Dyadic Developmental Practice: Level One Training

Dyadic Developmental Practice (DDP) is an intervention model developed by Dr Dan Hughes (U.S.A).  DDP is family-based and is focused on facilitating the child’s readiness and ability to establish a secure attachment with his/her caregivers.  It is called Dyadic Developmental Practice both to focus attention on the importance of reciprocity in parenting, caregiving and therapy, and also to draw attention to the fact that abuse, neglect and trauma can seriously impact on the child’s developmental age and stage.  The intervention is theoretically based on the models of attachment theory and intersubjectivity, and is consistent with the needs of children and young people who have experience developmental trauma.

It is an approach that:

• Integrates recent research in the areas of neurobiology of trauma, early child development and attachment theory, to produce a therapeutic  and parenting approach that assists professionals to understand and effectively support children with trauma-attachment problems, and their families
• Communicates playfulness, acceptance, curiosity  and empathy (PACE) in order to help the child regulate their feelings (often fear, shame and anger) associated with past experiences, and to create together new meanings to be integrated into the child’s life story (autobiographical narrative)
• Recognises the vital role which adoptive parents, foster carers and residential workers play in the recovery of traumatised , attachment-resistant children
• Provides a set of principles that can support networks, inform and enrich parenting and can support the child outside of the home e.g. in residential settings and at school

This introductory 28-hour training course is relevant to professionals and therapists who have experience in communicating with and working therapeutically with children and young people and their families.  It is focused on families and residential care homes when children have experienced past developmental trauma and have associated attachment difficulties.  Principles and interventions are presented through formal discussion, case examples, videotape of therapy sessions, role-play and hand-outs.  This course is part of the pre-requisites to becoming a certified DDP Practitioner.  A MAXIMUM of 27 participants is permitted.

You will learn:

• The impact of secure developmental attachment on neurological, affective, cognitive, and behavioural development
• How developmental trauma (abuse and neglect) create insecure and disorganised attachment patterns which impede normal development
• Principles of psychotherapy, effective communication and parenting that facilitates the development of attachment security
• Specific strategies of parenting and communication that facilitate the development of a secure attachment and help children integrate past trauma and abusive experiences.
• How the caregiver’s attachment history and attachment patterns can be important factors when providing care for children who have experienced developmental trauma

Dr Sian Phillips is a psychologist and adjunct professor at Queen’s University in Canada.  Sian is a DDP Board Member, certified practitioner, consultant and trainer.  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.