Rebuilding Trust: Relationships, Relationships, Relationships

Part two of understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma.

Introduction

This is the second session of a free staff CPD course re understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma. Subsequent sessions will be added to the website weekly. I hope you will find this useful.

The sessions follow on from one another so if you have not already read session one I would suggest that you complete this first. Session one can be found on clicking on the Session One tab.

Throughout the course I use the term trauma in relation to children and young people who have experienced loss, bereavement, neglect, abuse and/or domestic violence and, additionally, those who have experienced the potential traumatic effect of unpredictable stress, which they cannot control, over a sustained period of time (for example stress related to health difficulties, financial insecurity and social isolation).

My hope is that you will find these sessions useful as you continue to support children and young people and their families at this extraordinary time and as you plan for the recovery phase of the pandemic.

The approaches and interventions in these sessions will be evidence-based. Mostly from research in the fields of psychology and neuroscience. Some of the evidence-based approaches and interventions informed by research are deceptively simple. They are, however, also enormously powerful in their impact.  

The aims of each session will be to:

• Provide an overview of key messages from research regarding what works for children and young people who have experienced trauma.
• Provide an opportunity to reflect on your practice with regard to these key messages (reassurance and ideally identifying action(s) to further develop your practice).
• Signposting to further information.

The following image summarises the information re understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma which will be explored over the course of these sessions. As represented, the children and young people need to have trusting relationships with adults and feel safe for learning to be possible. For children and young people who have experienced trauma, we do not have a choice to make between focusing on learning or focusing on trust and safety. Without the foundations of trust and safety it will be impossible for learning to take place. Children and young people who have experienced trauma will need us to focus on trust, safety and learning.

This session will focus on rebuilding trust.

Shifting our pattern of stress.

Before we explore rebuilding trust I want to share some recent advice from Psychiatrist and Neuroscientist Bruce Perry regarding 8 actions we can all take to shift our pattern of stress during the pandemic.

He has suggested 8 actions that we can take (and encourage the families whom we are supporting to take) which will help all of us to shift the stress to more be more predictable, moderate and controllable. If we can shift some of the stress which is inevitable for all of us during the current pandemic in this way so that it is less chaotic, severe, prolonged and uncontrollable then we are likely to mitigate some of the potentially traumatic impact.

Source: www.bdperry.com/mulitmedia

The 8 actions that Bruce Perry has suggested are:

• Daily structure – continue with structure and routines.
• Family meals – healthy eating, structure/routine and a time to check in / connect with each other.
• Limited media – especially the news coverage.
• Exercise – especially patterned, repetitive, rhythmic activity to help us to regulate our physiological state.
• Reach out – even if we need to be physically distant we need to emotionally connect.
• Help others
• Sleep ‘hygiene’
• Positive, future focused – The same way anxiety and panic is contagious, so is calm. Don’t underestimate your power to bring calm to others. When we stay calm and regulated, those around us will feel less distressed.

By shifting our pattern of stress we will spend more time in a regulated state (feeling safe) as opposed to being pushed outside of our window of tolerance into a defensive state (fight/flight or freeze).

If you would like to read more about these 8 actions and the neuroscience behind them then you can find more detail by following the links in the signposting section at the end of this article.

I’ll return to more on the actions we can take to manage stress in the next session of the course.

What do we need to know about trust in relation to children and young people who have experienced trauma?

One of the concepts that we explored in the first session of this course was the Window of Tolerance which describes the ‘window’ of arousal in which a person can stay calm and connected. Each of us has a unique window of tolerance within which we remain in our open and engaged state. However, feeling unsafe will push us outside of our window of tolerance into hyper-arousal (fight/flight) or hypo-arousal (freeze).

Children and young people who have experienced trauma will have a much narrower window of tolerance which, like all of us, will reduce even further when we are in stressful situations.

We can support a child or young person to remain within their window of tolerance by creating an environment which feels as safe as possible for them.

We can support a child or young person to expand their window of tolerance (increase resilience and reduce vulnerability) by:

• Providing repeated experiences of relational buffering (co-regulation with a trusted adult) in response to situations that the child or young person finds stressful.
• Providing experiences of joy/play in a safe relationship (safe mobilisation) and experiences of comfort in a safe relationship (safe immobilisation).

Additionally, in session one of this course we explored the transformative power of feeling safe and concluded that a significant element of feeling safe comes from the interactions with the people around us:

• One of the most significant factors in feeling safe is scanning the people around us for signs of safety or threat.
• When we feel unsafe and are triggered into a defensive state (fight/flight or freeze) then one of the most effective ways of returning to our open and engaged state (felt safety) is to spend ‘time-in’ co-regulating with a trusted adult.
• It is these experiences of feeling safe in social interactions and co-regulating to return to an open and engaged state that, when experienced repeatedly overtime, support children and young people who have experienced trauma to return to a neurotypical stress response (as opposed to a sensitised stress response).

Trusting relationships with key adults make an enormous difference to the effectiveness of each of the interventions highlighted above. As I’m sure we all know from our personal experience we are significantly more able to support a child or young person if we have established a trusting relationship with them.

The full quote from Neuroscientist Jon Baylin, which I shared part of previously, is that ‘We need to convince the primitive parts of the child’s brain that we are safe by providing repeated messages of safety through our interactions. We need to be Amygdala Whisperers.’  We are far more able to provide these messages of safety if we have been able to build a trusting relationship with the child or young person. As I suggested in the title of this session it is all about relationships, relationships, relationships.

It is time for the first video of our session now. I’m a big fan of TED Talks and this talk by Psychologist Karen Treisman is my favourite:

Source: You Tube

“Relationships are the most powerful mental health intervention

known to mankind.”

It is useful to know a bit more about the serve and return interactions, which Karen Treisman mentions briefly in the video, and the important role that they play in our development and learning. Our brains have a wonderful capacity to continue to learn from new experiences throughout our lives. The serve and return interactions with other people and the wider environment shape the development of our brain and form the basis for learning.

Two short videos now. Firstly, please watch the following short video explaining these serve and return interactions:

Source: You Tube

These reciprocal interactions (serve and return) are not only important in early childhood development but continue to impact upon the development of our brain and our learning throughout our lives. These repeated interactions lead to changes in the brain through a process called Neuroplasticity. Neural pathways that are used repeatedly become stronger through reinforcement and neural pathways that are not used become weaker and potential disappear through a process called Pruning. Please watch the following video re Neuroplasticity:

Source: You Tube

The good news is that, although early childhood experiences are significant for our development, recent research demonstrates that Neuroplasticity continues throughout our lives. It is never too late for second chance learning. For all of us, no matter what age we are, we need repeated experiences to continue to develop and learn. As Karen Treisman stated in her TED Talk, “Our brains can be positively and negatively shaped, moulded and influenced. Relationships either strengthen the brain or weaken it.”

An additional challenge for children and young people who have experienced trauma is that they are likely to develop Blocked Trust. Blocked Trust is a term used by Psychologist Dan Hughes. He describes Blocked Trust as ‘when children block the pain of rejection and the capacity to delight in order to survive in a world without comfort and joy.’

Children and young people develop Blocked Trust due to the lack of good enough care and, in particular, the lack of relational buffering in response to stressful situations (both of which are far more likely under a prolonged period of stress in the family). It is a sad reality that children and young people who develop Blocked Trust continue to block interactions with adults who are able to provide this good enough care. As Dan Hughes observes in his work with adopted children and young people: Even when good care is readily available to these children in a new home, school and/or therapy they continue to mistrust and block reciprocal relational interactions.

When a child or young person has Blocked Trust he/she will:

• Mistrust the intention of other peoples’ behaviour towards him/her
• Block reciprocal interactions (serve and return) and, therefore, not allow others to have influence on him/her
• Try to be self-reliant
• Seek to control and manipulate the behaviours of others in order to get his/her needs met and to feel safe
• Not seek joy or comfort from relational connection and interactions
• Not learn social and emotional skills, as relational skills are learned in relationships
• Have a limited capacity to learn

Effectively children and young people who have experienced trauma build a defensive wall around themselves to protect them from further harm. Sadly, the wall that they build also blocks them from the relational interactions which are necessary for them to heal.

The picture above is an illustration from Adoptive Parent Ali Redford’s beautiful book The Boy Who Built a Wall Around Himself.

How do we support children and young people who have experienced trauma?

