PACE TRAINING
PACE Therapeutic Parent Training
We can deliver 3 day training workshops based on Dr Kim Golding, CBE "Foundations for Attachment" therapeutic parenting programme helping parents/carers/care workers to understand the principles of the PACE model of therapeutic parenting to support children and young people with attachment and developmental trauma.
Wendy's experience as a Clinical Psychologist delivering therapeutic parenting programmes and workshops spans over 15 years. Wendy was awarded an "Innovation in Practice" award (2014) by the BPS (British Psychological Society) for her innovative training programmes for parents supporting children with attachment and trauma based needs using a DDP approach. Wendy's enthusiasm for delivering training to support parents has spanned adoptive parents, foster carers, birth parents and residential care staff.
Dr Wendy Coetzee is a UK approved PACE trainer by DDP Connects, trained and supervised by Dr Kim Golding, CBE. Wendy's training is based on Kim's Foundations for Attachment PACE training package to support birth families, foster carers, residential care workers, adoptive parents, SGO Parents and Kinship carers. Her experience of delivering PACE informed parenting has spanned over 15 years.
Wendy helps parents to understand and make sense of their child/ren's emotional, social and psychological needs, understanding the impact of developmental and relational trauma, abuse, neglect and disrupted attachments and their impact on a child/young person's social, emotional and psychological development. We advocate an approach of "what happened to you" NOT "whats wrong with you!". We like to avoid the labels that can sometimes define these young people's trauma histories and make sense of the child in the context of their history.
Our training helps to make sense of why "behavioural" parenting approaches do not successfully support children with trauma histories and help parents/carers to develop and adopt practical therapeutic parenting skills to help them to develop trusting relationships with children and young people who have developed defensive, survival strategies in relationships with others.
This parenting approach helps parents to recognise their child's nervous system responses and their own so they can learn to respond using therapeutic skills to support emotional regulations, shame reduction and ultimately the building of safe and trusting emotional connection.
Supporting parents to remain "emotionally engaged and connected" is so important to helping their children to recover from relational trauma. We recognise the impact that parenting children whose nervous systems are constantly over activated can be. It is vital to support parents to recognise the impact their child can have on them emotionally and ensure they develop good self care and an awareness of their own emotional responses. We support parents to have space and time to reflect on the challenges of this parenting approach. Offering a supportive and empathic approach.
We recognise and value that "every interaction is an intervention" (Dr Karen Treisman, MBE) and parents can have a transformational impact in restoring and developing children's trust in adults. Therapeutic parenting offers children and young people the opportunity to recover and heal from their experiences of relational trauma. It is vital for us to support parents who are taking on this challenging and rewarding role and to ensure that they are given the tools to support them in this.
This programme can be tailored for a variety of parent needs including: Adoptive parents, Kinships Carers, Special Guardianship parents, Foster carers, Birth parents, Residential care staff.
PACE Parenting "One PACE at a Time"
A 3 day workshop based programme supporting parents/carers/staff to learn about the PACE therapeutic parenting approach.
- This programme enables them to begin to understand children's complex relationship difficulties using an attachment and trauma lens, to develop and understanding of developmental trauma and attachment difficulties and to understand why a PACE approach to care/parenting can enable parents to develop and build trust and emotional connection with their children.
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.
- 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.
We support parents to develop their own unique understanding of 'their' child's/children's needs, teaching them how to adopt this approach in practice using role play, play based activities, multi media and video material/clips and interactive discussions. We offer parents time to reflect on the challenges and successes and to have some time for their own emotional reflection and support them to develop good self care skills.
Parents who have attended this training programme have reported that it has transformed the way in which they understand and respond to their children's. needs, enabling them to create trusting relationships.
We are fully accredited
PACE Training Residential Care Staff
Places still available on 19/20th March and 9/10th April 2025 in Warwickshire