Single-Session Interventions for Children and Young People: Evidence, Clinical Skills, and Best Practice

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Event type Workshop

Webinar, 1:00pm – 5:00pm UK time
Can't make it, don't worry, book now as delegates have exclusive access to recordings for 90 days after the event, together with slides. You must book before the event starts, there are no tickets after the event starts.
Recordings from the session will be available to delegates from 5 working days after the event.

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Jessica Schleider web
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Half-Day webinar exploring the latest evidence, implementation, and clinical application of Single-Session Interventions (SSIs) and Single Session Consultations (SSCs) for children and young people’s mental health. Bringing together leading international experts, this online training event will examine the theory, research evidence, and practical strategies underpinning single-session approaches.

Participants will gain insights into how SSIs can be implemented within services, alongside the core clinical skills needed to deliver effective, evidence-based brief interventions. Combining research, real-world examples, clinical demonstrations, and case-based learning, this event offers a valuable opportunity for mental health professionals to expand their therapeutic toolkit and improve outcomes for children, young people, and families.

Register for the Event & Pricing

Sign up at this link or on the Book Now buttons, and complete the form that follows. You’ll then receive an email confirmation and a link to the webinar, plus we’ll send you a calendar reminder nearer the time.

Delegates will have exclusive access to recordings for 90 days after the event, together with slides. Plus you will get a personalised CPD/CME certificate via email. Recordings from the session will be available to delegates from 5 working days after the event.

  • ACAMH Members MUST login to book onto the webinar in order to access this webinar and get a CPD/CME certificate.
  • Non-members: this is a great time to join ACAMH, take a look at what we have to offer, and make the saving on these sessions.
Ticket Type Price
ACAMH paying Members (Online, Concession) EARLY BIRD £99 (until 01/12/26 then £129) (Join now and save)
ACAMH Learn Account Holders EARLY BIRD £139 (until 01/12/26 then £169) (Join now and save)
Non Members EARLY BIRD £139 (until 01/12/26 then £169) (Join now and save)
ACAMH Undergraduate/ Postgraduate Members £20
LMIC Members Free
Don’t forget as a charity any surplus made is reinvested back as we work to our vision of ‘Sharing best evidence, improving practice’, and our mission to ‘Improve the mental health and wellbeing of young people aged 0-25’.

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About the Event

Half-Day webinar exploring the latest evidence, implementation, and clinical application of Single-Session Interventions (SSIs) and Single Session Consultations (SSCs) for children and young people’s mental health. Bringing together leading international experts, this online training event will examine the theory, research evidence, and practical strategies underpinning single-session approaches.

Participants will gain insights into how SSIs can be implemented within services, alongside the core clinical skills needed to deliver effective, evidence-based brief interventions. Combining research, real-world examples, clinical demonstrations, and case-based learning, this event offers a valuable opportunity for mental health professionals to expand their therapeutic toolkit and improve outcomes for children, young people, and families.

Talk 1 by Assoc. Prof. Jessica Schleider – Single-Session Interventions (SSI): Understanding the rationale, mechanisms, evidence and clinical potential

Persistent gaps between mental health needs and available support demand approaches that can reach people when and where they seek help. Single-session interventions (SSIs), structured programs designed to offer meaningful benefit within one encounter, offer opportunities to expand access within and beyond formal health care systems. SSIs can be self-guided or delivered by trained providers; offered online or in-person; and embedded in online platforms, schools, health systems, and community settings, where people most often seek help. The science supporting the utility of SSIs has expanded substantially over the past decade. Our 2025 umbrella review in the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology synthesized 24 systematic reviews encompassing 415 unique clinical trials, identifying benefits for a range of mental health outcomes and treatment engagement across youth and adults, alongside important variation and high-priority domains for future research.

In this webinar, I will share updates in SSI science, with particular attention to recent trials and meta-analyses, emerging evidence on how and for whom SSIs work, and questions about the durability of their effects. Drawing on research from the Lab for Scalable Mental Health and the broader field, I will discuss digital and human-delivered approaches, lessons on sustainable implementation from community partnerships, and strategies for integrating SSIs into youth mental health ecosystems. Participants will leave with access to free, evidence-based resources and practical guidance for making effective support available to more young people and families.

Learning outcomes

  • To define single-session interventions (SSIs) and describe their role within and beyond formal mental health services.
  • To summarize recent scientific advances in whether, how, and for whom SSIs improve mental health outcomes.
  • To identify evidence-based SSI tools and strategies for implementation in real-world settings.

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Talk 2 by Prof. Maria Loades – Self-guided SSIs in the UK: what works, where it fits and what next?

Children and young people in the UK continue to face long waits and substantial barriers to accessing evidence-based mental health support. Self-guided single-session interventions (SSIs) have emerged as a promising approach to increasing access to early, low-intensity support. Grounded in evidence based active ingredients, these brief digital interventions can be completed independently in around 15 to 30 minutes. Rather than replacing therapist-delivered multi-session support, they have the potential to complement existing services by expanding choice, offering support earlier, and reaching young people who might otherwise receive no intervention.

While the evidence base for SSIs has grown rapidly, it has been driven largely by studies from North America. This presentation will provide a comprehensive overview of the emerging UK evidence, drawing on recent adaptation, feasibility, effectiveness and implementation studies with children, young people and young adults. It will explore what we have learned about engagement, acceptability, clinical outcomes and implementation, and consider how findings compare with the international literature.

The talk will then examine where self-guided SSIs could fit within UK mental health pathways, including NHS services, schools and the voluntary sector. It will discuss the opportunities and challenges of implementing SSIs at scale, including considerations around equity, safety, potential harms and maintaining fidelity in real-world settings.