The good news is that research informs us that we can support children and young people to overcome Blocked Trust through the use of the PACE Approach. The PACE Approach will support children and young people to become open, once again, to the reciprocal interactions (serve and return) and, as a result, become open to influence from others.

The PACE Approach was developed by Psychologist Dan Hughes in his work with children and young people who are fostered or adopted. It requires some adaptation for us to use in education but we’re getting lots of experience of being adaptable at the moment.

PACE stands for an approach of Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy. It is described as an approach because it is a way of being with children and young people. We don’t take children off to do a 10 minute session of PACE. Instead we interact with children and young people in a way that is PACEful when the opportunities are there to do so. We also do not need to incorporate all of the elements of PACE into every interaction. However, the more PACEful interactions we are able to have with a child or young person the more trust we will build.

It is also worth noting at this point, that the PACE Approach works in building trusting relationships with anyone including friends, colleagues, partners and members of the families whom we support as well as with children and young people. We could all benefit from the connection that takes place through PACEful interactions especially at these extraordinary times.

The approach can be summarised as:

• Playfulness: Light, hopeful, open and spontaneous. Especially the non-verbal elements to communicate safety.
• Acceptance: Unconditionally directed at all of the experience of the other. Finding ways of demonstrating that s/he is worthwhile and wanted including correction being carried out while maintaining connection.
• Curiosity: Non-judgemental, not-knowing, active interest in the others’ experience. Curiosity leads to reflection and learning – solving problems collaboratively.
• Empathy: Felt sense of the other; actively experienced and communicated. When someone understands you it creates a strong connection.

Use of the PACE Approach rebuilds trust and supports a child or young person to take down the defensive wall that s/he built to protect herself/himself from further harm.

As Ali Redford writes in her book The Boy Who Built a Wall Around Himself, ‘Someone kind picked them up [the bricks from the wall the boy had built around himself] and turned them into bridges.’

And as Dan Hughes suggests, ‘We have to wear down children’s mistrust of us overtime by adopting a PACE Approach.’ Therefore, supporting the child or young person to move from mistrust to maybe and eventually to trust.

We need to provide PACEful interactions with children and young people that are NOT like this:

Source: You Tube

And are more like this:

Source: You Tube

Each of these videos shows serve and return interactions with young infants, however, PACEful interactions like the father and son on the sofa are important for all of us, at all ages, and are especially important for children and young people who have experienced trauma.

This is a good time for our next video which is from Psychologist Kim Golding who works closely with Dan Hughes. A couple of things about the video before you watch it: Firstly, it starts slowly but stick with it as it gets to some good stuff after the first few minutes. Secondly, Kim uses the term “DDP” which stands for Dyadic Developmental Practice – The PACE Approach is a key component of DDP.

Source: You Tube

“A way of being to help children form those connections, develop that security, that they need in their lives surrounding them.”

Just before I invite you to complete a self-review regarding your use of the PACE Approach I want to add a little bit more detail about empathy. Dan Hughes emphasises the importance of empathy as a key part of the PACE Approach. He states, ‘I can’t overstate the importance of empathy. Empathy is not just the start of our helping it is the most important and effective part of our help.’

One of many lessons that I have learned from Dan Hughes is to spend longer on the empathy element of my support with children and young people and not to rush on to either reassurance or problem solving too quickly.

The following video from Shame and Vulnerability Researcher Brene Brown provides a useful summary of the elements of empathy.

Source: You Tube

“Rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection.”

At this point I’d like to invite you to take the time to complete the self-review which can be found by clicking here. The self-review is intended to support reflection on your practice with regard to some of the key messages from this session. I hope that you will find the self-review to be both reassuring and to help identify action(s) to further develop your practice with children and young people who have experienced trauma.

In addition to the self-review, it is worth reflecting on the useful summary provided by Therapist and Trainer Louise Bomber regarding actions we can take to support children and young people who have experienced trauma which can be found here.

I’ll conclude this session with a series of summative quotes:

“Every relationship has the power to confirm or challenge everything that has gone before.”

Louise Bomber

“Every interaction is an intervention”

Karen Treisman

“it’s good to know that someone actually gives a s**t!”

A Young Person

Go out there and show that you give a s**t!

Build bridges and not walls.

Finally

I hope that this second session has been useful.  There will be a third session added to the website next week

The third session will focus on the importance of self-care and organisational care.

Thank you for the feedback from the first session. It has been very validating. One adjustment that I will make as a result of the feedback is to produce these sessions weekly and make them a bit shorter. I will, therefore, be publishing a new session on Tuesday every week. I’ll also endeavour to make the future sessions a bit shorter too, although those of you who know me will realise that this will be a significant challenge.

In the interim, I’d welcome any feedback, comments, questions or suggestions of other useful resources or future topics. Please email these to me at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com

1st May 2020

I’ll leave you with a final word from Dan Hughes at these extraordinary times:

Source: You Tube

Signposting (quite a few options this time)

• Dan Hughes has written many fabulous books. My personal favourite is the book he co-wrote with Jon Baylin entitled The Neurobiology of Attachment Focused Therapy (2016). But, honestly, any book by Dan is worth reading.

• There’s a great video by Dan Hughes relating to children who mistrust good care which is bit longer than those included within this session which can be found here.

• You can read Dan Hughes’ description of PACE on the DDP website which can be found here.

• The most accessible book specifically about PACE that I have found to date is by Kim Golding entitled Everyday Parenting with Security and Love (2017).

• Louise Bomber has additionally provided a great article entitled Guidelines for Supporting Pupils Who Have Experienced Significant Traumas and Losses which can be found here.

• Louise Bomber has also written a number of great books specifically focusing on what schools can do to support children and young people who have experienced trauma. In my opinion the best are Inside I’m Hurting (2007) and What About Me? (2011).

• Louise Bomber’s website also contains many useful resources touchbase.org.uk 

• At the time of posting this session each of Dan Hughes, Kim Golding and Louise Bomber are in the process of publishing new books with a specific focus on trauma informed approaches and interventions in education.

• If you would like to learn more about the advice from Bruce Perry on the 8 actions we can all take to shift our pattern of stress during the pandemic then click here.

• If you would like to know more about the neuroscience behind Bruce Perry’s advice then please watch his video which can be found here.

PACE+ Approach courses.

If you’d like to learn more from me (Ian) about evidence-based approaches and interventions to support children and young people who have experienced trauma, then sign up for a PACE+ course which I will be presenting online in the next academic year.

• • • The PACE+ Approach courses are 6 x 1.5hr sessions
    • There is an online course running in the Autumn term and another online course running in the Spring term
    • For more details and to book a place, visit our website www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/cpd-leadership/ click on the PACE+ Approach course you are interested in (as shown below).

• • • You can also find us search for us on Google: Sigma Teaching School
    • Follow us on twitter @ Sigma_TSA

Our Own Wellbeing: Self-Care and Organisational Care

Part three of understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma.

Introduction

This is the third session of a free staff CPD course re understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma. In the first two sessions we explored safety and trust (the two cornerstones of the foundation of supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma).

The other two sessions are available on by clicking on the tabs on the left of this page.

In this session we will turn our attention to the importance of our own wellbeing.

The aims are the same as for the other sessions in the course:

1. To provide an overview of the key messages from research regarding what works for children and young people who have experienced trauma.
2. Provide an opportunity to reflect on your own practice with regard to these key messages (reassurance and ideally identifying actions to further develop your practice)
3. Signposting to other information.

As with other sessions the approaches and interventions will be evidence-based. Mostly from the fields of psychology and neuroscience. Some of the evidence-based approaches and interventions informed by the research are deceptively simple. They are, however, also enormously powerful in their impact.

What we’ll cover in this session:

• Key messages from research about our own wellbeing that we already know but may not always do.
• Key messages from research that we may not already do but we definitely need to do.
• Getting through a difficult day.
• Organisational care.

Key messages from research about our own wellbeing that we already know but may not always do.

A meta-analysis of hundreds of research studies has identified the top 5 actions that we can take for our emotional wellbeing. In no particular order these are:

1. Connect
2. Give to others
3. Take notice
4. Keep learning
5. Be active

I’m not going to spend a long time on these as from my experience of working with a wide range of people we are already aware of these key messages. The exception to this is Mindfulness as part of the ‘Take Notice’ way to wellbeing. If you don’t already practise Mindfulness then I would encourage you to give it a go. The next session of this course will, therefore, focus on Mindfulness as a superpower.

