Finding Hope

Specialized Training

Thank you for your interest in learning about the special needs of children with complex trauma. Such trauma can occur from abuse, neglect, abandonment, and even from emotionally distant primary caregivers. We offer specialized training in the impact of early trauma and provide healing interventions. We will make research practical.

Many times parents, direct care staff, teachers, therapists, and case workers struggle with the how-to’s. We will lay the foundation for healing-the why’s, then the how-to’s.

Trauma from neglect, abuse, and abandonment:

The child’s healthy development is derailed with each trauma. Developmental milestones cannot be reached when a child is living in stress and fear and/or when a child does not have an emotionally responsive and attuned caregiver to guide the child through these stages. Imagine the developmental “holes” a child may have from multiple caregivers and placements, abuse, and neglect. Trauma impairs “attachment, biology, affect, dissociation, behavioral regulation, cognition, and self-concept” (cook et al., p.392). In our training, we will identify 6 Trauma Disrupted Competencies and offer multiple interventions to address each with healing interventions, not just behavioral change.

Treatment in the context of relationships:

Counseling 101 instructs clinicians to form a therapeutic relationship with their clients. Traumatized children are adverse to relationships and do not trust adults. These children may be difficult to engage and resistant in revisiting their early trauma. Specific training and creativity are needed to engage a resistant child. To further complicate treatment, some parents are emotionally unavailable due to not understanding the child’s behaviors. Treatment must be in the context of relationships-parent/child if possible-with multiple positive and reparative experiences. The parents may be the first clients-as the clinician helps them explore and resolve their histories, expectations, skills, stress, grief and loss, and sometimes, infertility. Clinicians find that training in Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, and Theraplay meet their clinical needs. 

Teaching Parents and Children to Thrive

Professionals in the foster and adoptive world desire to see the children they work with not just live with but thrive in their new families. They know the last thing this child needs is another change in placement. They know the heartbreak, the depression, the violence possible in the child and in the homes. They also know the joy, care, and comfort in the healing homes-and they want this for all their families. They have seen that hope is tangible and accessible in the right home with the prepared parent – the flexible parent – the ones who can see this child differently.

Helping Parents and Cheering Them On

Professionals can help parents be the change agent by providing resources, training, and encouragement. They can stand by the parent during the struggles, be their cheerleader as they travel through the Trauma Lens Paradigm Shift, and empathize with the defeats. Use the resource list to help families look outside of their “normal” parenting styles. Attend training with the parents so that everyone with be on the same page. Most of all, ALWAYS project these parents are the best parents the child could have, these parents can be TRUSTED. If you cannot verbally and non-verbally state these qualities, the child should not be in this home. Healing occurs when the child has a Safe Haven and Secure Base.