Foster Carers' TSD Standards covered:
- 1.3 Person centred approaches
- 2.3 Relationship with parents and others
- 3.4 Personal safety and security
- 4.1 Encourage communication
- 4.2 Knowing about communication
- 4.3 Communication with parents, families and friends
- 5.2 Resilience
- 5.6 Understanding contexts
- 5.8 Supporting disabled children and children with special emotional needs
- 6.2 Keeping children safe
Author Details
Name: Dr Lucy Murray
Job Title: Clinical Psychologist
Current place of work: The Child Psychology Service
Your child or adolescent harming themselves can be a terrifying prospect. It may leave you, as their parent(s) or carer(s), feeling powerless, scared and unsure about the best way to support them.
Sadly, self-harm is common in children and adolescents and is most common in females between the ages of 15-24 years. Research cited by National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE, 2011) found that of a sample of 15-16 years surveyed, 10% of girls and 3% of boys had self-harmed in the previous year.
Despite these figures, the true scale of the problem is difficult to quantify as most people will try and conceal their self-harm due to high levels of shame. Children and young people who are looked after have been identified as especially at risk of self-harm (e.g. Harkess-Murphy, MacDonald & Ramsay, 2013).