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FOCUS
ON ADOPTION COURSES
For Local Authorities to buy in
Training for Social Workers & Therapists
and allied professionals.
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FOCUS ON ADOPTION COURSES
ALL THESE COURSES ARE AVAILABLE FOR LOCAL AUTHORITIES TO BUY IN
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FOCUS ON ADOPTION: Training for Social Workers & Therapists and allied professionals
Participants for each Focus on Adoption Course will be supplied with a comprehensive handbook, included in which will be rationales, frameworks, research and references.
| CONTACT
- Continuity or Contamination? |
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Contact has become one of the most contentious issues in family placement. Research evidence as to whether contact is a proactive factor is questionable. High levels of contact for protracted periods while cases are in proceedings, the explicit and implicit messages that come with contact and "termination" of contact are difficult to manage.
Family Futures has pioneered the concept of "facilitated contact" pre and post order as a way of ensuring that contact is both safe and meaningful. Family Futures believes that face-to-face contact should be seen as a therapeutic opportunity rather than a re-enactment of the past. This course will look at ways of making contact safe, meaningful and therapeutic for all parties.
| MATCHING - Child & Adult Attachment Styles |
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One of the hardest tasks in family placement is matching children and prospective parents. In Forms E and F there is a lot of descriptive and factual information on both the child and the parents but no framework for matching the two. At Family Futures we have adapted attachment based child and adult assessments and have developed a framework for matching the strengths and vulnerabilities of the parents with a profile of the parenting needs. In this way it is possible to make more complimentary matches and to plan adoption support programmes that are bespoken and specific to a particular child and its new parents. This approach enables pro-active planning and a way of analysing post-placement difficulties in parenting
a child with attachment difficulties. This is a 2-day course.
| SIBLINGS
- Together or Apart? |
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Placing sibling groups is a complex process which often raises strong feelings when the separation of siblings is considered.
It is the convention that sibling groups should be placed together and research suggests that this is a protective factor.
At Family Futures, as a result of our work with children who have experienced early trauma and experience attachment difficulties, we have come to question these assumptions. Our work has highlighted the need for very detailed assessments of sibling attachments. The day will explore the assertion that, for some children, separating sibling groups is a low-risk option and that some sibling attachments hinder rather than help the re-parenting of traumatised children.
| TRANSITIONS
- Moving Families |
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Helping children to move from foster home to permanent placement has been a neglected area of practice. For many children such moves are fraught, hasty and represent the loss of a significant carer. An added complexity occurs when siblings are moved together especially if they are in separate placements.
Family Futures has advocated that in certain situations serial placement of siblings is a more "natural" way to proceed and to help develop new attachment based practices can minimise the risks and how the role of foster-carers can be enhanced.
| Multi Disciplinary
Child Assessment - A Holistic Approach |
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The day is designed with CAMHS, Professionals and Looked After Children's Attachment Teams in mind. Over the past decade, Family Futures has developed an assessment framework for children who have experienced early trauma and who have attachment difficulties.
The framework is based on research and theory from the neurosciences. It encompasses the neurological, psychological and physiological impact of early trauma and how this manifests itself throughout childhood.
| PARENTING - New Approaches |
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It is now accepted that in parenting children with attachment difficulties, parents need to adopt a sophisticated range of strategies. This 1-day training will look at the different models that have been developed for parenting children with challenging behaviour, giving practical illustrations of how different strategies can work.
Family Futures has taken the lead in identifying executive functioning difficulties as an issue for many children who have experienced early trauma. For many children the problem is "can't do" rather than "won't do". The significance of this for parents and parenting will be explored. New approaches and ways of helping children manage their own behaviour will be looked at.
| PANEL TRAINING - Trauma, Attachment & Contemporary Family Placement |
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This one day course for Panels is designed to convey up to date research and theory on the impact of trauma and stress in infancy upon children and the implications this has on their subsequent development. Panels have to make profound decisions about placement options for children and matching. It is therefore vital that their decision making is based on the most up to date evidence to ensure that they maintain the highest standards of good practice. The course presents a handbook of information relevant to this topic, video examples and practical exercises.
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