If you would like to learn more about the five ways to wellbeing then please follow the link to the MIND website in the signposting section at the end of this article.

In addition, we need to be aware of the importance of self-care for our own emotional wellbeing. We need to recognise that self-care is not selfish, that we need to ‘put our own oxygen masks on first’ and that we ‘cannot pour from an empty vessel.’

The question I will invite you to consider before I move on is: Do we actually take each of these actions on a regular enough basis to get the benefits?

Key messages from research that we may not already do but we definitely need to do.

We need to remember that physiological states are contagious. If we are able to keep ourselves in our own open and engaged state then we will be able to positively shift the states of those around us towards being in their open and engaged states rather than defensive states of fight/flight or freeze/collapse (see the first session of the course for more detail on these physiological states).

The neuroscience research in the last decade has confirmed the wisdom in the following powerful quote from Psychologist and Teacher Haim Ginott ‘I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a student’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humour, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a student humanised or de-humanised.’

Source: www.bdperry.com/multimedia

Occupational Therapist Eadaoin Bhreathnach reminds us that ‘If you feel dysregulated the children will sense it and will also start to dysregulate, therefore, caring for children starts with getting ourselves in a place where we can care for ourselves.’

The five ways to wellbeing is a positive start to achieving this self-care, however, the evidence from research demonstrates that we need something more.

Our stress builds throughout the day and waiting until the evening or even the weekend or holidays to take self-care actions is good but is not enough. Eadaoin Bhreathnach teaches us that ‘We need to interrupt our stress pattern by interjecting regulating activities, little and often, throughout the day. Then we won’t become overwhelmed/distressed.’ Eadaoin refers to these as ‘Regulation Breaks.’

The following two graphs represent this. Each graph represents the time over a day on the x axis and the level of stress on the y axis. Self-care needs to include regular (brief) grounding, soothing and relating activities throughout the day (physiological regulation breaks).  When we use regulation breaks throughout the day then we can reduce the likelihood of becoming physiologically and emotionally overwhelmed.

Source: www.bdperry.com/multimedia

It is time now for our first video of this session. The following video from Psychiatrist and Neuroscientist Bruce Perry explains the impact of these regular physiological regulation breaks. I am aware that this is a neuroscience heavy video – in a good way. However, if you’re not in a place for a lesson in neuroscience, then please feel free to skip past the video.

Source: You Tube

“A dysregulated adult can never calm anyone.”

As summarised in the video research informs us that the most effective regulating activities are ‘bottom up’ activities to calm the lower areas of our brain (our Brainstem and Limbic System). These include:

• Calming breathing activities – for example 7-11 breathing (deep and even breathing in to the count of 7 and out to the count of 11)
• Somatosensory activities – physical and sensory activities to calm, sooth and ground our bodies and minds
• Social connection – relational regulation (e.g. a two minute check-in)

The good news is that these do not need to be long activities. Even two or three minutes of rhythmic use of these ‘bottom up’ regulating activities have a significant calming effect on our physiological state and help us to remain within our window of tolerance (in an open and engaged state).

Therapist and Trainer Louise Bomber recommends that we regularly “press our pause button” and use regulation breaks that are matched to our physiological state. Louise additionally provides the following useful list of regulation break activities that we could try:

The following sensory breaks (List A) are helpful to calm us from moving into a mobilised defensive state of fight/flight. Use regulation breaks that will enable us to slow down and become grounded. For example:

List A activities to calm us if we are feeling stressed, anxious or chaotic:

Slow and heavy movement: chair press ups, squats, balancing our body weight for as long as possible on monkey bars, resistance work e.g. pushing against a wall, the use of resistance bands, gardening – especially digging or carrying loads in wheelbarrow, moving/re-arranging classroom furniture, carrying books/equipment/trays

Diet: chewing something that takes a lot of effort – a whole apple, a whole carrot, a chewy snack bar, fruit tubes

Drinks: hot chocolate, tea, cuppa soup or thicker drinks through a straw

If you notice that you are becoming lethargic (moving towards our immobilised defensive state of freeze/collapse) Louise would recommend using regulation breaks that energise and activate you (see list B below). For example:

List B activities to energise us if we are feeling lethargic, low or dissociated:

Faster paced and lighter movement: running, star jumps, sit-ups, sliding, trampolining, balancing activities that require focus and attention,

Diet: eating an orange, sucking citrus flavoured sweets, sucking mints, fresh juice, ice pop

Drinks: drinking cold water, fresh lemon/lime/orange or sucking on an ice cube

Do remember to keep watching our physiological state as this will inform the type of intervention to use. Check how we are whilst engaging in a regulation break and most importantly how we are after a regulation break.

If you notice that you become hyperactive rather than calm (open and engaged) after these energising breaks (list B), then use List A instead in future sensory breaks.

Also remember that combining these breaks with calming breathing and social connection will maximise their impact.

To see the full article from Louise re emotional regulation please see link in the signposting section at the end of this session.

Let’s take the opportunity to practise a couple of these ‘bottom up’ regulating activities. Ideally, by trying out different activities as regulation breaks overtime, you will be able to work out which ones work best for you.

Louise Bomber has been providing weekly Sofa Time activities that we can try.  Watch the first of Louise’s weekly sessions.

Source: You Tube

Psychologist Karen Treisman has also provided a range of somatosensory activities that we can try.

Source: You Tube

For additional examples of regulating activities from Louise Bomber and Karen Treisman follow the links in the signposting section at the end of this article.

We need to intentionally build regular, brief, regulating activities (physiological regulation breaks) into our daily routines so that we use them proactively throughout the day.

In order to look after our wellbeing we also need to know about Blocked-Care. Blocked-Care is a physiological process in which our body responds to the pain of offering social connection that is repeatedly not reciprocated. When this rejection is repeated over a sustained period of time then our body responds to protect itself by suppressing five care giving systems in the brain i.e. our:

• Approach system – our seeking connection with the child.
• Reward system – our enjoying being with each other.
• Child ‘reading’ – our ability to accurately ‘read’ the child’s nonverbal communication.
• Meaning making – our ability to understand the communication behind the child’s behaviour.
• Executive system – which integrates past experiences and knowledge with present experiences.

Psychologist Dan Hughes describes this as ‘Suppression of caring being triggered in the adult.’ The adult continues to do their job but their heart isn’t in it.

When we are working with children and young people to wear down their Blocked-Trust overtime through the use of PACEful interactions (see session two of this course) then we need to redouble our self-care actions in order to avoid Blocked-Care.

Psychologist Kim Golding reminds us that ‘It is only through self-care that we can build emotional resilience and enhance our ability to move out of defensive responding.’ Kim has identified the most effective actions that we can take to avoid Blocked-Care:

• Taking care of our physical health
• Focusing on one thing at a time
• Down time
• Connecting socially
• Getting enough sleep
• Play / having fun
• Developing our own capacity for reflection and regulation

Reassuringly we have covered the majority of these actions in this session already, however, it would be timely to consider actions to develop our own capacity for reflection.

Kim Golding encourages us to use mind-minded reflection.

Courtesy of Kim Golding

The following video from The Circle of Security encourages us to be aware of our own ‘shark music’ as part of this reflective process. The video is aimed at parents, however, the content is relevant to anyone working with children and young people.

Source: You Tube

We need to take time to reflect in order to understand accurately what is happening in the relationship rather than reacting to the shark music that we are bringing to the relationship.

Psychiatrist Dan Siegel describes this as reflection on our ‘I map’, ‘you map’ and ‘we map’ and suggests that we reflect in that order. Reflecting upon what is happening for us, the other person and together at each of the following levels (starting from the bottom up):

Image Courtesy of Complete Coherence

The iceberg image above is from Complete Coherence. Please see the signposting section at the end of this article for information on a great App from Complete Coherence which supports reflection upon our emotions. Remember that curiosity leads to self-awareness and self-awareness leads to self-control.

To quote Charlie Mackesy (from his beautiful book The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse), ‘Isn’t it odd we can only see our outsides, but nearly everything happens on the inside.’ We need to be curious about the stuff on our insides and its impact on the stuff on our outsides.

