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Applying prinicpals of neurodevelopment to clinical work with traumatised children
The following Blog puts out a challenge to all those people who have contact with children!
That's pretty much everyone!
The treatment of children who have experienced trauma is complex. It requires expertise and knowledge in child development, neurobiology, traumatology and physiology. It also requires the coordination and mobilisation of the most important people in the lives of children - Their Safety Team!
It is this team of people (parents, grandparents, foster carers, case workers, teachers, counsellors, coaches, mentors) that have the capacity to make the greatest changes to a child's life. To be able to heal the damage that trauma has made not only from a phsyically and psychological perspecitve but from a neurodevelopmental perspective.
Who'd have thought that the kind and compasionate groundsman that takes the trouble to talk to that 'awkard kid at the school' is contributing to changing how their brain is wired!
I often say to parents and carers that it is not what I do in the therapy room with a child that makes the greatest difference - it is the quality of relationships children have with those adults that they have contact with every day. Or that teacher that makes them feel special and included in class or that coach that provides words of encourgment. It is those people who make the difference. It is those people who kids need most. Kids need someone like you.....
So - I put it out there - who's safety team are you on!