Dyadic Developmental Psychology recommendations

[PootlesBobbleHat]

Hi

Has anyone had the above therapy for their adopted child?

It's been recommended for us and social services will fund it but I can't find any robust evidence that it's effective or helpful, and whether our son may benefit from that over and above any other type of therapy.

Has anyone any experience?

DS is 8, some attachment issues, with us 3 years or so now, possible developmental delay, ADHD, some autism traits (More likely to be trauma related). Anger and emotion regulation issues. But after 3 years, beginning to settle more and more.

We don't know whether it's the right thing, or the right time.

Thanks :-)

We’ve done DDP. It was great. Really helpful. Ds was struggling with emotional regulation, anger, attachment all from traumatic early experiences. Personally I’d thoroughly recommend it. And I was very sceptical beforehand as couldn’t find anything online that really ‘proved’ to my mind that it would work.

However, I know another adoptive family who said it didn’t help them at all. Think it depends very much on the quality of the psychotherapist, and the rapport they build with you and the child. Ours was ace and I feel very lucky we got assigned to him.

Thanks for that. I'm cautious because they tried to push him through it 2 years ago for funding reasons, and his play therapist at the time said no way was he ready.

I can't find much evidence, and I know a bit about other therapies such as EMDR which I thought might also be helpful.

It's also very expensive...!!!

Expense really doesn’t matter if social services are funding it. I’ve never heard of this treatment before. Is there not an option for an informal chat with the person who runs it? Or a one off appointment to assess the situation?

Costs matter because they could be used to purchase different types of therapeutic input which could be equally effective, or assessments needed to get an EHCP to get him into a special school.

DDP is very much marketed at social services without much robust evidence base. I'm a clinician so for me I'm used to making decisions on patient need plus evidence base.

Where therapy is concerned research consistently shows that the quality of relationship with the therapist is the determining factor in the success of therapy, regardless of modality. Different things work for different people st different times.

What are you hoping the outcomes of this type of therapy will be/what are your immediate concerns that you want therapy to address?

Agree that the quality of the relationship with the therapist is really key. Is there a way you could ask to meet or speak to the therapist who would be providing the DDP to get a sense of them before committing to the therapy?

For my dd (it autocorrected to ds in my first post) the fact that DDP was a talking therapy was probably instrumental, along with the quality of the therapist in it being really beneficial. Dd likes talking, and enjoyed - even though it was difficult and challenging stuff we were talking about at times - the opportunity to talk to the therapist. I can imagine that the outcome might have been different with a child who was more reluctant to communicate verbally. I don’t know.

Fwiw we were initially suggested theraplay and I was much keener on this as DD can be quite young developmentally in some respects (and then emotionally aware way beyond her years in others) and I thought the play aspect of theraplay would be most beneficial. On reflection, I’m glad that we were given DDP as I think this has been more suitable for her.

I know there’s a funding cap with the ASF, and that’s definitely a concern. Would another option be to agree to a couple of initial DDP sessions - not sure whether that’s even possible - and ask to review it after that, or ask for an application to be made for DDP and something else? If the application year runs on the financial year could you put in one application now for DDP and then another one in the new financial year?

OP can I just ask, was your dc assessed by a clinical psychologist and were you able to discuss all this with them? Or did the social worker simply offer this therapy as a fix all?

By a clinician, do you mean you are also a psychologist or psychiatrist?

Yes he was assessed by a clinpsych prior to being recommended for this, 3 years ago, at the time he was deemed by us and his therapist as not ready to do the work.

Now, the LA will have to.sign his case off and pass to our own LA so are tying up loose strings. His case has been forgotten about for 2 years after adoption so they are trying to rush it through.

FWIW we didn't like the clinpsych and felt she was quite pushy about this treatment, and he was very disrupted for weeks afterwards. This type of treatment is likely to be once or twice a week firvthe whole family for up to 1 year so it's quite an undertaking and has to be the right thing as it has to be seen through to the end.

@pootlesbobblehat

Sorry, very late reply
After 3 years, the clinpsych might not even have the same opinion now! It is a long time for a child.

I think poppy is right that it depends on the child. I am not sure it is right that it depends on the relationship with the therapist, because if the trauma has affected the development of the stem/limbic then talking therapy can be very distressing, however good the therapist relationship is, as the child is not able to "pin" the issues anywhere until more work has been done, I believe. Early work would be more to do with physical movement, sensory work, rhythmic work as I understand it, not talking. Also games which help with strengthening prefrontal cortex. Is my nonprofessional take on it.

Trauma can present in a similar way to asd/adhd, I think (?) which may be a clue for your dc .

I have known a child who was seen as asd/adhd/other disorder/in need of special school/violent/unable to cope with movement around them who did a lot of the early work therapy as per above and after 4 or so years was thriving in a normal school, and able to talk through problems. It seemed like magic - such basic run of the mill activities having such an impact.

Did your clinpsych specialise in developmental trauma?

I haven't experience of DDP (sorry, I should have said that probably!). I looked up emdr and it looked interesting. EFT tapping seems to be recommended by psychologists too which is also not a talking therapy. Also cranial osteopathy. Am I right in thinking that neither EMDR or EFT or things like neurofeedback have had much research to back them but are liked by psychologists nonetheless?