Getting through a difficult day

Sometimes, whatever actions we usually take for our self-care, we simply need to get through a difficult day. On these occasions it is helpful to go back to the basics:

• Meet your basic needs including sleep, activity, food and social contact.
• Pause for some self-care, take a moment for a calming breath and get some perspective.
• Temptation bundle – bundle tough tasks with something you enjoy afterwards.
• Prioritise and reschedule.

Going back to basics sounds simple, however, when we are caught up in the events of a stressful time then these are often the very actions we neglect or feel least like making the time for.

Please watch the following video for a summary of the actions we can take to get through a difficult day.

Source: You Tube

Other noteworthy self-care actions

Prior to inviting you to complete the self-review re self-care I’d like to make reference to a number of other evidence-based actions that we haven’t yet mentioned and which also positively impact upon our wellbeing:

• Connect with nature (by going outside or connecting with your pet)
• Be creative
• Play – have fun, do things you enjoy and that make you laugh
• Sing
• Dance
• Play a musical instrument
• Do some yoga
• Have some ‘me time’ with distracting activities that you enjoy
• Be grateful – remind yourself of the things in your life that mean the most to you and the things that you are grateful for
• Avoid unhealthy habits – don’t rely on alcohol, smoking or caffeine as ways of coping
• Take a break from the stressors but don’t avoid them completely
• Saying no to taking on too much work
• Reflect or talk it through with someone you trust and make a plan (Other-Care)

Support from others is necessary for all of us. Be clear about what help you need and ask for it. I’ll return to this in a moment when we reflect on organisational care.

It is also important to remember that not all stress is bad for you. The research demonstrates that stress that is moderate, predictable and controllable actually builds our resilience. This is especially true when this moderate stress is combined with relational support. Emotional wellbeing is not about removing all stress from our lives. Stress can help to inform us about the things we feel passionate about. Having things that we feel passionate about in our lives helps to give us purpose. ‘Good stress’ can motivate us towards productive actions. ‘Good stress’ is a very personal thing and is a combination of the situation and our mindset.

Before we move onto organisational care I’d like to invite you to complete the Self-Care self-review which you can find here. The self-review is intended to provide both reassurance for the actions you already have in place and potentially support you to identify additional actions for further improvement.

Organisational care

As Bruce Perry stated in the earlier video, “The bottom line is that if we don’t create organisational practices that facilitate the regulation of our front line workers then we will never be able to create a workplace that will consistently meet the needs of the families and children that we are asking them to serve.”

We need to create organisational practices that are trauma reducing rather than trauma inducing for the staff as well as for the children and young people. A key foundation to this is how we interact with our colleagues.

Please watch the following video from Karen Treisman to remind us of the importance of PACEful interactions (Playful, Accepting, Curious and Empathic) with our colleagues as well as with the children and young people (see session 2 of this course for more details).

Source: You Tube

“The micro moments can make a difference. Every moment or interaction can be trauma reducing or trauma inducing. Every interaction is an intervention.”

We need to care for ourselves and each other even more than ever at this extraordinary time.

An important part of planning for the re-opening of schools at this time will be to ensure that the staff team have the opportunity to come back together and re-establish ourselves as the secure base that the children and young people are going to need us to be.

In the following video Karen discusses the importance of how organisations make people feel during this time; and how the values of trauma-informed practice need to be embedded and modelled; and our staff wellbeing needs to be at the forefront.

Source: You Tube

“This is an opportunity to really support people to feel treasured, noticed, held and contained.”

Karen has also provided a useful summary of the defensive ways of operating that organisations can shift towards at times of stress. It is useful to be aware of these and, if they occur, to explore what this is about and plan actions to return to a more relational way of working. Karen’s summary of these organisational defences can be found here and there is a link to a video of Karen explaining these in the signposting section at the end of this article.

At this point I would like to invite you to complete the self-review document re organisational care which you can access by clicking here. As you will see I have attempted to summarise the evidence-informed actions we can take for organisational care and have structured these using the framework of the five ways to wellbeing. Once again the self-review is intended to provide both reassurance for the actions you already have in place and potentially support you to identify additional actions for further improvement.

If you would like to read more about trauma informed organisations then I’d recommend reading Karen Treisman’s more detailed (and, therefore, longer) article by clicking here.

Finally

One further quote from Karen Treisman, ‘To address relational trauma we need relational repair. Our ability to make healthy relationships, even amongst complex and sometimes hostile contexts, is one of our greatest tools. Therefore, self-care and stress management is paramount to enabling this relational process.’

We must take intentional actions to attend to our needs and the needs of our colleagues if we are to be able to meet the needs of the children and young people in our care.

I hope that this has been useful.  There will be more sessions of this course added to the website every Tuesday at http://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/. The next session will continue to explore self-care with a focus on the superpower of Mindfulness. In the interim, I’d welcome any feedback, comments, questions or suggestions of other useful resources or topics for future sessions. Please email these to me at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com

11th May 2020.

I’ll leave you with some wise words form one of the funniest people on the planet, Tim Minchin, entitled 9 life lessons.

Source: You Tube

“Be an amazing teacher. Even if you’re not a teacher. Be a teacher.

Rejoice in what you learn and spray it.”

Signposting

• Karen Treisman’s website is safehandsandthinkingminds.co.uk and includes lots of useful resources and links including additional videos of regulating activities in the Covid19 section
• Karen Treisman’s video explaining defensive organisational ways of being can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaRwY7qzEyw&feature=youtu.be   
• Karen Treisman has developed a fabulous resource which can be used by adults as well as with children and young people: A therapeutic treasure deck of grounding, soothing, coping and regulating cards and is available for purchase on Amazon (other retail organisations are available too, who knew!)
• Louise Bomber’s website is touchbase.org.uk and also includes lots of useful resources and links including additional videos of Sofa Time sessions with regulating activities in the Youtube channel of the ‘useful’ section
• The article from Louise Bomber re regulation breaks, which I made specific refence to in the session above, can be found at touchbase.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/7-Regulation-in-school-for-troubled-pupils.pdf 
• Further detail re the five ways to wellbeing is available at www.mind.org.uk/information-support/tips-for-everyday-living/wellbeing/wellbeing
• Action for Happiness have a website that is full of practical advice re emotional wellbeing and mental health including monthly action calendars. See actionforhappiness.org 
• The App from Complete Coherence which I made reference to as a useful tool for self-reflection is called Universe of Emotions.
• If you’d like more from Bruce Perry then you might like to read the following paper on secondary traumatic stress vtt.ovc.ojp.gov/ojpasset/Documents/STS_Impact_On_Child_Advocates-508.pdf or watch the other videos in Bruce’s neuroscience and Covid-19 series at www.neurosequential.com/covid-19-resources

PACE+ Approach courses.

If you’d like to learn more from me (Ian) about evidence-based approaches and interventions to support children and young people who have experienced trauma, then sign up for a PACE+ course which I will be presenting online in the next academic year.

• • • The PACE+ Approach courses are 6 x 1.5hr sessions
    • There is an online course running in the Autumn term and another online course running in the Spring term
    • For more details and to book a place, visit our website www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/cpd-leadership/ click on the PACE+ Approach course you are interested in (as shown below).

• • • You can also find us search for us on Google: Sigma Teaching School
    • Follow us on twitter @ Sigma_TSA

Our Own Wellbeing Part 2: Mindfulness is a Superpower

Part four of understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma

Introduction

This is the fourth session of a free online staff CPD course re understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma. The previous sessions can be found on the tabs on the left side of this website page. Subsequent sessions will be added to the Sigma Teaching School website every Tuesday. I hope that you will find them useful.

This session is the second part of our review of the importance of our own wellbeing and will focus on Mindfulness.

The aims remain the same as for the other sessions in the course:

1. To provide an overview of the key messages from research regarding what works for children and young people who have experienced trauma.
2. Provide an opportunity to reflect on your own practice with regard to these key messages (reassurance and ideally identifying actions to further develop your practice).
3. Signposting to other information.

As with other sessions the approaches and interventions will be evidence-based. Mostly from the fields of psychology and neuroscience. Some of the evidence-based approaches and interventions informed by the research are deceptively simple. They are, however, also enormously powerful in their impact.

What we’ll cover in this session:

• What is Mindfulness?
• Why should you give Mindfulness a go?
• Let’s do some Mindfulness.

The main focus of this session will be trying out some Mindful activities, after all, if we are to achieve the benefits of Mindfulness then we need to do it.

