussion with Cath Knibbs - Doki Doki and More!

VIDEO


CHAPTER 17 - “Supervising online counsellors of young people” – Jan Stiff (Excerpt)


"At a time where the provision of online counselling for young people is expanding, yet there is a scarceness of supervisors trained in online supervision, this chapter aims to provide an introduction to the role of the online supervisor (CYP) offering supervision to counsellors counselling young people online with insights from personal practice. Since every young client, every online supervisee and every online supervisor are unique, some points within this chapter are likely to be up for discussion and I would welcome readers’ feedback."Introduction"The first part of this chapter begins by providing a broad account of the typical world of a young person followed with an explanation of the differences between online counselling and face to face counselling within this age group. There are a number of significant differences between counselling young people online and counselling adults online. These can be attributed to differences in lifestyles, emotional and physical and intellectual development and behaviours as well as issues around mental health and available support and treatment for this age group. I feel it is important to focus upon these differences within this chapter, suggesting that an online supervisor (CYP) requires a comprehensive understanding of these differences to ensure they provide effective and safe online supervision for counsellors counselling young people online""The second part of this chapter proposes a model for online supervisors’ work that provides a flexible framework for online supervision (CYP) that incorporates these differences and reflects upon the value of the relationship between the online supervisee and online supervisor.""No differentiation is made between either asynchronous or synchronous forms of online supervision (CYP) or online counselling (CYP). Both are applicable.""The term “online supervisor (CYP)” will be used for online supervisors providing supervision for counsellors, counselling children and young people online. “Online supervisee (CYP)” will be used for counsellors counselling children and young people online, where “children” are secondary school age and above and “young people” can be understood to be adolescents up to the age of 21."

Monday 9 July 2018

"Rise in Childline counselling sessions about loneliness"


"Childline carried out 4,636 counselling sessions for loneliness in 2017/18 – a 14% rise on the previous year1. Young people spoke to Childline about struggling with feelings of isolation and loneliness due to mental health issuesbullying and social media use.
Girls received almost 80% of sessions, some of who shared concerns about:
  • the harmful effects of social media use
  • how comparing themselves to others online made them feel increasingly isolated."


LINK

Wednesday 4 July 2018

The Dangers of Distracted Parenting


"Smartphones have by now been implicated in so many crummy outcomes—car fatalities, sleep disturbances, empathy loss, relationship problems, failure to notice a clown on a unicycle—that it almost seems easier to list the things they don’t mess up than the things they do. Our society may be reaching peak criticism of digital devices.  


Even so, emerging research suggests that a key problem remains underappreciated. It involves kids’ development, but it’s probably not what you think. More than screen-obsessed young children, we should be concerned about tuned-out parents."

Link

Tuesday 3 July 2018

"The secret life of a child therapist: you have to accept you can’t fix everything" - Anonymous


You learn early on that you’re not going to make everything all right. Lots of kids just have very tough lives, whether one of their parents has a drink or drug problem, their dad’s just died, or they are seeing a lot of fighting going on. Sometimes social services do something about it. Mostly, they don’t because they simply can’t.

A lack of therapeutic intervention by social services is quite common in austerity Britain, and it was one of the big surprises when I started my career, working on the frontline of child mental health in schools. Indeed my local social services describe themselves as an “emergency service”, and increasingly seem to manage levels of risk, rather than help situations or people improve. In many parts of the country, Camhs – child and adolescent mental health services – is similarly stretched.


From the Guardian - Last modified on Wed 14 Feb 2018 21.12 GMT
LINK