Our Training Programmes are designed for - Social Workers - Psychologists - Therapists and other allied disciplines - Parent Mentors

To be sure you secure a place on one of our Training Courses, please apply within 60 days of the start date
Family Futures' training includes a handbook for each participant on the topic of each course.

Our ratings by course participants over the past 2 years have averaged out at:

• 9 out of 10 for presentation
• 9 out of 10 for course handbooks
• 9 out of 10 for food and training environment when the course has been held at Family Futures

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
7-8 July 2009
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
Please click here to download flyer

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
Please click here to download flyer

Contact Arrangements for Children who are Fostered & Adopted
26 September 2008
Presented by Alan Burnell & Liz Williams
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.
A copy of the handbook will be provided as part of the training package.
Cost: £190 + VAT (Incl. lunch & training handbook)

Attachment and Contact for Guardian's
Date tbc
Presented by Alan Burnell & Christine Gordon
The 2 days will outline training on trauma, attachment and contact.
Cost: £380 + VAT (Incl. lunch & training handbook)

New Developments in Assessing and Teaching Looked After Children and Children who are Adopted
Won't Do or Can't Do?
22 October 2008
Presented by Marion Allen; Educational Specialist
She will be demonstrating the use of her new publications; Resource Packs for helping children in the classroom.
Please click here for flyer
Cost: £190 + VAT (Incl. lunch & training handbook)

Introduction to Family Futures Assessment Handbook
13 November 2008
Presented by Alan Burnell & Liz Williams
Family Futures have published their assessment handbook designed to help social workers and other professionals make assessments of children covering the following issues: -

This highly acclaimed assessment handbook provides a framework for analysing information gathered about a child based on theory and research from the fields of attachment theory, developmental trauma and neuro-science.
A copy of the handbook will be provided as part of the training package.
Cost: £190 + VAT (Incl. lunch & training handbook)

"Where Angels Fear to Tread"
Planning for disruption and working with families post disruption
21 January 2009
Presented by Alan Burnell & Liz Williams
This workshop is designed to look at: -

This area of work is among the most difficult emotionally for all concerned and the most complex and needs to consider the following: Contact issues for adopted children; they may leave their adoptive family but are still adopted. Sibling relationship with siblings who may remain in placement. How we can turn what can be seen as a ‘bad ending’ into a ‘new beginning.’ The professional system is always impacted by a disruption and a systemic perspective that needs to be maintained and managed.

The day will look at Family Futures framework for a make or break programme and for managing placements post disruption drawing on trauma and attachment theory, case examples and practice experience. The day will be of value to social workers who have case responsibility for children or work as part of a family placement team.
Cost: £190 + VAT (Incl. lunch & training handbook)

Sibling Placements
4 February 2009
Presented by Louis Sydney
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.  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.
Cost: £190 + VAT (Incl. lunch & training handbook)

Parent Mentoring - Integrating Home & School
12 February 2009
Presented by Christine Gordon & Marion Allen
The day will focus on integrating home and school approaches to managing challenging behaviour.  It is now accepted that in parenting children with attachment difficulties parents need to adopt a sophisticated range of strategies.  This one 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.
Cost: £190 + VAT (Incl. lunch & training handbook)

Matching - Assessments of Children & Perspective Parents
18 February 2009
Presented by Alan Burnell
One of the hardest tasks in family placement is matching children and prospective parents.  In family placement reports 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.
Cost: £190 + VAT (Incl. lunch & training handbook)

Please click here to download flyer on all of the above training

Family Futures Conference to be held at the Royal Society for the Arts, London
Body Based Interventions with Traumatised Children
Parenting the Primitive Brain
15 May 2009
Speakers: Giselle Genillard, Babette Rothschild, Eadaoin Bhreathnach, Jay Vaughan & Louis Sydney
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.
Cost: £190 + VAT (Incl. lunch & conference pack)

EMPATHY, ATTACHMENT & MAKING TRAUMA THERAPY SAFE
Presented by Babette Rothschild
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 (Incl. lunch & training pack)

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 (Incl. lunch & training pack)
Please click here to download flyer

Adoption & Attachment Course
This course is credit rated by the University of Greenwich;
1st Year - 60 Credits at level 3
2nd Year - 30 Credits at level M
Please click here to download flyer  

Dan Hughes Courses
Dr. Dan Hughes is a psychologist whose developmental attachment therapy has been much acclaimed by parents and professionals, both in this country and the USA.

Theraplay®
Family Futures is pleased to be able to host the Theraplay® introductory certificate course. Family Futures is committed to running the complete Theraplay training course to enable UK participants to qualify in Theraplay®. We therefore also host the intermediate course and supervision days.

Focus on Adoption Courses for Local Authorities to buy in;
Matching, Contact, Siblings, Transitions, Parenting & Panel Training
Designed as training for Social Workers & Therapists on key issues in contemporary adoption practice.   These courses are designed for Local Authorities to buy in for groups of staff to be trained in the above key issues.  Participants for each Focus on Adoption Course will be supplied with a comprehensive handbook, included in which will be rationales, frameworks, research and references.  Please contact us regarding cost and dates.

Parent Mentoring Courses
Family Futures has devised a 5-day course for parents wishing to be parent mentors and for social workers who are training and supporting parent mentors.

For further information on any of the above courses, please contact Joanne Collett; Training Services Co-ordinator joanne@familyfutures.co.uk / 020 7354 4161

Application Forms