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the quality of being fully present and engaged with whatever we are doing at that moment – free from distraction or judgement and aware of our thoughts and feelings without getting caught up in them.

The skill of Mindfulness allows us to step back and be in the present moment in any situation. It doesn’t eliminate stress or other difficulties; instead, by becoming more aware of our thoughts and emotions, we have more choice of how to handle them and a better chance of reacting calmly and empathetically.

Meditation allows us to build the skill of Mindfulness so that we can then apply it to our everyday life. It involves taking a few minutes a day to practise some Mindful activities and is often described as making time for a workout for our mind.

Psychologist Daniel Goleman describes Mindfulness meditation as a method of ‘Training for your brain. Training your attention so that you can bring it to where you want and keep it where you want.’

Andy Puddicombe (the Co-founder of Headspace) writes, ‘Meditation is the training ground for learning Mindfulness. At first, we meditate to become familiar with the here and now for a limited period of time. Over time, however, regularly practicing Mindfulness helps to develop the ability to be present throughout the day, every day.’

Why should you give Mindfulness a go?

The answer to the question of why we should give Mindfulness a go is simple: It works!

Research demonstrates that practising Mindfulness regularly, even for a few weeks, is demonstrated to:

1. Reduce mind wandering – increase our ability to focus and improve our working memory.
2. Increase calmness – reduce our reaction to stress.
3. Increase resilience – increase the speed at which we recover from adversity.

In addition, becoming more aware of the present moment can help us enjoy the world around us more and understand ourselves better. People who regularly meditate rate themselves as happier and as having more fulfilling relationships.

The good news is that these benefits occur even after a few weeks of practising Mindful activity regularly and that these benefits extend into every aspect of our lives.

The research also demonstrates that the more we practise Mindfulness the greater the benefit. It can be the difference between being mind full or Mindful (pun intended).

It’s all about our Uncinate Fasciculus (but you already knew that). In session two of this course I introduced the concept of Neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is how the brain develops through the repeated use of neural pathways. The neural pathways that are repeatedly used become stronger while the pathways that are rarely used become weaker or disappear completely through a process called pruning. Mindfulness practice strengthens the connections in the brain between the emotional centre (Amygdala) and the rational decision making part of the brain (the Prefrontal Cortex) i.e. The Uncinate Fasciculus. Strengthening the connection between these areas of the brain gives us greater emotional awareness and impulse control.

Source: By Sobotta

If you would like to know more about the science behind Mindfulness then please see the links in the signposting section at the end of this article.

Despite the proven benefits many people are still wary of the term meditation. So before we continue it might be helpful to dispel some myths:

• Meditation is not a religion. It is simply a method of mental training.
• You don’t have to sit cross legged on the floor, wear a special uniform or listen to whale music. You can mediate anywhere and at any time.
• It will not deaden the mind or trick you into a false Pollyanna attitude to life. It is about learning to see the world with greater clarity so that you can take wiser and more considered action to change those things which need to be changed.

It is time to watch our first video of this session.

Source: You Tube

“Mindfulness is a superpower and one that is accessible by you.”

Let’s do some Mindfulness

Who couldn’t benefit from reduced mind wandering, increased calmness and increased resilience?

As I said in the introduction: in order to achieve the benefits of Mindfulness then we need to do it. Let’s get started.

Time for our second video.

Source: You Tube

If you’re not convinced to give Mindfulness a try by the video with the cartoon rodent in a lab coat then that’s all I’ve got.

In this section I am going to invite you to have a go at a few of Mindful activities and, in doing so, introduce you to some of the foundation techniques involved in Mindful activity.

The last video started to introduce the technique of focusing attention in meditation. This doesn’t have to involve focusing on the breath, however, it is a useful place to start to learn this technique. Not least because we have always got our breath with us as an anchor for our mind to return our focus to and maintain awareness. When you notice your mind wandering then simply return your focus to your breath.

This is different from the breathing exercises that I shared in previous sessions of this course as physiological regulation breaks. In focused attention meditation we are not attempting to change our breathing instead we are using our breath as a focus and simply accepting it as it is. Often you will find, however, that working with the mind in meditation the breath actually starts to slow down as part of the release of tension in our body.

You may find that adding an additional element to the focusing attention such as silently counting the breaths (1 on the in-breath and 2 on the out-breath up to 10 and then returning again to 1) or simply silently thinking ‘in’ and ‘out’ with the breaths will help you to increase your attention and achieve the right balance of focus alongside relaxation.

The following meditation is Andy Puddicombe’s first session on the Headspace basics programme (see signposting section below to access all 20 meditations ‘basics’ for free as part of the ‘weathering the storm’ section of Andy’s website and App). It is time to do our first meditation. Please follow the instructions in the following meditation.

Source: You Tube

So how was it? Maybe that was your first time meditating. Maybe you’ve been meditating for years. Either way pausing at the end in order to reflect on how it was for you is important. It is helpful to approach meditation with what is known as a beginners’ mind (as described in the following short video).

Source: You Tube

It is also important to remember that meditation is not about trying to change our thinking.

Source: You Tube

“Training our mind is about changing our relationship with the passing thoughts and feelings. Learning how to view them with a little more perspective. And when we do this we naturally find a place of calm.”

A second foundation technique is the body scan. Often our body is the doing one thing while our mind is elsewhere. The body scan technique (which was briefly touched upon in the first meditation) helps to sync the body and mind by performing a mental scan from the top of your head to the bottom of your toes. Imagine a photocopier light slowly moving over your body, bringing attention to any sensations, discomfort, tensions or aches that exist. Again, you are not trying to change these sensations in anyway. You are simply focusing your attention on being aware of the sensations in your body.

Source: You Tube

Sometimes when we are in a busy state of mind then a slow scan can be difficult to achieve. In this situation you can use multiple body scans. Allow your mind to complete the scan of your body more quickly and then simply begin the scan again and this time attempt to slow down the pace of your scan.

Time for our second meditation. This one comes from the Mark Williams and Danny Penman’s book Mindfulness: A practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world (see signposting section below for more details). Please follow the instructions in the following meditation.

Source: You Tube

A third foundation technique in Mindfulness meditation is visualisation. This type of meditation invites you to picture something or someone in your mind. Essentially this is a focusing attention meditation which replaces the focus on the breath with the mental image as the object.

Source: You Tube

A fourth foundation technique is noting. This technique involves mentally noting what is distracting the mind. We simply note the thought or feeling that arises without judgement and then let it go (without needing to “turn away and slam the door!” – If you have to google that reference then you haven’t got young children). Having noted the thought or feeling then return to the focus of our attention (e.g. the breath or our visualisation). Noting helps us to become more self-aware by learning more about our thought patterns, tendencies and conditioning.

Source: You Tube

Meditation can also focus on the happiness of others. In this ‘loving kindness’ form of meditation we direct goodwill to ourselves, then to others whilst paying attention to the sensations arising from the heart.

Source: You Tube

If you would like to complete a loving kindness meditation then see the second link in the signposting section below entitled Andy Puddicombe re back to basics with Mindfulness meditations at this challenging time.

Mindful activity can also take a variety of forms e.g. You can take a Mindful walk

Source: You Tube

Mindful activities could simply involve pausing for a moment from time to time and taking the time to notice your surroundings. These experiences involve us fully focusing on the present moment to take in the detail. This only needs to be for a brief moment and can be enhanced by focusing on one of our senses at a time (e.g. closing your eyes, taking a few deep breaths and naming five separate sounds that you can hear).

A number of techniques can be combined in a single meditation e.g. the following meditation taking 10 minutes to ‘decompress’ your body and ‘reset’ your mind:

Source: You Tube

Meditations don’t have to be lengthy. To get the benefit, however, you do need to commit to practising Mindfulness activities on a fairly regular basis (ideally for a few minutes on most days). However, even taking a minute to meditate on the breath at some point in the day will be beneficial. Here is a short mediation focusing on the breath.

Source: You Tube

And a 3 minute breathing space.

Source: You Tube

As with any skill we will get better at Mindful meditation the more we practise. One aspect that we will need to train our brains to be able to do overtime is letting go of effort in meditation.

Source: You Tube

And to practise Mindfulness with a sense of playfulness and curiosity.

Source: You Tube

And remember it is all about regular consistent practise. Be more elephant.

