Child and Family Psychology

Developmental health and family well-being
It is common for children and adolescents to experience difficulty with their development at some point. These difficulties may include not meeting expectations for developmental or educational milestones and/or social, emotional, or behavioural difficulties. Sometimes these difficulties cause children significant distress and make it difficult for them to participate fully in their daily home, school or leisure activities. This can also be very difficult for their parents, siblings, friends, and teachers, who may struggle to know how to help the child.

Child and Family Psychologists work from a strength-based perspective, that is we seek to help families understand and manage behaviours and relationships within a developmental and family context.

Generally, the way we work is to:

  1. conduct interviews to learn about the situation from the perspective of the child and their family (and the school, if relevant); 
  2. gain a shared understanding of where the child is on their developmental journey - this might involve using standardised assessments of development, intelligence/ thinking skills or behaviour;
  3. support the child and family in using skills and strategies to manage the issue of concern;
  4. do a check up/review with the family.

Who we help
Because of the family-focus of our work, we tend to work mostly with children rather than the more autonomous adolescent. The CDN Child and Family Psychology service is beneficial for families experiencing a range of concerns including difficulty with: