Join Karen Treisman and Lisa Cherry in a conversation on 14th December at 7pm, recorded for the Podcast, on all things Trauma Informed Culture Change. Where do we go next? How do we get there? How do we layer the change that will see services and systems fit for 21st Century practice?
Why has the ACES research prompted a public moment and an angry debate all at once when so many other frames such as attachment, trauma, adversity, poverty, haven’t? Listen in to Part One here or if you prefer, you can watch here.
Join me in conversation AGAIN with Dr Suzanne Zeedyk for Part Two as we explore some of the themes that emerged in Part One. We explore questions such as is there something particular within our culture that ignores childhood suffering? What supports understanding which language/frames works for you/us? What are the cultural responses to ACEs?
When? Tuesday 3rd November 7pm.
To join this LIVE webinar, please register below. There are only 100 places, so if you register, please do attend!
Join me and Pooky Knightsmith as we dive deeply into mental health, anorexia, autism relationships that make a difference and what it means to bring the professional, the academic and the personal into the arena
An internationally respected face of child and adolescent mental health, Pooky works tirelessly to ‘be the change she wants to see’. A prolific keynote speaker, lecturer, trainer and author, she develops and shares practical, evidence-informed approaches to promoting mental health – arming health, social care and education staff with the skills, understanding and knowledge they need to support the children in their care.Pooky has a PhD in child mental health from the Institute of Psychiatry, is the author of many books, is the research and development director at Creative Education and is a former chair of the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition. She lives in South London with her two daughters, husband, mother-in-law and three dogs. She’s a keen climber an amateur knitter and a tenor in her local choir. She lives with PTSD and autism.Twitter: @PookyhInstagram: @PookyHWebsite: www.pookyknightsmith.comYouTube: www.youtube.com/pookyhEmail: pooky@inourhands.comLinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pooky
In this week’s conversation, we explore ACE’s, the tragedy of the medical model and the wave of social change. We could have talked for hours and much time was spent unpicking the programme recently aired called What’s The Matter With Tony Slattery.
Grab a cuppa, sit back and join the conversation…
Warren has extensive experience working around serious mental illness and distress. He is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, he developed a routine enquiry about childhood adversity (REach) and has an extensive portfolio around policy development.
A deeper conversation looking at trauma, social injustice and organisational capacity for holding the space during the pandemic. Make a cuppa and then relax into this discussion. You might need a notepad and a pen!
At the beginning of ‘lockdown’ which has been affectionately renamed ‘safe keeping’, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could serve you. You may or may not know that I host a rather fab podcast that creates the kind of conversations that make a difference. The podcast is in Season Two and its focus is on conversations across all the sectors acknowledging that we seek to ensure that we do not add to harm but rather seek to support healing from it. You can have a listen to the Trauma Resonance Resilience podcast here or wherever you listen to your podcasts (and we’re on YouTube).
Being connection obsessed, added a new dimension in to my thinking and I decided to host some of the podcast recordings as live webinars so that you could not only be with my guests in real time, you could also ask them questions! Bingo!
On 12th May at 2pm, the next free webinar in this “COVID 19 Social Connection Series”, I am speaking with Karen Treisman. Psychology Professional of the Year Award for Excellence in Attachment and Trauma (2018) and Youth Psychology Professional of the Year (2020) Karen is a Clinical Psychologist, trainer, and author of 8 books. She specialises in areas of trauma, attachment, child protection, fostering adoption, refugee and asylum seeking young people, and adversity, culturally, and trauma informed, infused, and responsive organisational transformation. Karen is the director of Safe Hands Thinking Minds Training and Consultancy services.
Register your place here and make sure this in in your diary!
As school leaders begin to ponder how best to prepare for a return of the school community, the confusing enormity of their task is unfolding. They are accustomed to integrating vulnerable children from complex backgrounds at the beginning of a new school year, but the issues confronting them now are multiple – and are likely to have affected every group in their school, whether pupils, teachers, TAs, admin or ancillary staff. It is not just the number of bereavements that have occurred, but the mental and emotional stresses that have been generated by ‘lockdown’ and how adults and children have managed those – or not. Data is already being published on the impact of social isolation and it is the younger people, the 12-25 year-olds who have found it the hardest (and had the least ‘voice’) even with the technology that they have to hand for making those social connections.
Social isolation forces a person, a family, a community into a place where there is little choice to confront the developing awareness of your own resilience and resources – or lack of them. For some children and adults, just being in an enclosed space for a prolonged period of time without any prospect of easy escape will generate toxic stress. Children that could exit the family home when the going got tough have had to stay and listen to the verbal abuse and see the domestic violence and perhaps suffer abuse themselves. The stresses of parenting increased for everyone, but particularly for those already vulnerable through poverty, social isolation and poor mental health. For some parents there has been a toxic overwhelm with the likely outcome of domestic violence or child abuse. For others, the experience has led to the realisation that a relationship with a partner is no longer sustainable and they are now in that place where they are facing further stresses at the thought of separation.
Whatever the particular situation, it is likely that, regardless of age, many of those returning to school will be returning with a burden of stress and anxiety. We can call it PCSD (Post Covid Stress Disorder).
