Saturday 23 January 2010 (10.00am-5.15pm, registration 9.30-10.00am)
WHAT EVERY CHILD PROFESSIONAL NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT WORKING WITH ATTACHMENT DIFFICULTIES AND TRAUMA (0-18 years)
Cost: £160 (includes a complimentary buffet lunch)

This conference is a must for anyone working with troubled children or young people. It will provide a sound working knowledge of the long-term effects of both attachment difficulties and trauma. Presenters will offer a wealth of effective interventions to enable those with insecure attachments or traumatic histories to be able to move on in their lives. In light of this, presenters will address the fact that when working with troubled children and teenagers it is vital to consider both attachment and trauma.

What the day will cover
The presenters will address how our emotional attachments profoundly influence our development, our self-worth and our very perception of life. The insecure attached can perceive life as a threatening journey in contrast to the secure attached who commonly view it as a privileged adventure. Without effective intervention many children and young people with attachment difficulties live their lives with deep mistrust, loving in torment or not daring to love at all. Others deny or try to defend against their genetically ingrained attachment system and need to bond, and as a result move into a sense of emptiness, meaninglessness, depression and attempts to compensate (e.g. addictions to alcohol, nicotine, food, etc.) As Freud said: Those who cannot love, fall ill.

Presenters will also explore the long-term effects of trauma on children and young people, how victims can easily become perpetrators and how lives can be blighted until the trauma is addressed and worked through. Presenters will address the physiological basis of trauma, how the body is one of these 'theatres' where the memory of trauma is often re-enacted in stress related symptoms and hyperaroused states. Most importantly, presenters will speak about a variety of effective interventions and evidence-based programmes that overcome traumatic repetition and attachment difficulties and enable children and young people to flourish.

• Why children and teenagers can move from trauma to violence
• Creative ways of working with attachment disordered/traumatised children and young people
• Up to date attachment research
• How to recognise different attachment styles, disorders and difficulties
• How to recognise signs and symptoms of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorders
• The relational events key for a child / young person to move from trauma and attachment difficulties to emotional well-being
• Interventions which have prevented a traumatised or attachment disordered child/teenager from hardening his heart and losing his humanity
• Case material vignettes

Sir Richard Bowlby
Promoter of attachment research based on the work of his father, John Bowlby. Attachment Information Video Producer. Author: Fifty Years of Attachment Theory: Recollections of Donald Winnicott and John Bowlby.

Dr Dan Hughes (International Guest Speaker, USA)
Clinical Psychologist. Author: Building the Bonds of Attachment - Awakening Love in Deeply Troubled Children (Jason Aronson). Decades of ground-breaking and profoundly moving clinical practice with very traumatised adolescents who have moved into violence. Author of the forthcoming book Principles of Attachment-Focused Parenting.

Jay Vaughan
Psychotherapist and Dramatherapist. Co-founding Director, Family Futures - an organisation specializing in therapeutic work with traumatized fostered or adopted children who have experienced loss, neglect or abuse leaving many of them locked in aggressive or violent behaviour

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