Attendees will leave with an evidence-based understanding of what we know about self-guided SSIs in the UK, where they may add value within existing services, and the key research and implementation priorities needed to realise their potential.

Learning objectives

  • Understand the current UK evidence for self-guided single-session interventions (SSIs) for children and young people.
  •  Identify where SSIs may complement existing mental health services and improve access to evidence-based support.
  • Consider the key implementation challenges and research priorities for scaling SSIs safely and effectively within UK settings.

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Talks 3 and 4 by Dr Erica Szkody – Single Session Consultations (SSC): principles and core skills and Practical applications of SSC: clinical demonstrations and case-based examples

Single-Session Consultation (SSC) is a brief, evidence-informed clinical approach that helps practitioners deliver meaningful therapeutic impact within a single encounter while remaining flexible enough to integrate into routine mental health care. SSC can be delivered as a standalone intervention or embedded within ongoing treatment and has been successfully implemented across outpatient clinics, schools, integrated care, and community mental health settings.

In this interactive workshop, attendees will receive a practical introduction to the SSC model and its implementation. In the first half, participants will learn the evidence supporting single-session care and receive a step-by-step framework for conducting an SSC, including agenda setting, identifying client strengths and goals, facilitating solution-focused conversations, and collaboratively developing actionable next steps.

The second half will focus on translating SSC into everyday practice through clinical demonstrations, case-based examples, and discussion of implementation strategies. Participants will explore documentation templates, workflow integration, common challenges, and practical adaptations for different service settings while maintaining fidelity to the core model.

Designed for anyone interested in providing evidence-based, equity-focused mental health care. Attendees will leave with a working knowledge of SSC delivery and practical strategies for integrating SSC into their own clinical practice.

Session 1 learning objectives

  • Describe the evidence base and guiding principles underlying Single-Session Consultation (SSC).
  • Learn the step-by-step structure for conducting an SSC from beginning to end.
  • Apply core clinical skills for collaboratively identifying goals, eliciting strengths, and developing actionable next steps within a single session.
  • Identify opportunities to integrate SSC principles into routine child and adolescent mental health practice.

Session 2 learning objectives

  • Identify practical strategies for implementing SSC across different clinical settings and service pathways.
  • Apply implementation tools, documentation templates, and workflow adaptations that support successful SSC delivery.
  • Recognize common challenges encountered during SSC implementation and identify evidence-informed solutions.
  • Adapt SSC while maintaining fidelity to its core clinical components.

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Who should attend

This event is primarily aimed at mental health practitioners working with children, young people and families, including clinical psychologists, child and adolescent psychiatrists (CAMHS), psychological therapists, counsellors, mental health nurses, social workers and other clinicians delivering psychological interventions. It will also be relevant for service leads, trainees, and researchers interested in brief, evidence-based interventions and innovative models of care. The content is suitable for professionals with a foundational understanding of child and adolescent mental health who are looking to develop practical skills and integrate single-session approaches into routine clinical practice.

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About the Speakers

Jessica Schleider web

Dr. Jessica Schleider is Founding Director of the Lab for Scalable Mental Health and Associate Professor of Medical Social Sciences, Pediatrics, and Psychology at Northwestern University. Her professional mission is to build, test, and disseminate scalable mental health solutions that bridge gaps in mental health ecosystems, with a focus on single-session interventions (SSIs) for underserved youth. She has secured >$13 million in research funding as PI or Project Lead and has been recognized via numerous awards, including the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award. Dr. Schleider has published >160 peer-reviewed articles and chapters, along with three books. She has also created over a dozen open-access, single-session mental health programs, which have reached >150,000 people to date. Dr. Schleider completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Harvard University in 2018, along with her Doctoral Internship in Clinical and Community Psychology at Yale School of Medicine.

Maria Loades

Dr. Maria Loades is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Bath and an NIHR Advanced Fellow, leading research to improve early access to mental health support for young people. She is a clinical psychologist with extensive NHS CAMHS experience and has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers on child and adolescent mental health. Maria leads UK-based research evaluating innovative, scalable approaches, including digital single-session interventions, and works closely with young people, clinicians, and policymakers to ensure research translates into meaningful improvements in practice. See https://unlockwellbeing.org.uk/ which is a co-designed website aimed at young people, parents and professionals and describes what SSIs are and how they can be accessed.

Erica Szkody

Erica Szkody, PhD, is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a clinical psychologist specializing in scalable youth mental health interventions. Her research focuses on developing, evaluating, and implementing brief psychological interventions, including Single-Session Interventions (SSIs) and Single-Session Consultations (SSC), across schools, health systems, and community settings. Dr. Szkody has led multiple implementation studies and trained more than 500 providers across 8 U.S. states and 3 countries in SSC delivery. She currently holds an NIH K23 award to develop a provider-delivered single-session intervention for rural schools.implementation studies, trains clinicians internationally in SSC delivery, and currently leads an NIH-funded program examining digital and provider-delivered brief interventions for youth in rural communities.

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Programme Schedule
13:00 Welcome and Introduction
13:05 Assoc. Prof. Jessica Schleider – Single-Session Interventions (SSI): Understanding the rationale, mechanisms, evidence and clinical potential
13:50 Q&A with Assoc. Prof. Jessica Schleider 
14:00 Break
14:10 Prof. Maria Loades – Self-guided SSIs in the UK: what works, where it fits and what next?
14:55 Q&A with Prof. Maria Loades
15:05 Break
15:15 Dr Erica Szkody – Single Session Consultations (SSC): principles and core skills
15:55 Break
16:00 Dr Erica Szkody – Practical applications of SSC: clinical demonstrations and case-based examples
16:40 Q&A with Dr Erica Szkody
16:55 Closing Remarks
17:00 Close

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