Saturday 18 September 2010 (9.30am-5.15pm)
HELPING CHILDREN WITH TROUBLED PARENTS (infants to teenagers)
(Children who live with parents troubled by alcohol/drug abuse, depression, anxiety, aggression, domestic violence, mental/physical ill-health, the stress of separation/divorce)
Cost: £160 (includes a complimentary buffet lunch)

This conference will focus on how to help children whose emotional wellbeing is adversely affected by troubled parents. Presenters will address the effects on children of family breakdown, separation and divorce, witnessing parents fighting, parents who suffer from mental or physical ill-health, depression or anxiety, and those who are addicted to drugs or alcohol.

Many children of troubled parents live with the burden of having to navigate their parent’s emotional states, leaving them with a mass of overwhelming and sometimes unbearable feelings about a chaotic disturbing world. Often they feel alarmed by their parent rather than experiencing them as a place of safety and solace. Moreover when parents are so preoccupied with their own troubles, they are often unable to effectively address their child’s core relational and attachment needs, or provide sufficient quality one to ones, e.g. soothing, validating, attunement, co-adventure, interactive play etc. Presenters will consider the legacy of this, which for many children can be an adolescence and adulthood of trying to manage feelings in harmful ways, e.g. using drugs, drink or self-harm. Others develop debilitating neurotic symptoms, become depressed, anxious or full of anger.

Presenters will offer a wealth of effective interventions for these children/young people. Most importantly they will address the key feelings such children need help with, and how to offer that help. There will also be focus on prevention: how to empower parents with the support and skills they need in order to address their troubled feelings and unprocessed trauma and loss, so their children no longer suffer.

Benefits from attending this conference

• Understand the complexity of children’s/teenagers’ feelings about their troubled parents
• Understand common physical symptoms and emotional problems when a child is feeling burdened by a parent's troubled state
• Learn how to enable children/teenagers to address their hurt, fear, grief, rage, resentment about their troubled parent in order to move forward in their lives
• Learn how to empower children/teenagers to find their voice when they have been left in the role of impotent bystander
• Learn about effective parent-child intervention when parental troubles are adversely affecting the child
• Learn how to help a parent and child ‘find’ each other again after attachment rupture or repeated misconnections
• Learn how to empower troubled parents to process their emotional pain so they can address their child’s unmet psychological needs

Speakers

Camila Batmangelidjh
Psychotherapist. Founder of two children’s charities: The Place 2 Be (now national) and Kids Company where she currently works with deeply traumatised young people. Author of the groundbreaking book Shattered Lives. Has won many awards including Ernst and Young Woman of the Year 2006 award. With her team has raised over £40 million to help London's most vulnerable children. Regular media appearances as consultant about troubled children and young people.

Julia Segal
Research Counsellor for over ten years. Author: Phantasy in Everyday Life. Co-Author: Helping Children with Ill or Disabled Parents - A Guide for Parents and Professionals.

Dr Margot Sunderland
Director of Education and Training at The Centre for Child Mental Health. Integrative Child Psychotherapist, Academic Psychologist, Parenting expert. Author of 20 books in child mental health translated into 17 languages. BMA award winning author. What Every Parent Needs To Know (Dorling Kindersley) is the result of over ten years work collating hundreds of scientific research studies on the long-term effects of parent-child interaction on the brain.

Julie Lynne-Evans
Psychotherapist specialising in working with children and families. Author: What About the Children (the effect on children of separation and divorce). Consultant to schools and families throughout the UK. Works with many child and adolescent units including the Royal Free Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital, The Maudsley. Appeared on television programmes including Panorama and written for national newspapers on the subject of the influence of drugs on the developing brain.

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