Source: You Tube

Finally

Getting started:

• Commit to a short mindful activity each day – a few minutes regularly (even a couple of minutes a day) is more effective than a longer session less frequently.
• Build it into your routine – you are twice as likely to follow up on your plan if commit to a specific time and place when you will carry out your action each day.
• Decide if guided or non-guided (DIY) is best for you – perhaps try both and see which activities work best for you (see the signposting section below for some places to find guided meditations).
• Decide when you will review how this is working for you – reviewing whether you’ve been able to keep to your plan, whether it is making a difference and which aspects are working best for you. In particular, reviewing which aspects of your Mindfulness practice are most frequently cultivating the core elements of calm and clarity.
• If you get this right then it should be a part of your routine that you look forward to rather than another chore that you feel guilty about when you don’t do.
• Initially you should feel the benefit of taking time to pause to find a relaxed and focused space within your day.
• Overtime, you should start to feel the benefits throughout your day.

If you’re not sure where to start then I’d suggest trying the free sessions available from Headspace (see the links to the website in the signposting section below or download the App). Headspace are currently providing thirty free ten minute meditations in a section called ‘Weathering the storm.’

If you’re not sure if meditation is for you then I’d suggest that you watch the following video:

Source: You Tube

An ancient Japanese quote to end on, ‘You should meditate for 20 minutes a day, unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.’

Remember ‘Mindfulness is a superpower and one that is accessible by you.’

I hope that you found this useful. Please let me know how you get on or email me with other feedback, questions or suggestions at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com. There will be more sessions of this course added to the website every Tuesday at http://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/. The next session will explore the issue of managing transitions in relation to children and young people who have experienced trauma.

18th May 2020

I’ll leave you to choose between which of the following two videos you would prefer to end with. I’d suggest that you choose the first video if you are more likely to be motivated to commit to trying Mindfulness by listening to the science behind it and the second if you are more likely to be motivated by watching Andy Puddicombe use juggling as a metaphor for learning to be Mindful.

Does Mindfulness really work? by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson:

Source: You Tube

Or All it takes is 10 Mindful minutes (TED Talk) by Andy Puddicombe:

Source: You Tube

Signposting

Guided meditations:

• Andy Puddicombe’s Headspace App or website ( headspace.com ) includes thirty free 10-minute guided mediations in the ‘Weathering the storm section.’
• Andy Puddicombe re back to basics with Mindfulness meditations at this challenging time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6DXnEMFPAo

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yoa_1y0KwU

• Sam Harris’ Waking Up App includes five free guided meditations including this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw7XBKhZJh4

• Danny Penman’s website includes a number of free guided meditations including a chocolate meditation (really, I’m not kidding, what’s not to love)

http://franticworld.com/free-meditations-from-mindfulness/

• Danny Penman and Mark Williams’ book: Mindfulness a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world includes guided meditations as part of a structured course.

The science:

• Daniel Goleman talks about the science of Mindfulness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKF8NE42RZ0
• Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson’s book Altered Traits includes a meta-analysis of Mindfulness research

Some additional hints and tips re Mindfulness from Ask Andy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFhg4ftvZrU

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQLuiwzr0_c

If you missed the element of a self-review from this session then The Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) may be of interest to you https://positivepsychology.com/mindful-attention-awareness-scale-maas/

If you really did want some whale music https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7o6dt

PACE+ Approach courses.

If you’d like to learn more from me (Ian) about evidence-based approaches and interventions to support children and young people who have experienced trauma, then sign up for a PACE+ course which I will be presenting online in the next academic year.

• The PACE+ Approach courses are 6 x 1.5hr sessions
• There is an online course running in the Autumn term and another online course running in the Spring term
• For more details and to book a place, visit our website www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/cpd-leadership/ click on the PACE+ Approach course you are interested in (as shown below).

• You can also find us search for us on Google: Sigma Teaching School
• Follow us on twitter @ Sigma_TSA

‘Reopening’ Schools: Five key trauma-informed considerations re managing transitions for everyone’s wellbeing

Part five of understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma.

Introduction

The focus of this session will be managing transitions. At the time of publishing, schools are in the process of planning for ‘reopening’ as part of the next phase of the response to the pandemic. Although in reality, schools have not closed and have adapted to provide remote education and welfare support alongside being fully open for children and young people where this is appropriate. None the less, the ‘reopening’ phase will involve significant transitions for many children and young people as well as for school staff. We are living through a period of time when significant transitions will be frequent. It therefore appears timely to consider what the evidence base can tell us about supporting effective transitions for children and young people who have experienced trauma.

As with the other sessions in this course the aims are:

1. To provide an overview of the key messages from research regarding what works for children and young people who have experienced trauma.
2. Provide an opportunity to reflect on your own practice with regard to these key messages (reassurance and ideally identifying actions to further develop your practice).
3. Signposting to other information.

And once again, as with other sessions, the approaches and interventions will be evidence-based; mostly from the fields of psychology and neuroscience. Some of the evidence-based approaches and interventions informed by the research are deceptively simple. They are, however, also enormously powerful in their impact.

What we’ll cover in this session:

• Transitions are stressors for all of us.
• Increased vulnerability to transitions of children and young people who have experienced trauma.
• What we can do to manage transitions: The five-key trauma-informed considerations for everyone’s wellbeing.
• Keeping a check on our confirmation bias.

I hope that you will find it useful.

Transitions are stressors for all of us

Every transition activates a physiological stress response in each of us. These stress responses can be mild and brief or more severe and longer lasting.

For the majority of us and for the majority of the time, these transitions do not push us out of our window of tolerance. We are able to remain in an open and engaged physiological state and, as a result, we can continue to access all of the problem-solving areas of our brain to self-manage the transition.

As discussed in more detail in session one of this course (The transformative power of feeling safe): If the stress (in this case the transition) triggers a physiological response which pushes us outside of our window of tolerance then we will move from being an open and engaged state to either a fight/flight or freeze/collapse state.

If we are triggered into a fight/flight (defensive mobilisation) state then a number of significant changes occur in our body:

• Our heart rate increases, our breathing increases and we become more active.
• The primitive areas of our brain associated with survival (the brainstem and the limbic system) take over and the areas of our brain which are capable of more complex thinking and reasoning (the cortex) effectively go offline.
• Our face muscles tighten leading to flat facial expression and a monotone tone of voice.
• Our inner ear muscles tighten leading to greater difficulty hearing mid-tone frequency sounds (including the human voice).
• We become hyper-vigilant to threat and our bias to perceive danger increases leading to more miscuing of interactions as unsafe/threatening. As a result, we are not only more likely to perceive other peoples’ actions as threatening but we are also more likely to misinterpret the intentions/motives behind their behaviours as negative towards us.
• Our digestive system function decreases as does our immune system function.
• We feel anxious, angry, panic, fear and/or irritable.
• As a result of feeling unsafe we try to take control of the environment and the people around us.

And if we are triggered into a freeze/collapse (defensive immobilisation) state then a number of significant changes occur in our body:

• Our heart rate decreases, our breathing becomes very shallow and we become inactive potentially to the point of collapse (‘playing dead’).
• We become dissociated (cutting off from the real world), entering our own world, and appear distant and less responsive to others.
• We lose muscle tone throughout our body (becoming floppy) including in our facial muscles (flat facial expression and monotone voice).
• Our pain threshold increases and we feel numb.
• Our digestive system function decreases as does our immune system function.
• We feel helpless, shut down, depressed, withdrawn, trapped, energy-less and/or hopeless.
• Again, as a result of feeling unsafe, we try to take control of the environment and the people around us.

In either the fight/flight or freeze/collapse state we will not be able to learn due to the key areas of the brain effectively being offline until we are able to return to our open and engaged state.

How we manage transitions can impact significantly on the level of stress response for each individual.

We are not all going to be pushed outside of our window of tolerance, however, we are all likely to feel a bit like this:

And that is likely to be communicated in our behaviour:

The good news is that there are evidence-based actions that we can take to make a difference. We will consider these in a moment but first let’s remind ourselves of the increased vulnerability for some children and young people.

