Supportive Hands

Therapeutic Needs Assessment Programs

Supportive Hands is a small company that supports Organisations, Departments, Relationships, and Individuals in coping with change and emotional literacy development in a targeted and innovative way. Supportive Hands has partnered with Child Trauma Intervention Services in the development of the Emotional Literacy Enhancement Portfolio as we believe that there is a growing need in supporting children, young people, school, and carer development.

Supportive Hands are offering two individual  Emotional Literacy Enhancement Products. 

• SHANARRI Assessment, and 
• Therapeutic Life Story Work (TLSW) Needs Assessment.

The SHANARRI Assessment

The SHANARRI Assessment tool supports a school, home, residential and juvenile justice setting focused on providing child, adult and family assessment with managed targeted support.

All therapies need to incorporate an outcome-based measurement system and to this end, Richard Rose with Jill Hughes, Family Placement Team Leader in Argyll and Bute has introduced a version of the Scottish SHANARRI approach. SHANARRI is part of the ‘Getting It Right for Every Child’ agenda which itself is a version of Every Child Matters introduced by the UK parliament in 2004.

SHANARRI is an acronym (indicators) for the desired outcomes for children; children should be Safe, Healthy, Active, Nurtured, Achieving, Respected, Responsible and Included. Richard decided to design an outcome measurement process which was then shared with the carers, teachers and social care workers responsible for adopted children living in Scotland. It is their belief that this approach would sit well with the project Supportive Hands has been developing over the last few years.

The Therapeutic Needs Assessment

Since 1997, Richard has been working with children and young people through a therapeutic life story process. Richards work has been published through books, various articles and now supported through an Therapeutic Needs Assessment (TNA) Application. The TNA Application is designed to support the Therapeutic Life Story Work intervention which takes approximately 8 weeks to prepare and is designed to provide an evidence based assessment with an holistic understanding of the child, their placements and recommendations for intervention if required.

Similar to the above assessment comprising of eight Indicators, the TNA has seven Indicators to be assessed; Achieving and Learning, Physical Health and Development, Emotional Intelligence, How Included the child is, Identity, Ability to Concentrate and Physical Settled, and Attachment to Primary Carer. 

Supportive Hands have transformed the concept into a data driven capability, providing assessor the ability to capture, analysis, and share information whilst enhancing targeted support through a report / case plan identifying actions, responsibilities, and time frames. The below image is an example of the program deployment approach.