About us

We are the Family Assessment and Safeguarding Service (FASS).

We are a specialist CAMHS team that works with parents. We have experience helping with parenting, attachment, and trauma.

Our focus is on the emotional side of parenting, especially when there have been difficulties in family relationships, or safeguarding concerns.

How we help

We help parents:

• Make sense of their child’s difficult or confusing behaviours.
• Feel less stressed as a parent.
• Repair or strengthen their bond with their child.
• Make sense of how their own life experiences have shaped them as a person and a parent.
• Shape their child’s lifelong mental health.

What we offer

Video Interaction Guidance (VIG)

VIG helps you capture moments of emotional connection between you and your child.

We will join you and your child in moments of ordinary play or conversation. We capture the very best moments on video.

Afterwards we watch the video clips and think together about what you are doing that makes those better-than-usual moments happen.

Mentalisation Based Treatment for Parents (MBT-P)

MBT-P helps you find what feelings are ‘under the surface’ for your child, and how their attachment needs shape their behaviours.

It helps you better understand yourself too. For example, we help you identify and build on you own unique strengths.

It may also help you notice the kinds of things that trigger or frustrate you as a parent.

We want to help you feel confident responding to your child in a way fits with your child’s needs and your values. We offer individual and group-based MBT-P.

Parent-child life story work

We can help you find ways to talk to your child about confusing or upsetting things that they may have experienced, in a way that is simple, truthful and age appropriate.

We want to give you the tools to help your child make sense of their experiences, so that they can cope better with what has happened and have better mental health.

What to expect

At your first appointment, we will meet with you individually, without your child or children. We want to hear about your experiences of being a parent.

We will answer your questions and hear your point of view about your family’s strengths and difficulties. We will think together about whether our team can help your family.

For the next appointment we will make a time to come and see some ordinary play or interaction between you and your child or children, which will help us get to know you as a family.

We will also ask you to fill out some questionnaires to help us better understand your experience as a parent, and your child’s needs.

We want to get to know you as best we can, so that any support we offer is a good fit for you and your family. Please feel free to ask questions at any point about our team, or how we can help.

Contact us

CAMHS Family Assessment and Safeguarding Service
Maple House, The Slade
Horspath Driftway
Oxford
OX3 7JH

Email: FASS@oxfordhealth.nhs.uk

Phone: 01865 902 418