The Therapeutic Parenting Podcast

In this third and final episode from our Conference Special, podcast host Serena Gay talks to childhood abuse survivor Rosie Jefferies about breaking the circle of abuse to become a good parent. Rosie is also the Managing Director of the National Association of Therapeutic Parenting (NATP) and spoke most movingly at the conference with colleague Sarah Dillon  about their personal surivival stories during the National Conference day in Solihull. A key element to success not just for abuse survivors but also for their foster and adoptive parents is essential self care. And during the Conference Day there was plenty of help and advice available on this theme. You can hear more about it from volunteer Lindsay Bodman and Emma Edwards, Director of the Haven Parenting and Wellbeing Centre on this episode.                                                                                                        ***The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma's November 2021 conference focused on a huge variety of issues that challenge parents and social workers nationwide. Everyone had a chance to explore solutions for their own personal difficulties and challenges and in this episode, we focus on the schools discussions and on the dilemmas faced by Kinship Carers and Special Guardians.  In this edition, Serena Gay talks to Daniel Thrower, CEO of the Wensum Trust and to Sair Penna , Director of Wickselm House.  In the second part of the podcast, she talks to the COECT's Jane Mitchell and to Kinship carer Ian Fogg as well as to attendee, Kay.  Find out why Kay needed to attend and what value she felt she took away.                                                                                                       ***The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma's November 2021 conference attracted parents and professionals from around the country. It was an emotional day. Well, it would be wouldn't it because so much to do with fostering and adopting children from trauma involves raw emotion. Billed as "your roadmap of strategies through to sanity", reflected  the difficulties that come with parenting traumatised children as well as the need for self-care to build the resilience required to keep going. In this edition, Serena Gay talks to the COECT's Sarah Naish and Sarah Dillon who opened the conference with a talk on strategies to cope with "Clouds of Grief, Guilt and Anxiety". This edition also features an interview with the NATP's Glynis Hough who has many years of successful fostering experience but who recently experienced great anguish when her foster daughter left the family for good. Find out more about her story and why she wanted conference attendees to know all about it.                                                                                                        ***The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

In this last episode of Series 2,  expert Sarah Dillon explains how and why trauma has such a profound and negative effect on the relationship children have with food. Their behaviours with it might include:hoarding stealing hiding eating all the time refusing food only eating certain types of food gorging on sugar or sugar productsAll of these have a perfectly good explanation which reflect the upsetting experiences of a child's early years. Not only are all these behaviours typical of a child who has undergone abuse and neglect,  but they also express the need to find replacements for the love and care that has been missing.What they require from their parents now are the therapeutic parenting techniques set out by Sarah who brings humour and colour to the strategies she knows, from experience, really work.                                                                                                         ***The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

When small children display signs of sexualised behaviour, foster and adoptive parents find it repugnant. As NATP expert Jane Mitchell explains, they are rightly furious with those responsible for the abuse their child must have suffered in an earlier existence.In this episode, Jane sets out an array of simple but effective  strategies that help to reset a child's understanding of what is appropriate behaviour between children and adults.  But she advises learning to differentiate between what is normal childhood curiousity and what is clearly entirely improper knowledge. If it's the latter, parents should alert their supervising social worker and the local authority without delay and find out what therapeutic intervention is available. In the case of older children who were subject to abuse in their early years, they may well be vulnerable to some form of sexual grooming. In all instances, the NHS, the NSPCC and Barnardo's are all good ports of call as is the website Thinkuknow                                                                                                    ***The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

In this episode, Sarah Dillon tells us why traumatized children run away or abscond from loving and caring foster and adoptive families. She understands this problem in depth both as a professional and because she was once a runner herself. Sarah tells us children run away for fear-based reasons which do not reflect badly on their foster or adoptive parents.They may not seriously intend staying away but it is likely that they are trying to make sense of unprocessed trauma.Her advice is not to make a big deal out of it no matter how anguished you may feel. You need to help them feel it’s not about them but about what happened to them.  Sarah mentions three books which listeners may find useful:The A-Z of Therapeutic Parenting by Sarah NaishThe Quick Guide to Therapeutic Parenting by Sarah Naish and Sarah Dillon                                                                                                     ***The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk 

A child in a state of dissociation can be a strange and disturbing thing to witness. In this week's edition, Jessica Jackson - whose own small son has a tendency to dissociate - talks us through why this happens and above all, what to do when it does. Dissociating can best be described as mentally leaving the room. If you are parenting a traumatized child you may be aware that they seem to go into a trance and be completely unaware of what is happening around them. This could well be a repeat of the survival mechanism that served them well during times of extreme stress before they joined your family.We don't always know what triggers them into displaying dissociation in what are now safe and happy homes - but they can hurt themselves during such episodes and Jessica gives us some excellent coping strategies. Concerned parents who are also members of the NATP (part of COECT's umbrella group) are welcome to contact us for one to one help.You can find out more about COECT and the NATP's training, listening circles and support here https://www.naotp.com/                                                                                                    *** The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

