About the workshop
The recent Harvard/Casey study shows that trauma and anxiety disorders are not resolving simply because children are moving into safe placements. Instead, children are growing up with high rates of traumatic stress and debilitating anxiety.
This day gives professionals the skills that they need in treating children who have been traumatized or who have lost adult caregivers in a sudden and/or traumatic fashion. It will address the generalized anxiety that so many children experience after rotating caregivers in the first year or two of life.
The topics of the day will include:
- Assessment and diagnosis of children. What are the adjustment issues to a new home? What is traumatic stress?
- What are the symptoms of traumatic stress and how do they interfere with integration and healthy adaptation? What are the developmental impacts of trauma and pathological grief?
- What are the resources necessary in order to do trauma work?
- How to help children build a stress regulation system: Skill-building in affective regulation.
- Methods of working with children who have attachment issues as a result of traumatic stress.
- Processes of assisting children in grieving when children have lost parents traumatically.
- Protocols for working with trauma, grief, and attachment issues. What comes first?
- Anxiety and trauma issues in parents.
- Home programs for families--Creating a healing milleu.
This day will help therapists and caseworkers sharpen their focus in assessing children, select appropriate strategies for helping children, and assist children as they make meaning out of their life events. The goal is to shift children onto developmental arcs that allow them connection with caring others, their areas of mastery, and the positive meaning of their lives.
This workshop is required for those enrolled in the Certificate Program in Adoption and Foster Care Therapy.
