Trauma and Intellectual Disability: Acknowledgement, Identification & Intervention

Nigel Beail is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Professional Lead for Psychological Services for South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, and Professor of Psychology at the Clinical Psychology Unit, Department of Psychology at the University of Sheffield., UK. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Trustee of the British Institute for Learning Disabilities, CPD Lead for the British Psychological Society's DCP Faculty for Learning Disability, former President of European Association for Mental Health in Intellectual Disability, and a founder and Fellow of the Institute for Psychotherapy and Disability. He has published extensively on practiced based research from his clinical work. Pat Frankish is a Clinical Psychologist and Psychotherapist with many years of experience in the field of disability, emotional development and trauma. Her doctoral study established a method for measuring emotional developmental stages and this has now become the "Frankish Assessment of the Impact of Trauma (FAIT") published by Pavilion (2019), along with a trauma-informed care guide to working with traumatised individuals and a little book called "Nought to Three - Becoming Me" which charts to development of the child from birth to the establishment of a secure identity. These publications together provide an explanation for distressed behaviour and a way forward. Pat is from Lincolnshire and has settled back there after working in North Yorkshire and Teesside. She has a small group of businesses with her daughter and provides expert psychological services as well as direct support for very distressed individuals in supported living environments. Pat is a past President of the British Psychological Society and has always maintained a strong interest in systemic effects of policy and guidelines. She continues to speak publicly and provide training for staff working at all levels of security and community provisions, including schools. She remains committed to making a difference to the provision she witnessed as a child living with parents who worked in an old long-stay hospital. Allan Skelly is the 2019-2021 Chair of the Faculty for People with Intellectual Disabilities (FPID) of the British Psychological Society (BPS) and Consultant Clinical Psychologist with Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne & Wear NHS Foundation Trust. Allan has published articles promoting a focus on the close personal relationships of people with an intellectual disability, the heightened lifetime risk that these will be broken or strained, and how to address this in clinical work. Allan actively promotes the Trauma-Informed Care agenda and the application of Attachment Theory in doing this. He is the author of published articles promoting psychodynamic approaches to people with an intellectual disability, as well as applying Attachment Theory-based interventions in clinical practice. Allan was chair of the working group which produced the 2017 BPS clinical practice guidelines for the integration of Attachment Theory into the work of clinical psychologists in the UK. As well as reviewing the available clinical tools for formal assessment in several publications, he has collaborated on the design and validation of specific tools for this purpose.