Your first reaction to the sight of your child smeared in its own poo could well be shock and revulsion. But understanding why they do strange things with their faeces or when they urinate on the carpet is key to finding a solution.You might be surprised to learn that this is one of the issues most asked-about on our Facebook page. This episode's guest, Sarah Dillon, the COECT's Therapeutic Lead, has helped many parents and children overcome wee and poo issues using therapeutic parenting-inspired strategies. As she tells us, such problems can seriously interfere with how children attach to their parents and they can occur with older teenagers as well as the very young.  But, the important thing is to find a way to ensure that relationships stay strong by using a series of strategies that reinforce a child's sense that it is safe, accepted and loved.                                                                                                           ***COECT, The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

Little else could be more destructive to a family unit than a child who is violent and aggressive towards their adoptive or foster parents. In this week's episode,  our expert guest, Jane Mitchell,  tells us that children can show superhuman strength when their fears are adrenaline-fuelled. The result can be harm to the parents and costly damage to the family home. As Jane explains, this behaviour is a symptom of the child's sense of overwhelm triggered by traumatic memories. They're not conscious of what they're doing and parents need to put into place careful plans and strategies to cope.  There's plenty of good advice here on effective de-escalation  techniques and Jane also refers to two courses* provided by the National Association of Therapeutic Parents (the NATP) as well as to the non-violence resistance courses available through many local authorities in the UK.The vast majority of children who behave this way learn to control their fears with the right kind of therapeutic parenting - and to move forward into a more settled way of life. *Therapeutically De-escalating Violence 6-week Programme and the Introduction to De-escalation and Protective Interventions are available through COECT's  partner agency, the Inspire Training Group                                                                                                            ***COECT, The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

Remember the child in your school class who was the fidgety one? Or the one who always had their hand up but was ignored by the teacher because they made apparently stupid remarks? Or the one that seemed to know exactly what was going on everywhere else but was paying no attention at all to the lesson? You wouldn’t have known it at the time, but this could have been a sign of a traumatized child experiencing extreme stress. Making the transition from home to school or from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 2 can present enormous difficulties for children who have suffered adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).In this episode, senior teacher and adoptive mother Sami Byrne – who’s also a Therapeutic Lead for the National Association of Therapeutic Parents (NATP) - helps us understand what they are going through.  She gives preparation and coping strategies to prepare children for all the different stages they have to confront during their school lives. These are tried and tested methods that she has used successfully with her own children and which form part of the document she co-authored with Jane Mitchell entitled The School Transitions Pack available on request from COECT (see below for contact details).Sami also recommends Rosie Jefferies and Sarah Naish’s book “William Wobbly and the Very Bad Day”.   Other recommended resources include "Harry and the Dinosaurs Go To School"  and  "Topsy and Tim Start School"                                                                                                           ***COECT, The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

If your child is from a traumatized background you may be asking yourself why they are seem so super sensitive to everything. Why are they so watchful and guarded? What are they afraid of? Why do they seem to focus on matters of peripheral importance when they should be concentrating on their lessons or simply on going to sleep?Why can't they just relax? Our expert guest this week, Glynis Hough, makes a welcome return to explain what is happening in a child's mind to make it hypervigilant and to make its behaviour disregulated. She tells us to practice P.A.C.E. (patience, acceptance, curiousity and empathy) until we're blue in the face. And she suggest a number of other excellent coping strategies. To help preserve your sanity, she suggests joining one of the NATP's Listening Circles where parents can seek advice and share their stories. COECT, The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

It is often really difficult for the professionals involved to know if a group of traumatized siblings should be kept together or separated once they've been removed from their birth families. There are so many factors to weigh in the balance such as:Do the siblings depend on each other and have they formed an unbreakable bond? Or is there intense rivalry and jealousy between them?Have the boys been encouraged to think they are more important than the girls? Will learned patterns of behaviour make re-parenting and learning new cultural norms an uphill battle?Is an older child violent to a younger one? Does one child show highly sexualised behaviour to another?How can a parent meet the different needs of each individual child within a sibling group?And how can parents successfully raise traumatized siblings so that they retain happy memories of their childhood?Social worker, academic and mother of two sibling boys, Jessica Jackson, talks from her own challenging experience with plentiful advice on how to overcome problems. (Jessica recommends using Theraplay techniques for therapeutic games the whole family can play and enjoy) You can find out more about COECT and the NATP's training, listening circles and support here https://www.naotp.com/The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

In the first edition of Series 2, you'll hear plenty of therapeutic parenting strategies for coping with the inevitable loneliness and isolation experienced by the parents of traumatised children. COECT's CEO Sarah Naish talks about her own challenging experience bringing up five siblings from a traumatised background on her own after the break-up of her marriage. She tells us how other mums distanced themselves from her family because of her adopted children's difficult behaviour. Sarah became increasingly isolated and desperate for empathetic listeners willing to simply listen to her troubles. All this eventually prompted her to found what has become COECT and the NATP to provide all kinds of training and empathetic help for troubled adoptive and foster parents. The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

