June 2008

Family Futures Becomes an Adoption Agency in our 10th year as an Adoption Support Agency

We are pleased to announce that in addition to continuing our adoption support work, we are now a fully fledged Adoption Agency.  Over the past year we have recruited and trained an adoption panel and we are privileged to have Bridget Betts as the Panel Chair and Adrian Briggs as our Panel Advisor.

i-Adopt – An Adoption Agency for the 21st Century

i-Adopt was launched at our 10th Anniversary Conference held at the RSA in May 2008.  Sir Richard Bowlby, Dan Hughes, Phyllis Booth, Jonathan Pearce and David Howe all shared their wisdom and experience in re-defining adoption for the 21st Century (CD available of the presentations from the day, please contact joanne@familyfutures.co.uk to purchase a copy)

i-Adopt – Who is it For?

i-Adopt is for agencies looking to place ‘high risk’ children for adoption who will need intensive support packages.

i-Adopt is for prospective adoptive parents who recognise the realities of adoption today and wish to be assessed by an agency that sees parents as collaborators and part of a therapeutic team.

i-Adopt is a contemporary, sophisticated service that utilises neuro-scientific research and theory to understand and help children who are experiencing developmental trauma because of early life experiences.

Further information can be found on ‘Our Services’ page, please see pdf.

In order to offer this service, Family Futures has become a Government regulated not for profit agency.

i-Play A Therapy Service for 0-4 Year olds

i-Play has been designed for children 0-4 who are fostered or who are adopted from care or abroad.

i-Play is a therapeutic programme that incorporates theraplay, sensory integration, somatic reactions to trauma and nutrition.  Family Futures have integrated these 4 important treatment mediums in a short term programme of intervention that is affordable to local authorities and parents.

i-Play has been conceived for a group of parents and infants who often get over looked by therapeutic services.  Separation, loss and multiple care taking have a traumatising effect on babies and infants which often goes undetected but has profound neurological, physiological and psychological effects.  We believe that this programme of interventions which help parents to developmentally re-parent their young children will improve not only their attachments but will repair developmental harm.  For more details download the pdf in ‘Our Services’ section on the website. 

Forthcoming Conference & Workshops

Body Based Interventions with Traumatised Children
Parenting the Primitive Brain

Family Futures Conference to be held at the Royal Society for the Arts, London

15 May 2009

This ground breaking conference will explore how for parents and therapists alike, body based interventions with traumatised children can help them to become regulated.  Also, how a body therapy approach can heighten our awareness of the need to parent and work with ‘the primitive brain’.  Our work with children who have experienced multiple traumas in infancy, pre and post birth has led us to the recognition that the impact of such traumas is not just psychological but neuro-physiological.  We therefore need to understand the neuro-physiology of children’s responses to trauma and how to respond at the somatic level.

We are privileged to have new presentations from pioneers in the field who are using body and somatic observations and interventions in order to help children resolve early traumatic experiences as a pre-curser to forming more secure attachments.

For further details, watch our website.  Speakers to be confirmed in the Autumn.

Sensory Integration, Attachment & Trauma

Family Futures is pleased to be able to host these 2 courses run by Eadaoin Bhreathnach who has innovatively integrated attachment theory and sensory integration, theory and practice.  This approach fits within the framework of developmental trauma as an important therapeutic intervention.

An Introduction to Sensory Attachment Interventions
11-12 September 2008
This 2-day course is for professionals who are involved in therapeutic, educational, and daily care of children at risk, accommodated or adopted.
Cost: £200+VAT

Occupational Therapy Training in Sensory-Attachment Intervention
Level One Course
‘An Integrative Approach to Self Regulation’
25-28 November 2008 & 5-6 March 2009
This 6-day course will look at up to date theories on the process of ‘self regulation’ and ‘co regulation’ which include the process of sensory modulation, sensory discrimination, regulation of arousal states, and attachment. It will draw on the writings of theorists & clinicians such as Ayres, De Gangi, Dunn, Otter, Dahl Reeves, Greenspan, Stern, Perry, Schore, & Crittenden.

