Teams involved
Glasgow Infant and Family Team (GIFT)
We are translating the New Orleans Intervention Model in partnership with Glasgow City Council and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. The New Orleans Model helps social workers and judges decide whether a child should return to their birth family or enter care permanently.
GIFT works with the birth parents and foster carers of children aged between 0 and 5 years old who are - in local authority carer for the first time where there are court proceedings because of maltreatment and in a foster care placement.
Our aim is to make recommendations to social work and the legal system about whether a child can return home safely to their family, or whether permanent care away from home is indicated.
GIFT makes these recommendations by offering relationship based assessment and treatment to address the issues which lead to the maltreatment. For young children, the focus on their relationships with their main caregivers is important in supporting their recovery from their early experiences and to promote their mental health moving forward.
GIFT is a multidisciplinary infant mental health team with social work, psychiatry and psychology.
GIFT offers a 3 month assessing including:
- detailed relationship-based assessments of the child and their parents and foster parents.
- assessment of the child's development and mental health
- an assessment of each parent's health and wellbeing, including mental health, and the parent's exposure to trauma and violence.
GIFT then offer, usually, each family individually tailored relationship based intervention to strengthen the parent-child relationship and address concerns. Intervention can take up to 12 months. We aim to help birth parents understand how their own early experiences affect them as parents, the impact of the maltreatment on their children and how they can make sure their children are safe and protected.