Residential Care training
Training and Support for Residential Care Staff
We recognise the vital role residential care staff have in helping traumatised children to recover from their early experiences.
With over 25 years experience as a Clinical Psychologist and over 5 years as a Clinical Director developing an attachment and trauma informed therapeutic service for a residential care service, Dr Wendy Coetzee has a comprehensive understanding of the need to develop a therapeutically trauma informed approach to supporting children and young people in residential care. Wendy's understanding of this sector together with her DDP and PACE training skills (DDP approved PACE trainer) combine to enable her to offer a variety of training programmes to support residential care staff. These include Attachment and Developmental Trauma Training, PACE training and Supervision and Reflective practice for staff in a residential care setting.
Wendy has a vast array of experience of teaching and developing therapeutic practice in staff from senior leadership teams, Managers and Residential Care workers. Wendy's knowledge of working with children and young people with complex developmental trauma ensures that staff are supported to develop understanding of these children and also given the practical skills to ensure they can adopt an attachment and trauma informed approach to their work.
We recognise the challenges staff have in developing trusting relationships with the children and young people they care for, our training package supports staff to understand the impact of attachment and developmental trauma and our therapeutic parenting course (using a PACE therapeutic parenting model) enables staff to adopt an attachment and trauma informed approach to working with these children.
Our Residential care support and training packages support residential care staff to develop therapeutic parenting skills using an attachment and trauma informed approach.
Our aim
Our aim is to support residential care staff the opportunity to understand the young people they support using an attachment and trauma informed lens.
Building trusting connected relationships so they can overcome their experiences of relational trauma. Through training, consultation or more regular supervision to support individuals or teams as part of their continued professional development.
To find out more please drop us a line to discuss your needs.
Residential care support and training package
PACE therapeutic parent training - Helping troubled children heal through emotional connection
Dr Wendy Coetzee is an experienced DDP approved PACE trainer with over 18 years of training delivery experience in the sector.
- This unique PACE informed training package has been adapted and delivered to over 70 residential care teams and their managers.
- This therapeutic parenting package is based on Kim Golding Foundations for Attachment training package and has been adapted especially for use with residential care staff teams to support them in their work with traumatised young people with history of attachment and relational trauma.
- The course helps staff to understand the young people they care for using
- It helps staff to understand the impact of relational trauma and its impact on children being able to develop trusting parenting relationships. It supports the development of an attachment and trauma informed therapeutic parenting approach.
- Supports staff to understand why traditional behavioural parenting approaches are not effective with children with relational trauma.
- Develops a relationship based approach to parenting young people, adopting PACE informed practice to ensure that staff help young people to develop trusting relationships with their young people while helping them to create security and safety using relationally informed discipline and boundaries.
- The ongoing theme of supporting children to emotionally regulate using relationships with staff, supporting children with sensory and nervous system regulation.
Course Content:
- Day One: Understanding attachment and developmental trauma, Impact of trauma on the development of the brain, emotional regulation, relational trauma and social development. Understanding why traditional parenting approaches are not effective with children with insecure attachments. Parenting children with Shame and Toxic Shame. Introduction to Polyvagal theory.
- Day Two: Exploring the Five challenges of parenting a child with attachment and developmental trauma: Loss of Trust in Infancy .Fear of Intersubjective/Connected relationships, Understanding "hidden needs", Moving from Mis-trust to Trust, Understanding and responding to Shame. What is PACE, Adopting PACE as a therapeutic parenting approach.
- Day Three: Developing a PACE-ful parenting approach, role play, case scenario and media material are used to support a very practical and interactive workshop on developing therapeutic parenting skills, what to do and what to avoid. Staff well being and self care.
Staff develop practical skills to support their work with young people using interactive role play and watching filmed examples of PACE in practice.Wendy uses a variety of media in an interactive workshop, personable and engaging way to ensure that staff gain a good understanding of the theory and how to put this into practice to develop therapeutically informed approach to their work with the children in their care. Training days can be delivered to whole staff teams in your locality (geography permitting).
- We know that children and young people can begin to recover from relational trauma through the development of just one trusting relationship. We recognise how vitally important the role of residential care staff can be in helping children to begin to heal from their experiences.
- PACE training brochures can also be supplied for staff to use post training.
- This course is important for all members of a Residential care service Directors, RI's, RM's, RSW's and also bank staff.
- See PDF PACE training brochure below for more details.
Understanding attachment and developmental trauma: Developing relationships that can heal
This workshop supports staff working with children looked after to understand children using an attachment and neurobiological lens. This workshop helps staff parenting children with relational and developmental trauma.
