'transforming trauma'
trauma-informed foster care
COURSE OUTLINE
Section 1: Children and Trauma
In Part 1 of this workshop, we will explore what we know about the impact of childhood trauma. Understanding the impact of trauma on children is a crucial step in facilitating change. We know that children who have suffered trauma struggle to learn. Children who experience chronic trauma frequently experience developmental delays across a broad spectrum including: cognitive skills, language skills, motor skills, and social skills.
Chronic trauma impairs emotional health and impacts on the regulation of feelings, the ability to have clear thoughts or memories and disrupts the way feelings are stored and expressed in the body. We will explore four domains that trauma can impact upon: memory, regulation of emotions, relationships and connection with others, and representation (a child’s beliefs, attitudes and values).
Section 2. Putting it into PRACTICE
In Part 2 of the series, we will explore a set of guiding principles for working with children who have experience trauma. The PRACTICE framework (developed by the Australian Childhood Foundation - ACF) provides a way to organise responses to children that will over time help establish an effective relational environment that addresses their experiences.
The PRACTICE environment aims to: (i) foster a sense of predictability in children’s routines,(ii) connect children to relationships with peers and adults who are supportive and consistent; (iii) keep children calm: (iv) build children’s memory and cognitive functions as a way of them understanding their experiences of abuse and the effects of it, (v) contain and influence children’s behaviour associated with fear, anger, shame and disconnection, and (vi) support children to shape their internal emotional reactions. Finally, we will explore as a group how we can apply this model to case examples and to the children in our care.
trust based relational intervention
Trust based relational intervention (TBRI)
TBRI is an attachment-based, trauma-informed intervention that is designed to meet the complex needs of vulnerable children. TBRI uses:
Empowering Principles
to address physical needs,
Connecting Principles
for attachment needs, and
Correcting Principles
to disarm fear-based behaviours.
While the intervention is based on years of attachment, sensory processing, and neuroscience research, the heartbeat of TBRI is connection. TBRI is designed for children from “hard places” such as abuse, neglect, and/or trauma. Because of their histories, it is often difficult for these children to trust the loving adults in their lives, which often results in perplexing behaviours. TBRI offers practical tools for carers to see the “whole child” in their care and help that child reach his highest potential. Because of their histories, children from hard places have changes in their bodies, brains, behaviours, and belief systems. While a variety of parenting strategies may be successful in typical circumstances, children from hard places need caregiving that meets their unique needs and addresses the whole child.
'the pace model'
attachment focused parenting
attachment focused parenting
for traumatised children with attachment problems
This training program was developed by Dr. Dan Hughes, a clinical psychologist based in the United States, who specialises in the treatment of children and young people who have experienced abuse and neglect. Children who have experienced trauma need to be parented in a special way. PACE was developed as a way of thinking, feeling, communicating and behaving that aims to make the child in care feel safe.
Dr. Hughes stresses that PACE focuses on the whole child, not simply the behaviour. It helps children be more secure with their parents/carers and reflect upon themselves, their thoughts and feelings. For parents/carers, using PACE can reduce the level of conflict, defensiveness and withdrawal that tends to be ever present in the lives of children who have experienced trauma. Using PACE enables the parent/carer to see the strengths and positive features that lie underneath the more negative and challenging behaviours.
This training package is divided into the following four areas:
1. General Principles
2. The 'PACE' Model
3. Parenting Principles
4. parenting Interventions
'the secure base model'
promoting attachment and resilience in foster care
the 'secure base' model
The Secure Base model provides a positive framework for therapeutic caregiving which helps infants, children and young people to move towards greater security and builds resilience. The model focuses on the interactions that occur between caregivers and children on a day to day, minute by minute basis within the caregiving environment. But it also considers how those relationships can enable the child to develop competence in the outside world of school, peer group and community.
This process begins with the child's needs and behaviour and then focuses on what is going on in the mind of the caregiver. How a caregiver thinks and feels about a child's needs and behaviour will determine his or her caregiving behaviours. The caregiver may draw on their own ideas about what children need or what makes a good parent from their own experiences or from what they have learned from training. The caregiving behaviours that result convey certain messages to the child. The child's thinking and feeling about themselves and other people will be affected by these messages and there will be a consequent impact on his or her development.
Secure Base Model, groups caregiver/child interactions into five dimensions of caregiving. Each of the five caregiving dimensions can be associated with a particular developmental benefit for the child, as shown in the table below.
Availability
Helping the child to trust
Sensitivity
Helping the child to manage feelings and behaviour
Acceptance
Building the child's self esteem
Co-operation
Helping the child to feel effective - and be co-operative
Family membership
Helping the child to belong