.png)
In this interview, Saorsia talks about her role as Mental Health Specialist in the Leeds FDAC team and how she supports the wider team to build knowledge and skills to support families in a trauma-informed way.
When did you join the FDAC team at Barca-Leeds?
Before coming to FDAC, I worked in Criminal Justice Services and I completed my undergraduate degree in psychology which gave me an interest in people and behaviour. I volunteered with DISC, which is now Humankind. Then eventually, I got a role as a Drugs Rehabilitation Requirement Worker, where I worked with men and women with an offending background and substance misuse.
When Forward Leeds was developed, I worked within a team continuing to support substance misuse and addiction. However, I wanted a change but still wanted a role working with addiction and families. I joined FDAC as a Specialist Substance Misuse Worker when it was a pilot in Leeds in 2015. From there, I’ve continued to attend different training opportunities, including trauma training which has focused on how you work with the first phase of recovery and healing from complex trauma, which focuses on grounding and stabilization interventions, and this is a key focus that we work on with all of our parents initially in FDAC Care Proceedings due to the level of the complexity and the impact of longstanding complex trauma.
I have been with the team for majority of the years it has been running in Leeds, initially in the role of the Specialist Substance Misuse Worker between 2015 to 2020 and then as the teams Specialist Mental Health Worker from 2021 to 2023, and I am now the teams Manager since September 2023.
Tell me about your role
My role as the Mental Health Specialist for the team, I held a case load and I offer therapeutic interventions in all areas of need, however my specialism is focused around mental health, emotional wellbeing and trauma as well as supporting the formulations of parents that we work with.
I also dip in and out of some of the different cases and completed joint pieces of work with members of the team and their cases. For some families I have completed specific pieces of work, for example, with one mum I've actually been with her since the start and I am not the main keyworker. My support has focused on anxiety, using different models and techniques to look at emotion regulation and supporting second order change. Within FDAC, we really promote second order change as this encourages sustainable change. Second order change focuses on a person's thinking and understanding, as a person’s beliefs support the likelihood of change to happen and for new behaviours to be maintained in the longer term.
I also attend some of the case discussions in the team to add to the thinking around what is going on for a parent in terms of their mental health, emotional wellbeing and the impact of their past experiences.
I also run the FDAC emotions group for the team as well. I developed this with the Family Systemic Therapist in the team, Diane and Annie, our Clinical Lead. We ran it for the first-time last year and we’ve just completed a second round. The group is an introduction for parents around developing an understanding of their emotions, being able to notice them, being able to respond to them and being able to manage them in a healthier way, as well as supporting parents to understand the link between the role of substances and emotions. We talk about this connection quite explicitly as this is not always clear for those in the early stages of engagement and recovery. We can also offer one-to-one sessions with some parents who haven't been able to engage with the group as well or their circumstances impact their ability to join on a weekly basis. Group work also means that we gain an insight on parents’ learning through the process and build upon this within their weekly keywork sessions with their allocated FDAC worker.
How does your role fit within the wider multi-disciplinary FDAC team?
We do a lot as a team collectively. I help some of my colleagues with debriefing around their keywork sessions with parents and reflecting on any tricky parts of the work that we facilitate. This can involve supporting the structure of upcoming sessions and any follow up sessions. If there's any struggles around stuckness, dilemmas or avoidance I support others in the team to reflect on this and think about what else might be going on for the parent, ways to adapt interventions to meet the parents needs, to explore anything that might have come up for them as workers and explore how can we support the parent to look below the surface and gain a deeper understanding of what is going on for them in present day. I can support with the use of various models and skills that we will use in keywork sessions with parents, such as the Window of Tolerance or Iceberg Models.
Sometimes, I facilitate different training sessions for the team for instance looking at assessment writing and how you would explore the mental health section of our initial assessment reports and to encourage explorations from a trauma perspective.
Part of my role is looking at the formulations with the team for cases that I have been involved with and I can be available for other cases where needed. We work together in such conversations which allows us to consider and think about wider contexts for families. Being in a multidisciplinary team means we have different hats and skill sets that we can bring to such discussions.
A key part of my role is supporting the team to be able to learn and use models and techniques with parents. It's not about me being the specialist and doing it. It's about me supporting the team to be able to learn how to facilitate certain concepts and techniques, practice it themselves and promote others confidence for them to gain an additional skill for themselves. This means that an FDAC keywork can work with all presenting issues where possible with support. Within our team it's about sharing knowledge, so that it's not just one person who does certain pieces of work. Actually, you need to be able to cover absolutely everything and it means you can dip into somebody else's skill set, learn from them and then practice it yourself.
I believe FDAC is a good example of how a multi-disciplinary team can work. We've all got a caseload, which means we all need to be able to work with the presenting issues parents come with when starting care proceedings, and be able to explore all the different issues. I use the support of others in the team, such as Maddie and Zhenya for advice and support around substance misuse or Helen and Harriet for advice and guidance around parenting and infant observations.
What is the best part of your role?
Supporting the team when they’re reflecting on their cases and thinking about the keywork sessions they've completed with parents. I like the psychological thinking about people and the journey of helping people to figure make sense of their experiences, the world around them and who they are as a person and as a parent.
Giving our clients a really a different experience of people and relationships. In FDAC we offer an open and transparent approach and it is one of our key principles. This means we talk with parents about the comfortable topics of discussion and their strengths, as well as conversations that may feel uncomfortable and tricky which can feel shameful. In FDAC to demonstrate through our therapeutic relationships with parents that all types of conversations are ok to have and our working with them is not tied to conditions. We offer unconditional positive regard, showing what a healthy relationship can look like and for them to experience this as best they can.
I also enjoy hearing about the ongoing progress previous families are making and I recently experienced this at the first ever FDAC picnic the team held for our previous families came along. Some of the feedback shared how they felt we changed lives, we supported them to feel safe and experience services in a different way.
I love how the team offers the kindness and care, no matter what, and how we manage the trickiness that comes up with the families we work with. Also find that the support that we offer one another as a team is essential because we've been taught and learnt through this team to talk about our emotions, particularly uncomfortable ones for ourselves which encourages our practice. With the level of complexity of the issues presenting for FDAC families, it’s really important to have a supportive and safe team behind you. It's a really caring team that’s really committed, flexible and creative.
We are truly trauma-informed in our thinking not just for families but for ourselves and when thinking about the experience of professionals connected to our cases. The work that FDAC offers considers all parts of a family’s experiences and how this impacts them in present day, which means we are able to take a step back and reflect on wider contexts and perspectives.
What three words would you choose to describe the FDAC team?
Compassionate. Honest. Committed.
We never give up. There’s always a solution, there is always a way to problem solve something. Where there is a will, there's a way.