This week COECT's CEO Sarah Naish talks from personal experience about the strain placed on a relationship when a couple adopts or fosters traumatized children.Parents can quickly experience isolation within the relationship itself. This is especially the case if one becomes the main carer and the other is not around enough to witness the difficulties that arise.About 1 in 3 relationships fail in such families unless help is sought. As Sarah says, raising traumatized children can test relationships to the limit but she presents three effective strategies to combat the problem. COECT also holds workshops and webinars to help couples put these strategies into practice.                                                                                                          ***COECT, The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk 

As a trailblazer in the field of therapeutic parenting, COECT founder Sarah Naish has made a profound difference to the lives of many struggling foster and adoptive parents. She also runs fostering agencies in England and Wales where her effective strategies are applied. The agencies empower families to make a success of fostering even when things appear to be at their most difficult.This week Sarah tells us what defines a therapeutic fostering agency and how her own ones provide wraparound support when problems arise. Learn about how the True Fostering Agency and the new SAfER Fostering Agency in Wales   successfully guide parents through difficulties that include false allegations, compassion fatigue and mental health issues. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The links Sarah refers to in this episode are:https://www.truefostering.com and https://saferfostering.org.ukThe Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

The damage inflicted on a child as a result of domestic violence - be it physical or emotional - can have a catastrophic effect on their young lives. In this episode, Rachel Cawthorn, helps us to understand why this is the case and what physiological changes take place in a child as a result of this abuse. Rachel is a social work student and was a senior practitioner in substance misuse for 15 years.   She also experienced domestic violence as a child and, as a result, entered into two toxic relationships as a young adult which took their toll on her four children. All this is now firmly in Rachel's past but no one could be better placed to understand the damage inflicted by this kind of abuse. This is why her advice on how to apply therapeutic parenting's kind and gentle techniques is worth heeding.                                                          *The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

"Bazza" is a professional social worker with in-depth experience of working in the family courts protecting the rights - and the futures - of children. For good professional reasons, she has to remain anonymous. But on this podcast edition she provides us with an invaluable insight into how the family courts arrive at their decisions. Decisions which make fundamental differences to people's lives and most especially, to traumatized children's lives."Bazza" explains about the research, the soul-seeking, and the genuine desire to do the right thing that goes into the court's pronouncements.  

Our first male guest of this series joins us on this podcast edition to talk about a father’s experience of therapeutic parenting. Kinship Carer, Iain Fogg and his wife have cared for the daughter he refers to on the podcast as “kiddo” (not her real name), for the last two years.   We learn about the so-called honeymoon period and its aftermath, secondary trauma and compassion fatigue. Iain also discusses the grief he underwent for the loss of the idealized vision he imagined life as a foster father would be like. He presents a stark but ultimately hope-filled story not of the the kind of dad he wanted to be but of the kind of dad he needed to be.                                                          *In this episode Iain talked about the film “Instant Family” as the one that originally inspired him and his wife to investigate fostering further. Iain’s Instagram account is called “TherapeuticDad” and he welcomes all new followers.The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

In this episode, Jessica Jackson, an academic and practicing social worker as well as the adopter of two sibling boys joins us to advise on how to help a traumatized child go to sleep. Wherever childhood trauma occurs, sleep will be impacted. Nightime might well be associated with bad memories and it is well known that traumatized children are more susceptible to nightmares and night terrors. Jessica knows what she talking about from a professional and personal point of view. Here she advises us on:Why sleep is disturbed for traumatized children How to establish key bedtime routines  What kind of food to give to help children feel sleepyHow to make your child's bedroom conducive to sleep How to respond to their emotional behaviour and to reassure them How to cocoon and make a child feel safeWhy parents shouldn’t feel guilty if things don’t always go to plan The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CoEChildTraumaTelephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk

Today's guest, Rosie Jefferies, the Managing Director of COECT, talks frankly about the fears and emotions she experienced as a small child at the start of her adoption journey.Rosie's profound early life trauma meant she was understandably distrustful of all adults. Indeed she viewed them as dangerous to herself and to her four younger siblings. In this podcast she gives a moving description of the fearful emotions she felt on moving in with her adoption family for the first time. She contrasts the dark of her past with the bright light of the new family home which eventually came to represent safety and security to her.Rosie is now a successful businesswoman, a wife and mother to a securely attached little boy. She has an immensely positive view of the world. This podcast edition will undoubtedly give hope to families struggling to cope.  The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma is an umbrella organisation combining resources, research and knowledge from cutting edge experts in the sector – Inspire Training Group, National Association of Therapeutic Parents, Sarah Naish – Keynote Speaker and Author, The Haven – Parenting and Wellbeing Centre and Safer Fostering. Telephone – 01453 519000 Email – info@coect.co.uk Website - www.coect.co.uk