Increased vulnerability to transitions of children and young people who have experienced trauma

Everyone will have been impacted by the extraordinary times that we are currently living through. Therapist and Teacher Louise Bomber has described the pandemic as ‘collective trauma.’ Each of us will have been affected by the pandemic. I am not suggesting that everyone will be traumatised by the current extraordinary situation. We will all be impacted to different degrees. However, as with many necessary approaches to meet the needs of pupils with SEND, these are also good practice for all children and young people. As we consider the actions that we can take to be trauma reducing rather than trauma inducing we also need to remember that there will not be a one size fits all solution. The interventions in this article are trauma informed and will benefit in reducing the potential negative impact of the pandemic for everyone. In addition, we will need to assess the needs for those of us who have been impacted the most and further differentiate our support.

Source: You Tube

“We’re all in the same storm, but we’re in different boats.”

Each of us will be at a different starting point and we will need to adapt our responses to meet different individual needs. There are, however, clear messages from research regarding the approaches that are most likely to be effective for us to be able to weather and recover from the storm together.

One of the impacts of experiencing trauma is that we are likely to have a developed a narrower window of tolerance and a sensitised stress response. Whenever any of us is under stress our window of tolerance narrows and our stress response (alarm system for threat) becomes more sensitised. Under a sustained period of stress (especially if the stress is severe, unpredictable and/or uncontrollable) then the narrowing of our window of tolerance and sensitised stress response are likely to be longer lasting. This combination makes each of us more likely to have a more a severe and longer lasting physiological stress response to transitions. Even a relatively small transition could trigger a physiological stress response into a state of fight/flight or freeze/collapse.

The good news is that there are evidence-based actions that we can take to make a difference.

What we can do to manage transitions: The five key trauma-informed considerations for everyone’s wellbeing

In the earlier sessions of this course we have already considered a number of the effective actions that we can take to support children and young people who have experienced trauma. In this next section I will both remind you of some of the actions that we need to take even more than ever at this challenging time and add to these with a specific focus on the research regarding transitions.

The evidence-base suggests that there are five-key areas for action that we need to consider in order to manage transitions. We need to:

1. Focus on trust and safety in addition to learning
2. Stagger reintegration in bite-sized chunks
3. Use 3-part transitions
4. Manage transitions for staff as well
5. Build on the positives and acknowledge the challenges

I will explore each of these in turn.

Key consideration number 1: Focus on trust and safety in additional to learning.

Our children and young people will need us to focus on relationships and, in particular, the relational aspects of rebuilding trust and supporting them to feel safe. This is not a choice between focusing on these aspects or focusing on learning. Neuroscience research informs us that without trust and feelings of safety we will not be able to learn.

The research from Neuroscientist Stephen Porges informs us that felt safety is more strongly influenced by cues of safety from meaningful, genuine and familiar relational connection than simply the absence of threat. We need to intentionally provide over-compensatory cues of safety to the children and young people through our interactions. As you may remember from the first session of this course the safety cues communicated through the non-verbal elements of our interactions are enormously powerful. We need to:

• Smile, smile, smile rather than flat facial expression.
• Use a storytelling voice with prosody rather that monotone.
• Intentionally facilitate connection through interactions.

It is important that we continue to focus our efforts on maintaining a regular relational connection as well as academic learning. Neuroscientist Stephen Porges expresses this eloquently in this video.

In addition, you may remember from the second session of this course that rebuilding trust can be effectively achieved through repeated PACEful interactions. The work of Psychiatrist Dan Hughes informs us that we can build trust through interactions which include the elements of Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy. We need to intentionally facilitate connections through interactions which include:

• Playfulness: Light, hopeful, open and spontaneous. Especially the non-verbal elements to communicate safety.
• Acceptance: Unconditionally directed at all of the experience of the other. Finding ways of demonstrating that s/he is worthwhile and wanted including correction being carried out while maintaining connection.
• Curiosity: Non-judgemental, not-knowing, active interest in the others’ experience. Curiosity leads to reflection and learning – solving problems collaboratively.
• Empathy: Felt sense of the other; actively experienced and communicated. When someone understands you it creates a strong connection.

Therapist and Teacher Louise Bomber suggests that we provide over compensatory care in order to re-settle children and young people to learn. The following table is a summary form Louise as to what children and young people who have experienced trauma need and do not need from us.

For more details see Louise Bomber’s summary of Guidelines for Supporting Pupils who have Experienced Significant Relational Traumas and Losses (link in the signposting section at the end of this article).

Louise encourages us to create quality moments when we press pause and check-in with the children and young people. Time in which we are curious about them and what is happening with them.

We need to rebuild individual connections first to then re-establish a sense of belonging and community. We will also need to repair relationships where there are difficulties (more on this in the next session of this course).

Interactions which include elements of PACE will rebuild these individual connections. We need to remember that as Psychologist Karen Treisman reminds us ‘Every interaction is an intervention.’

Psychiatrist Dan Siegel describes this as making deposits into the child or young person’s ‘relational trust fund.’

Although the individual connections between staff and children and young people may need to look like the picture below initially we can still focus on building trust and increasing felt safety through PACEful interactions.

The research demonstrates that the most significant buffer to stress is relational support (building trust and felt safety) and that beginnings and endings are especially significant. We need to support children and young people to return to the care of the staff whom they already have established a trusting relationship with whenever this is possible. We will also need to find ways of maintaining relationships with Key Adults as far as possible. Demonstrating to children and young people that they have been ‘kept in mind’ and are that these relationships will continue. Where these Key Adult relationships need to end (including in Yr6 and Yr11) then we need to manage a handover and provide follow up contact from the previous Key Adult(s).

The good news is that over time repeated experiences of predictable, moderate and controllable stress with relational buffering returns a sensitised stress response to a neurotypical response.

Inner World Work (see signposting at the end of this article for a link to their website) remind us that from the perspective of a child or young person who has experienced trauma, “Spending just a small amount of time making me feel safe, will activate the calm part of my brain and you will get the best from me. I will probably need you to do this a few times throughout the task and /or day. However, the more my brain knows how to stay calm, the less likely I will go into survival mode and you will be able to teach me. Thank you for helping me every day to feel safe and to make life changing differences to my brain.”

Key consideration number 2: Stagger reintegration in bite sized chunks

All children and young people will need time to reconnect, regroup and re-orientate themselves with the school environment. Louise Bomber recommends keeping as much of the school environment the same for children and young people when they return as it was when they left. This will clearly be affected by the requirements for social distancing, however, the principle of minimising changes, is important. In order to minimise changes we need to break big transitions into a series of smaller transitional steps whenever we can.

The research from neuroscience informs us that stress which is predictable, moderate and controllable helps to build resilience. Whereas stress which is unpredictable, extreme and prolonged leads to vulnerability. We need to do everything that we can to keep the stress as predictable, moderate and controllable as we can. A number of actions can help to achieve this:

• Clear structure to the day
• Increase the regularity and clarity of communication of changes and also what is remaining the same (e.g. visual timetables)
• Minimise the pace of further changes as far as possible
• Calendars of key dates including any significant changes
• Managing each transition within the day including the use of physiological regulation breaks (see 3 part transitions below)
• Have fun – playfulness is a very effective way of reducing defensiveness
• Consider the cognitive demand of tasks – our stretch zone for learning is likely to be narrower too and we will feel overwhelmed more easily.
• Maintain connection with key staff – even though we may need to be creative in how we do this due to social distancing measures.

Source: Bruce D Perry

In the following video Psychiatrist and Neuroscientist Bruce Perry discusses ‘dosing and spacing’ the introduction of further change, including new curriculum content, in order to build children and young people’s resilience. The neuroscience is clear that at this time of increased stress we will need to reduce the quantity and frequency of new information.

Source: You Tube

Key consideration number 3: Use 3-part transitions

Bruce Perry emphasises the importance of managing transitions throughout the day in order to help children and young people to build their resilience rather than overwhelm them. Bruce proposes that an effective way of doing this is to break a transition between two activities into 3 phases:

1. Pre-transition phase
   • Countdowns to the transition
   • Verbal and/or visual markers alongside the countdown
   • Calm and clear instructions of what the change will be pre the transition.
2. Transition phase
   • Opportunity to build in a physiological regulation activity using physical movement. For example, for younger children repeating rhyming stories with actions (a favourite amongst children in my Yr1 class was We’re going on a bear hunt). Inner World Work suggest a number of activities that can be used as physiological regulation activities you can find these suggestions here. For older children clapping/drumming rhythms, dancing to music, yoga positions or similar rhythmic physical activity work well (you’ll find what works for you and your pupils).
   • Calm and clear instructions throughout the transition.
3. Post-transition phase
   • Settling routines and rituals to settle to learn
   • Deep breathing exercises
   • Verbal and visual markers alongside the re-settling
   • Calm and clear instructions to reinforce the re-settling to learn
   • Follow up with brief relational check-ins

The following video from Bruce Perry includes an explanation of the neuroscience behind these 3-part transitions. The first 7 minutes for the video are a reminder of the concepts from his last video. If you don’t need the reminder then you can skip to 7 minutes into the video.

