‘Understanding our family’: Co-producing empowering & non-blaming stories with families in a CAMHS inpatient unit

The influence and importance of a family on children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing has been well documented (Kana’Iaupuni et al., 2005). Therefore, when children and young people encounter mental health services it is vital that a family focused perspective is prioritised (Gross & Goldin, 2008). However, efforts to consider and explore family dynamics in the context of children’s lives have often been blaming and overly expert (Dallos, 2019). There have been some attempts to move away from individualistic understandings of children’s distress to more family functional formulations (Dallos, et al., 2020). Nonetheless, there remains very little literature and evidence around involving families in co-producing psychological formulations in a non-blaming, transparent and empowering way, but in particular this scarcity is evident in inpatient child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). The present paper will outline a co-produced family focused formulation called ‘Understanding Our Family’ developed for inpatient CAMHS settings by the authors. ‘Understanding Our Family’ is informed by the Power Threat Meaning Framework (Johnstone, et al., 2018) to provide an alternative understanding to what brings families into contact with inpatient settings and to offer a de-stigmatising and empowering narrative to families subject to multiple stressors and complex systems. The present article discusses and critically interrogates the challenges and opportunities of developing, implementing, and embedding this approach within a CAMHS inpatient setting in the North of England.