25th Jun 2026

Clinicians and Managers learning together

We held another exciting quarterly CPD day at Care in Mind for our clinical teams and residential managers yesterday at Hope House, our head office in Stockport.

Dr Rachel Scullion, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and our Managing Director, led a discussion on mental capacity assessments at times of high risk for our young people with complex emotional needs. We also discussed how we can mitigate deficits in capacity to help our young people to make decisions at times of high distress.

Our Learning and Development Manager, Dominique Hooper, spoke about a review of our Safewards for Safe Homes (SSH) model.  We broke into groups and we heard about some great examples of creative and collaborative practice in our various residential services. ‘Know Each Other Dobble’ was a favourite adaptation of one of the Safewards interventions.  The SSH model provides  effective risk prevention and management through least restrictive practice.  We discussed a number of areas of development in our SSH model including the adaptations we have made for our Eating Disorder service.  We are excited that we will also be attending the International Safewards Conference in Prague in November when we will be presenting on our SSH approach.

Finally, our psychiatrist Dr. Oliver Woolf presented his audit of the work we are doing across the organisation to reduce benzodiazepine use. Too many young people are discharged to our care on BDZs and it can be hard to reduce them due to both physical and psychological dependency – but we are making good progress. Oliver enhanced his session by handing out ice creams to everyone which was a lovely gesture at the end of a long and hot day of learning and discussion.

All in all, the day offered a really well balanced and stimulating programme. We have such talented and creative colleagues at Care in Mind. Looking forward to the next one!