Developmental Trauma What Every Child Professional Needs to Know

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Presenter: Dr Margot Sunderland

(Please note this webinar includes some film footage that some viewers may find particularly distressing.)

This webinar is essential viewing for anyone working or living with children/young people who have experienced abuse or neglect

Firstly, Dr Sunderland will define what is meant by developmental trauma. She will then explore how it impacts on the brain leaving a whole raft of blocks to quality of life, e.g., compromised reward processing system, memory processing system and over-active threat response system in the brain, poor emotional regulation, blocked trust, seeing relationships as primarily being about power and control, low self-esteem and dissociation and re-victimisation as a defence against unbearable pain.

Dr Sunderland then discusses key relational interventions vital for recovery and also to support the process of repair in the brain (known as neuroplasticity and neurogenesis). She addresses how emotionally available adults need to be with these vulnerable children and specifically how to gain their trust and how to respond to times of intense emotion and to behaviours that challenge. She will argue that its vital for foster carers, adoptive parents and schools to be made aware of the very particular unmet emotional needs in these children and will discuss how to meet those needs.

What you will gain from viewing:

• Learn how to recognise developmental trauma.
• Learn key relational skills for connecting with children and young people with blocked trust.
• Learn how to use PACE (Play, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy) with highly defended children. Understand how and when to hear the child’s story in order to bring about coherent narrative, alleviate self- hatred and ensure against them repeating their trauma with others, (either as victim or perpetrator).
• Gain skills in how to put down boundaries, whilst at the same time maintaining the child’s dignity and psychological safety.
• Understanding dissociation and dissociative amnesia: the neuroscience, psychology and how to be and what to do. Understand how to educate trauma uninformed schools about the needs of these children.