Using Relationships to Heal Trauma Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity & Empathy

This workshop looks at how trauma and negative attachment experiences change the trajectory of the developing brain away from mental health and towards cognitive, emotional and behavioural strategies that are self-protective. Such self-protective strategies then make it difficult to form healthy relationships and make it difficult for children to accept traditional parenting methods.
This workshop is relevant to any parent, carer or residential worker caring for children who have experienced early abuse, neglect, multiple transitions or losses. Participants will learn:

• about the impact of trauma on the developing brain.
• about emotional and behavioural patterns associated with insecure and disorganized attachment.
• about Dan Hughes’s highly acclaimed Dyadic Developmental Practice (DDP) and the use of Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy (P.A.C.E) when parenting children who have been hurt
• parenting strategies that will help children make sense of their experiences in a less shame-based way.
• how to advocate for our foster children in school settings.
• Practitioners and teachers supporting families and carers of vulnerable children are encouraged to attend together.

Dr Sian Phillips is a psychologist and adjunct professor at Queen’s University in Canada. Sian works closely with Dan Hughes as a Dyadic Developmental Practice (DDP) Board Member, certified practitioner, consultant and trainer. She oversees the research activities of the DDP Institute. Over the past two decades she has worked with children and parents/caregivers with complex trauma and attachment difficulties. She specialises in working with children in out of home care and their foster/adoptive parents.