THERAPEUTIC PARENTING
What is Therapeutic Parenting
Therapeutic Parenting is the term used to describe a specialist attachment informed approach to parenting that can support a child to begin to develop relationship security, trust, safety and emotional connection. There are a number of key aspects to therapeutic parenting that ensure that it can provide the essential foundations for a child with a history of developmental trauma and an insecure attachment style to begin to heal and learn to trust and engage in relationships.
We know that "traditional behavioural approaches to parenting" are not successful with children with attachment difficulties and relational trauma because of their feelings of mistrust in adults and their overwhelming feelings of shame.
Therapeutic parenting helps parents to adopt an approach that takes account of these difficulties and to help parents to adapt their parenting style and understand their children through a different lens.
- Therapeutic parenting can help the parents to understand and make sense of their own attachment and parenting history and to process the emotional impact their child is having on them.
- It builds a foundational understanding of the impact of early disrupted attachments and developmental trauma on a child's developing brain and on their relationship style.
- Therapeutic parenting helps parents to make sense of children's challenging behaviours and mistrust of relationships.
- We support parents to understand an attachment and trauma informed "PACE" therapeutic approach to parenting their children, using therapeutic parenting skills approach to enable them to make emotional connection and relationship security with their child/ren.
- We support parents to understand their own regulatory systems and how these can impact on their responses to their child.
- We support parents to learn to develop their own self-care and self-compassion.
Therapeutic parenting encourages parents to recognise their importance and potential influence in developing the feelings of safety and emotional connectedness so that a traumatised child can begin to heal and securely attach.
One to One Therapeutic Parent Sessions
We offer one to one therapeutic parent sessions to birth families, adoptive parents, foster carers and Special Guardianship/Kinship carers to enable them to learn about PACE therapeutic parenting. These sessions can be offered as a bespoke package of therapeutic support to enable parents/ carers to develop the necessary attachment and trauma informed PACE approach to caring for their child/ren.
These sessions are vital for families wanting to engage in DDP based therapy to support their child and can also be funded using Adoption Support Funds where necessary. These sessions help parents to adopt an attachment and trauma informed approach to caring for their children and help them to make sense of their own emotional responses to their child in a safe and confidential environment.
At TFC we recognise how hard it can be to care for children with attachment and developmental trauma and that parents need a high level of emotional and psychological support and space for reflection to enable them to continue to offer a consistent and loving parenting approach to their children. We ensure that we help parents to make time for their own self care and encourage them to adopt a compassion focussed approach to themselves.
We help parents to recognise their own experiences of secondary trauma, compassion fatigue and to develop skills in self care, helping them to develop compassion focussed thinking to themselves, to use mindfulness, self soothing and relaxation work to enable them to come back to parenting in an open and engaged way.
Compassion fatigue can be a significant factor for parents caring for children who are traumatised and mistrust. We believe it is vital to offer parents the space to emotionally offload, reflect on the stress of parenting, to offer a non-judgemental space to begin to make sense of their feelings and help them to become more accepting of themselves enabling them to return to their parent roles in an open and engaged way being able to continue to be "Bigger, Wiser, Stronger and Kind (Circles of Security).
Therapeutic Parent/Carer Groups & Workshops
We offer 3 day parent support workshops based on Dr Kim Golding's training programme "Foundations for Attachment" helping parents/carers/care workers to understand the principles of the PACE model of parenting. (ASF can sometimes be used to support this work).
These engaging, supportive, informal fun and interactive workshops are carefully and thoughtfully put together for specific groups of parents (e.g: one group for adoptive parents, a group for SGO parents, Foster Carers, Kinship Carers, Residential Care teams or Birth families). Facilitated by Dr Wendy Coetzee, who has been delivering these workshops for over 15 years and supported by Clinical Psychologist colleagues such as Dr Anna May, Clinical Psychologist who has worked with Wendy for many years.
Therapeutic Parenting Groups bring together small groups of parents/carers experiencing similar challenges and offers teaching and training on attachment and developmental trauma.
PACE Parenting "One PACE at a Time"
- The 3 day workshop style programme supporting parents (Birth parents, Foster Parents or Adoptive Parents) to learn about the impact of attachment and trauma on children's relational style and helping parents to understand and make sense of PACE therapeutic parenting approach.
- This programme enables you to begin to understand your child/ren's complex relationship difficulties using an attachment and trauma lens,
- It helps to develop an understanding of developmental trauma and attachment difficulties and to understand why a PACE informed therapeutic approach to parenting can enable you to develop trust and emotional connection with your child/ren.
We support parents to feel safe in these groups, ensuring confidentiality and a safe place to discuss frustrations, challenges and triumphs. We also support parents to develop their own unique understanding of their child's needs, teaching them how to adopt this approach in practice using role play, play based activities, video material and interactive discussions.
We have found parents get so much from these sessions, especially as they come to recognise they are not alone in struggling to manage their own feelings of frustration, sadness and courage. The parent groups enable you to connect with a local network of families experiencing similar difficulties and support you to support each other.
Contact us for more information.
We are fully accredited