Unfortunately, but inevitably, at the outset of the pandemic, two very conflicting messages were being referenced, deriving from two different branches of science: neuroscience informing us that in times of stress we need to develop nurturing connections with others to strengthen our emotional and physical resilience and medical science telling us we must endure prolonged physical isolation to slow down the spread of COVID-19. We have obviously followed the medical message which is aimed at securing our physical survival. But now it’s time to see what we can do about healing emotional and mental injuries and restoring psychic health.
In order to provide a response to this, myself and colleague Liza Lomax have developed a programme to support the recovery and resilience of all members of an organisation or community, regardless of age, is one which is based on attachment and trauma research and recognises that the brain is a social organ; recovery therefore happens most quickly and effectively where there is a good relationship, ideally a secure connection of the sort that mirrors the connection between a good-enough parent and their child, and the nurture it provides.
The children who return to school with the covid-19 message firmly imprinted in their unconscious may initially see others as a threat to life and be anxious in the large classroom group. The teacher who has conscientiously observed ‘lockdown’ to protect her two young children may well return to school with separation anxiety and initially struggle with the demands of the return to the classroom. Pupils’ parents may feel the same anxiety and keep their children off school. And our task in school is to create an environment that powerfully communicates safety, primarily through the quality of the interactions that the key adults have with others, whether children and their parents, or colleagues.
The session will focus on the following:
This online training session is being offered by Lisa Cherry on 20th May between 10am and 12 noon and you can book your ticket here
As I am unlikely to return to face to face training for the coming months, please email lisa@lisacherry.co.uk to request my recommended colleague, Liza Lomax. Liza is inspirational trainer and therapist who, for the first twenty-eight years of her career taught in secondary and tertiary institutions and with her family, fostered children for over twenty-five years will be delivering that training. Incidentally, Liza has had and recovered from COVID 19 so will be available once schools are ready to return.
One area that stands out for me during this whole experience of Covid 19 is grief and loss. As we settle into week 6 (or 7 if like me you made the decision slightly ahead of the Government) of this new normal, we can locate the loss of so much which sits alongside the intensity of concern for elderly relatives and our friends and family with underlying health conditions. We might call that potential grief and loss as we imagine life without our closest relationships. The news, drip-feeding loss throughout the day creating a background soundtrack that we are desperately trying to replace with house parties, family quizzes and twitter exchanges.
Now what if you are a child, in your developmental world of the constant firing and wiring up of neurons building your internal architecture? Who is holding that space? It will be parents, carers and then teachers when children and young people return to school. Do you feel equipped to hold that space? Who is holding that space for you?
COVID-19 has not only disrupted every aspect of our daily lives, and locked us down, it has also magnified losses that were pre-existing, and opened up the topics of death, loss and grief, making them part of our daily conversations. If we found these conversations difficult before COVID-19 and avoided having them, thinking grief and loss were topics for ‘another day’, they are even harder now, as the issue of mortality has threatened our sense of safety, challenged our capacity for change, emotional resilience, and questioned how we find peace of mind.
Added to this are the ‘big little losses’ – our children can’t see and socialise with friends and family, attend school, after school clubs, be at places of play, safety and refuge, all of which has thrown them, and us (parents and educators) into a state of grieving for our familiar routines, relationships, and human connections.
As we find ourselves in this new state of uncertainty and unbalance, not waving but almost drowning in grief, feeling angry one minute, and in denial the next, the question becomes – how do we talk to our children about grief and loss, and enable them to feel a sense of safety, and peace of mind? How do we find this for ourselves?
On Wednesday the 29th at 10.30am, I have invited Amanda Seyderhelm to join me in conversation on the podcast. I am going to host this as a FREE webinar so people can be part of the conversation and ask questions. Amanda is CRUSE Qualified to work with bereaved children and young people, a journey which started when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer nad then realised that she would never have her own children.
Painting helped her to make sense of her losses, find her voice, and find a new direction. She recovered her health, and has been painting ever since. This led her to explore working with children through painting, drawing and writing, and discovered the power of therapeutic storytelling. Shortly afterwards she had a dream which became her first book, Isaac and the Red Jumper for bereaved children.
She became a child play therapist because she knows that when children find their voice, they find their power and sense of wellbeing. Amanda is a recognised expert in her field of innovative creative play therapy for children. She is a certified Play Therapist where she focuses her work with children between the ages of 4 and 12, and has been in private practice since 2015. Previously she spent 4 years as a play therapist in a primary school in the East Midlands.
Her area of specialism is in treating children (and their families) who are suffering with mild to moderate emotional or psychological problems following bereavement, helping them navigate the 4 stages of ‘cycle of loss and change’: loss, change, resolution and resilience.
Amanda’s new book, Helping Children Cope with Loss and Change: A guide for professionals and parents was published by Routledge in 2020, and details each of the 4 stages of the cycle of loss and change, and includes 10 therapeutic story scripts to read with children. She is an accredited CPD Trainer for practitioners on childhood bereavement.
Register HERE to JOIN THE WEBINAR
*Amanda is a member of Play Therapy UK, and The Association of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice, and conforms to its ethical framework, Conduct of Practice, appropriate Clinical Governance procedures and CPD requirements. She is registered on the PSA Approved Play Therapy Register. Her work is clinically supervised, and she has professional liability insurance and a fully enhanced CRB
** Signposting resources will be referenced during this webinar, as well a ‘takeaway’ infographic about ‘how to talk to children about the Coronavirus’.
