Training

Combining my communication skills developed over several years as a teacher, with my knowledge, skills and experience as a psychotherapist and my experience of therapeutic care of emotionally traumatised children and young people, I provide a range of engaging and informative training modules, in areas including:

Child Development - here, we explore classic theories of child development such as Erikson's stages of human development and Pam Levin's theories of child development. I can also include comparisons with other child development theorists. 

This is linked to more recent neuro-scientific research on brain development. So much of the recent research on the effects of early childhood experience on brain growth has reinforced what people like Winnicott, Bowlby, Erikson and others were saying about the crucial importance of the early years.

We also explore the relevance of the theory to our here-and-now care of damaged, traumatised and acting-out children and young people.

Attachment Theory - Looking at Bowlby's theory, and how his original theory has been expanded upon by other theorists. We link up-to-date brain development research with the development of our attachment styles. Crucially, we also explore how this knowledge informs our practice.

We explore how attachment difficulties impact on young people, and how we can intervene to create an appropriate therapeutic environment for change.

One of our main tasks in work with attachment-traumatised children and young people is to "re-wire" their brains ... but we are not allowed to use a screwdriver!  This can only be done through healing relationships.

Therapeutic communication - using Transactional Analysis as a core theoretical model, we explore what happens in human communication; why do we get stuck? What happens in our communication at the unconscious level? How can we improve our communication?

We also explore techniques for staying in the here-and-now when communicating with traumatised children - how not to take their behaviours personally.

Understanding and working with self-harming behaviours - we explore the causes, triggers, and the underlying emotional trauma. We go on to explore how we respond to, work with, support and treat children and young people who self-harm.

I have also run successful training workshops on:

• working with disturbance
• understanding childhood mental health disorders
• understanding personality disorders
• understanding and surviving adolescence

I am happy to tailor these, and other relevant, training packages to your particular needs and situations.

Training packages can be for a whole day (10-4) or smaller packages depending on your need.