It offers delegates a comprehensive understanding of the importance of developing secure attachments with parents in early childhood. We explain how securely attached relationships are fundamental to the growth of a healthy and fully integrated brain.
We explore the impact of relational trauma, neglect, abuse and domestic violence and the impact on a child's developing brain architecture, the impact on the development of emotional regulation, higher executive functions, social skills development and relational trauma and how early relational trauma can also lead to ongoing emotional, social and psychological difficulties and long term mental health difficulties.
We Cover:
- Securely attached relationships in early childhood on the development of a healthy and integrated infant brain.
- The impact of relational trauma, neglect, abuse and domestic violence on a child's social, emotional regulation and cognitive development.
- The impact of trauma on the the nervous system, hypervigilance, mistrust in relationships, difficulties with impulse control and anxiety based difficulties.
- The impact of attachment difficulties in developing trusting and "emotionally connected" relationships.
- Understanding "what happened to you" rather than "whats wrong with you".
- Sensory integration models, the neuro-sequential model and the latest research on the impact of trauma on brain development.
- Secondary trauma and how working with/caring for young people with trauma can impact on our own well being and mental health.
- The development of Insecure Attachment styles and how we can understand children's hidden and expressed needs.
Our workshops are interactive with case material and multi mdeia clips and groups exercises. We support staff to understand the impact of relational trauma on a child's ability to engage in trusting relationships.
See Training brochure below
Supervision and PACE informed Reflective Practice
This training workshop ensures that Senior RCW's and Registered Managers develop the therapeutically informed supervisory skills to ensure their staff can develop PACE competency skills which can be embedded through ongoing supervision (See Staff Well Being page) ensuring compliance with OFSTED's standards of ensuring outstanding care.
Senior staff who offer line management supervision need to support their staff in supervision to develop reflective practice using the same PACE informed approach that supports their young people. This training supports the ongoing professional development of residential care staff and helps them to develop and embed good therapeutic practice in their work with young people. This workshop also supports staff to think about how to embed good therapeutic practice and to ensure that staff have an opportunity to develop the skills learned in PACE training.
Supporting staff to develop good active listening skills and offering their staff time to have time to reflect on the emotional impact of their work. Staff who have regular ooporuntities for reflective practice are more likely to feel avlued and supported by the organisation promoting food staff well being and better staff engagement and retention. We support staff in thinking about how to offer the same PACE informed therpaeutic work with their teams as we have devloped in their work with young people.
These training and consultation packages can support residential care services to deliver an attachment and trauma informed therapeutic package which can support their staff to deliver an attachment and trauma informed approach to children and young people with complex needs.
Consultation and Advice
Psychological consultation for residential care staff supporting children with complex needs
"Understanding children's behaviour can completely alter our responses to them.... If we can make sense of aggression/violence/anger in the context of "survival behaviour" .... it helps us to adapt our responses"
Psychological consultation can help support staff to have much needed time to pause and make sense of a child/young person in the context of "what happened to you" rather whats wrong with you!
This shift in focus can help staff to have time to reflect on the young people they are supporting putting their behaviour into a trauma informed context. This reflective time can also enable staff to feel heard and understood themselves (recognising how tough it can be to care for children who often make us feel that they don't want us). Staff need support and time to make sense of young people's difficult behaviours, helping them to understand these in the context of a child's experiences/history. This can help staff to stay engaged and empathic.
We can offer either one off psychological consultations or ongoing monthly consultations to residential care staff teams (whole team, manager or individuals) supporting children and young people with complex and challenging emotional and psychological needs to understand the child and the behaviours they are presenting with. We provide ongoing therapeutic supervision and reflective practice support. We facilitate the space to reflect on the difficulties being experienced with children and enable staff to make sense of the issues using an attachment and trauma informed understanding and psychological formulation to guide successful engagement with the child.
Regular staff consultations can enable a staff team to adopt a more psychologically informed approach, thereby ensuring the child has the most optimal chance of developing safety and emotional connection and placement stability.
Staff can bring their concerns in managing the young people and a psychological formulation of the difficulties can be considered with advice and support regarding how best to respond to and manage these difficulties.
These consultations can ensure that staff have an opportunity to reflect on their own emotional needs and well being, this can prevent staff burn out and ensure that the young people’s difficulties are being given thorough clinical consideration.
Consultation is most successful when a team have been given the training offered by TFC on Attachment and Developmental Trauma, and 3 day Therapeutic PACE Parenting training. See Brochure below.
PACE Training Residential Care Staff
Places still available on 19/20th March and 9/10th April 2025 in Warwickshire