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 packages:
Course 1: Understanding attachment and developmental trauma: Developing Relationships that can Heal
This introduction workshop can support staff who are new to working with children looked after and who need support to understand the challenges of parenting children with relational and developmental trauma. See Attachment and Trauma Workshops
Course 2: Three day PACE therapeutic parent training
- This unique PACE informed training package has been adapted and delivered to over 50 residential care teams and their managers.
- This therapeutic parenting package has been adapted for use with residential care staff teams to support them in their work with traumatised young people with history of attachment and relational trauma. to understand the young people they care for using an "attachment informed" therapeutic parenting approach.
- This training package helps staff to understand the impact of relational trauma and its impact on children being able to develop trusting relationships.
- 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.
- 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.
Course 3: Supervision and PACE informed Reflective Practice
This training ensures that Senior RCW's and Registered Managers develop the 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 we support young people with. This training supports the ongoing development of residential care staff and helps them to develop and embed good therapeutic practice 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 weekly/monthly consultations to residential care staff (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 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 consultations with staff can enable a staff team to adopt a more psychologically informed approach thereby ensuring the child has the most optimal chance of developing emotionally. Staff can bring their concerns that they have 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.