The course is specifically designed for Occupational Therapists who work in Child and Adolescent Mental Health and in Paediatrics. Emphasis will be on theory based analysis and practice. Therapists will be taught the use of profiles, assessment charts and treatment techniques. Videos and photographs will be used to illustrate each type of dysfunction and treatment programmes.
Cost: £600+VAT

EMPATHY, ATTACHMENT & MAKING TRAUMA THERAPY SAFE

Presented by; Babette Rothschild

Babette Rothschild, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. is the founder of Somatic Trauma Therapy. She has been a practicing psychotherapist and body-psychotherapist since 1976, licensed in California as a Clinical Social Worker since 1978. She is a member of the International and European Societies for Traumatic Stress Studies, the National Association of Social Workers (USA), and Certified by the Association of Traumatic Stress Specialists. Babette has trained extensively in Transactional Analysis, Gestalt Therapy, Psychodrama and Somatic Experiencing, and is a certified Bodynamic Analyst and certified Radix Teacher. She is the author of the following publications on trauma and PTSD: -

• Help for the Helper: The Psychophysiology of Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Trauma (2006)
• The Body Remembers Casebook: Unifying Methods and Models in the Treatment of Trauma and PTSD (2003)
• The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment (2000); BEST SELLER

PART 1
22-23 October 2009

Day 1
Empathy and the Neurological Basis of Attachment
We all deeply, emotionally affect each other; therapist, client, parent, child, friend, lover, etc. Empathy is the foundation of this effect and the attachment that results, facilitated by mirror neurons, facial and somatic feedback, and somatic markers. Through lecture, films, and exercises, day 1 will lay a theoretical foundation for human interconnectedness and how states of emotion can be passed from one person to another.

Day 2
Making Trauma Therapy Safe
In the field of trauma, there is fairly good consensus that treatment should be phase-oriented as outlined by Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery (1992). Unfortunately, the first phase, safety and stability, is often shortened or bypassed altogether in favour of moving rapidly to the (sometimes more interesting) stage of remembrance and mourning. However, this can be very, very problematic. It is not only a problem to prematurely address trauma memories, but some traumatised children and adults are actually not even good candidates for phase 2 at all. Day 2 will cover both theory and techniques to understand and support this critical first stage including a model for distinguishing which children are candidates to move on to stage 2 and which are not.
Cost: £380+VAT

PART 2
24-25 October 2009

Day 1 & 2

Further Essentials for Safe Trauma Therapy
This is a follow on 2 days training for practitioners who have completed part 1.  This is a more in-depth programme of theory and practice of working with traumatised individuals.
Cost: £380+VAT

Trauma and Dissociation in Children

This collection of 3 DVD’s sponsored by the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation and produced by Fran Waters, former president of ISSTD and forensic evaluator. The presenters are based in the USA, except for Renee Potgieter who is in the UK.

1. Behavioural Impacts
2. Issues for Interviewers
3. Guidelines for Prosecutors

This collection of three training DVD’s is aimed at informing and educating professionals working within the field of child protection. It focuses on the way children traumatised by parents or significant others are impacted and how dissociation is used as a survival mechanism.. It illuminates the role dissociation plays in the memory of the child and during the interviewing process conducted by a team of forensic evaluators and prosecutors.     There is a particularly cogent explanation as to why victims of abuse may retract or give inconsistent accounts of what they endured.  Advice is offered on how to support and approach the investigation and interview task in a way that gives children the best opportunity of being heard and understood and therefore protected. While the Guidelines for Prosecutors are of course based on the law of the USA there are never the less dynamics commonly seen in traumatized children no matter where they reside and some thought provoking intervention techniques that could be useful in the UK.  

There is a wealth of information on these three DVDs which comes with a trainers guide with an extensive bibliography, articles, and workshop formats with discussion areas. The DVD set is packed with useful information and insights, delivered by an array of articulate and engaging experts working in the field of trauma. Fran Waters one of the presenters was the recipient of the 2008 media award from the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children for her production of this set.  This DVD set has also been endorsed by The National Child Protection Training Centre and the National Centre to Prevent Sexual Abuse of Children. 

Even more helpful in some ways is the fact that young people who have experienced abuse and dissociation also talk about their experiences. Foster carers are also featured giving anecdotal accounts of looking after children and young people who have been dissociative. So much information is conveyed that these DVDs need to be watched more than once.

These DVD’s have been developed primarily for child protection services and forensic evaluators, as well as those working in the prosecution service. However the depth of insight and information it offers about the process of trauma and dissociation in children and the role of the parents’ means this could be a very valuable training tool for those working with traumatised children in the fields of adoption and fostering in understanding the behavioural impact of trauma on children and suggestions for interviewing children to minimize dissociation, which can also be useful to carers. 

It may not be suitable to offer to substitute parents for home viewing as the intensity of sitting through even the first of the 42 minute films without pause for discussion could make it difficult to watch. However carefully selected sections for use in preparation or training courses could be very useful, which are outlined in the trainer’s guide for discussion.  Some of the explanations and insights offered about how and why dissociative states arise in traumatised children could be very useful for carers in helping them gain insight and empathy into some of the most challenging behaviours that traumatised children can present.

For a more detailed description of the DVD set and the Trainer's guide, the reader can go to ISSTD's website at http://www.isst-d.org/store/trauma-and-dissociation-children-video.ht.  It is possible to view a clip of the DVD on this website from where it can also be purchased.

Elsie Price
Family Futures