About Us

Caidreamh; Family and Practitioner assessment and therapeutic services was established in early 2018 out of a small progressive service based in Southern Ireland. Dr Mairead Ni Eidhin and Ms Carmel Jennings make up this team.

This service delivers assessment, guidance and therapy to children and families. We provide children and family assessment and therapy.  This includes parenting capacity assessments, parent child attachment assessments, private family law assessments and educational assessments.

The service responds to the needs of practitioners in areas of training, development and clinical supervision.

We oversee complex cases and provide clinical consultation, offer complex fostering work, individual and group clinical supervision. We work with children presenting with developmental trauma, anxiety and other difficulties.

At Caidreamh we provide therapeutic services to children, families and practitioners.

We have particular expertise in working closely with foster carers and professional teams engaged in complex family work.  We offer team consultation on complex cases, this consultation is psychologically informed integrating theories on trauma, attachment and systems psychodynamic theory. 

We work with children presenting with relational and developmental trauma, anxiety and associated difficulties.  

At Caidreamh we are especially interested in providing spaces to practitioners to think about their work and to learn about new and existing theories and ways of working. We invite specialist trainers to offer focused training and deliver our own in-house training were requested. 

At Caidreamh our team have extensive experience in meeting parents and children where parents are separating or are in the process of separating. This can be a highly anxious time for all members of the family. 

We are often requested by the court to undertake an assessment to gain a deep and broad understanding of the challenges associated with family separation. In particular we are requested to provide a space in which the child’s voice can be heard and recorded.

Section 47 of the Family Law Act 1995 makes provision for the High Court and Circuit Court to procure a report on any question affecting the welfare of a party to the proceedings, including children. 

The Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 provides for expert reports (Section 32 reports) to be carried out on any question affecting the welfare of the child and to ensure the views of the child are heard in the course the proceedings affecting them.

Caidreamh is a member of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) https://www.afccnet.org. The AFCC is an interdisciplinary, international association of professionals dedicated to the resolution of family conflict. AFCC’s quarterly journal, Family Court Review, is a leading interdisciplinary academic and research journal for family law professionals.