Story Stem Assessment Profile Training

Anna Freud

When

What

Day 1: 13th May 2024, 09:15 - 16:15 - In-Person

Day 2: 20th May 2024, 09:15 - 16:15 - Online

Day 3: 21st May 2024, 09:15 - 16:15 - Online

Day 4: 7th June 2024, 09:15 - 16:15 - Online

About this course

This is a four-day training course teaching the administration, coding and clinical application of the Story Stem Assessment Profile (SSAP) within both clinical and research domains.

The Story Stem Assessment Profile (SSAP) (Hodges and Hillman, 2004) asks the children to respond to a set of narrative story stems where they are given the beginning of a ‘story’ highlighting everyday scenarios with an inherent dilemma. Children are then asked to "show and tell me what happens next". This allows some assessment of the child’s expectations and perceptions of family roles, attachments and relationships, without asking the child direct questions about their family which might cause them conflict or anxiety.

The SSAP is a clinical and research assessment tool which is a technique specifically for use with clinical and maltreatment populations. It has proved a valuable and non-intrusive tool for examining young children’s mental representations of attachment and relationships, both in research and in clinical practice. Normally, it is best used with children aged between about four and nine years.

Previous research has shown that children’s response to these story stems reflect both current and past features of their family life and attachment histories. The technique allows the child’s attachment representations to be evidenced in a displaced way which is usually enjoyed by the child and not experienced as unduly threatening.

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE; 2015) recommends the SSAP for accessing attachment difficulties in children in all health and social care settings. It is recommended to guide decisions on interventions for children who have or may have attachment difficulties.