This comprehensive resource is designed for training those who work with, parent and care for children and young people who have experienced the damaging effects of abuse, neglect and disruption to the primary caregiver relationship. Presented as an 11-session group programme, the pack offers an accessible overview of the core concepts of developmental trauma, trauma-informed therapeutic care, and self-care for carers. Reading materials, video clips and skills exercises support and reinforce each area covered. The underpinning model is Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), an approach which allows carers to get beyond the defences and blocked trust of children in their care using Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy (pACE). By helping participants understand and respond to the impact of developmental trauma on children, the resource aims to help reduce the spiral of failed relationships suffered by many young people who have been removed from their birth families.
DEBORAH PAGE is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist with Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, a certified DDP Practitioner and Consultant, and Clinical Lead of a CAMHS team for looked after children and young people. She specialises in therapeutic work with families in the area of fostering and adoption. She has thirty years of practice and supervision experience, as well as experience in delivering training to local authority partners and others. RACHEL SWANN is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist specialising in child and adolescent mental health, and a qualified DDP practitioner. She was Lead Clinician in an NHS and Local Authority Looked After Children's Mental Health Service, where she worked for fourteen years before leaving in 2018 to lead on the development of a new trauma informed model of care in two welfare secure children's homes.
SESSION 1: Attachment is a survival strategy; It's a marathon not a sprint SESSION 2: Non-verbal communication; Connecting to calm SESSION 3: Name it to tame it SESSION 4: Acting not re-acting SESSION 5: Finding your balance SESSION 6: PACE SESSION 7: SpACE - pACE for the Self SESSION 8: Be the thermostat not the thermometer SESSION 9: Structure and pACE to create a secure basis of safety SESSION 10: What you pay attention to with your heart and mind grows; Supporting not solving; Listening not lecturing SESSION 11: TRUST - Creating safety to help reduce stealing and lying SESSION 12: The places you'll go!