Source: You Tube

The transitions between activities can become an opportunity to include brief physiological regulation breaks for pupils and staff throughout the day.

As discussed in session 3 of this course (Our Own Wellbeing: Self-Care and Organisational Care) research informs us that the most effective regulating activities are ‘bottom up’ activities to calm the lower areas of our brain (our Brainstem and Limbic System). These include:

• Calming breathing activities – for example 7-11 breathing (deep and even breathing in to the count of 7 and out to the count of 11)
• Somatosensory activities – physical and sensory activities to calm, sooth and ground our bodies and minds
• Social connection – relational regulation (e.g. a two minute check-in)

In his review of what works in supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk promotes the value of the physiologically calming effect of rhythmic movement of the body and social connection. Bessel states that “Sadly, our educational system, as well as many of the methods that profess to treat trauma, tend to bypass this emotional-engagement system and focus instead on recruiting the cognitive capacities of the mind. Despite the well-documented effects of anger, fear, and anxiety on the ability to reason, many programs continue to ignore the need to engage the safety system of the brain before trying to promote new ways of thinking. The last things that should be cut from school schedules are chorus, physical education, recess, and anything else involving movement, play, and joyful engagement.”

Bruce Perry takes this a stage further and recommends that we make use of regular brief physiological regulation breaks throughout the day in order to remain in an open and engaged state and avoid becoming triggered into a defensive state of fight/flight or freeze/collapse (as represented in the graphs below).

Source: Bruce D Perry

And not risk being pushed outside of our window of tolerance into either fight/flight or freeze/collapse by only taking physiological breaks at lunchtime and the end of the day (as represented in the graph below).

Source: Bruce D Perry

Key consideration number 4: Manage transitions for staff too

All of the above applies to us and our colleagues as well as to the children and young people. We need to be the secure base for the children and young people to return to. In order to achieve this, we will need to provide protected time for staff to reconnect, regroup and re-orientate before the children and young people return to school. You might want to agree a set of principles of how you are going to work as a team during this extraordinary time.

Although the reconnecting with staff may also need to look like this initially.

Once we have re-established ourselves as a team to provide the secure base for the children and young people we will then continue to need to build in regular, protected, quality time for staff. This time needs to include:

• Ongoing regular check-ins with colleagues – quality moments of attuned, PACEful interaction with staff. These can be brief but need to be regular.
• Time for self-care – increased ‘downtime’ for staff including brief physiological regulation breaks throughout the day.
• Regular and clear communication – including checking for understanding and inviting feedback.
• Reviews as to how things are going and what next steps we need to take. As referenced in the last video from Bruce Perry we need to manage organisational transitions too – “dosing and spacing” change for adults as well as for our pupils.
• Ongoing staff CPD linked to any changes in roles or approaches – including the neuroscience of trauma and trauma informed approaches (see sessions 1 and 2 of this course).
• Team bonding – time together including fun collaborative activities and celebrating successes.

Organisations will be under stress too and will need to prioritise everyone’s wellbeing (see session three of this course) and clearly communicate that wellbeing is a priority for everyone in addition to catching up on learning in words and actions.

We all need to recognise the likelihood of a reduced window of tolerance and increased stress sensitivity for children and young people who have experienced trauma (especially as they initial return to school) and we will need to be stress regulators for the children and young people. In order to be stress regulators we will need to increase our focus on our own self-care and our support for our colleagues through organisational care. We will need to press pause for ourselves and engage in physiological regulation breaks (breathing, somatosensory and social connection) throughout the day too. Remembering that physiological states are contagious.

And also remembering that a dysregulated adult can never calm anyone.

Key consideration number 5: Build on the positives and acknowledge the challenges

We will need to build on the successes that were in place prior to the transition.

In the case of the ‘reopening’ of schools the positives from remote learning will potentially include:

• Partnerships with parents
• Community of school staff working creatively and adapting to meet the needs of the children and young people
• Use of technology for connection and learning
• Building upon children and young people’s individual and special interests

We will also need to acknowledge the challenges and be future focused. We will need to encourage people to tell their own stories of their experiences (opportunities to process their trauma) remembering both what has changed and also what has remained the same. Dan Siegel eloquently suggests that we ‘honour differences and promote linkages.’

We will need to find appropriate ways of recognising losses, acknowledging uncertainties and also ways of celebrating positive community actions.

We need to clearly communicate to everyone that we’re all in this together and we will all get through this together.

Keeping a check on our confirmation bias

Before I invite you to reflect upon managing transitions by completing a self-review I want to introduce the concept of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency for all of us to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information that confirms or support our prior personal beliefs or values. It is a feature of being human that we are more likely to notice and act upon the facts that confirm our beliefs. As illustrated in the picture below.

My reason for making reference to confirmation bias is that I would encourage you to be aware of your potential to unconsciously agree with the actions suggested by the evidence base which fit with the beliefs you already hold and dismiss those which do not. As you complete the self-review I would encourage you to both:

• Be reassured by the evidence-based actions which do fit with your beliefs, plans and actions.
• Carefully explore the evidenced-based actions which do not fit with your current beliefs, plans and actions. I am not suggesting that you should simply follow these blindly, however, it is through reflecting on these potential actions that we can learn the most.

At this point I would like to invite you complete the self-review of the five key trauma-informed considerations re managing transitions for everyone’s wellbeing. The self-review document can be found by clicking here.

Finally

I’d like to end with three quotes:

‘At their best, schools can function as islands of safety in a chaotic world. They can teach children how their bodies and brains work and how they can understand and deal with their emotions. Schools can play a significant role in instilling the resilience necessary to deal with the traumas of neighbourhoods or families.’  Bessel van der Kolk

‘The most powerful buffer at times of stress and distress is our social connectedness; so let’s remember to stay physically distant but emotionally close.’ Bruce Perry

As we plan for the ‘reopening’ of our schools at this extraordinary time we have the opportunity to become even more caring and inclusive communities as a result of embedding trauma reducing rather than trauma inducing approaches and interventions. “We’re going to need a bigger boat!”

I hope that you found this session useful. Please let me know how you get on by completing the feedback form below or email me with other feedback, questions, suggestions or examples of best practice to share at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com.

There will be more sessions of this course added to the website every Tuesday at http://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/. It is likely that at this time of increased stress that, despite our best efforts, there will be an increase in the number of ruptures in relationships. As a result, the next session of this course will focus on What about when it goes wrong?

26th May 2020

Image courtesy of Action for Happiness

Signposting

For additional information on trauma informed approaches and interventions see:

• The earlier sessions of this course. In particular, the first 3 sessions of the course as they provide the foundations to understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma. You can find these at http://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/
• The next sessions of this free online course are currently planned to be:
  • What about when it goes wrong?
  • Teaching the social and emotional skills not yet learned.
  • Teaching self-regulation.
  • We need to talk about shame.
  • The right intervention at the right time.
  • Building on successes.
• Additional webinars from Bruce Perry at https://www.neurosequential.com/covid-19-resources
• Information from Inner World Work at http://www.innerworldwork.co.uk/?page_id=45

Louise Bomber’s summary of Guidelines for Supporting Pupils who have Experienced Significant Relational Traumas and Losses can be found at https://touchbase.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2-Guidelines-updated.pdf

Louise Bomber, also, has a wide range of useful information, resources and links on her website (including the offer of a series of webinars).  You can find these at https://touchbase.org.uk/

PACE+ Approach courses.

If you’d like to learn more from me (Ian) about evidence-based approaches and interventions to support children and young people who have experienced trauma, then sign up for a PACE+ course which I will be presenting online in the next academic year.

• The PACE+ Approach courses are 6 x 1.5hr sessions
• There is an online course running in the Autumn term and another online course running in the Spring term
• For more details and to book a place, visit our website www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/cpd-leadership/ click on the PACE+ Approach course you are interested in (as shown below).

• You can also find us search for us on Google: Sigma Teaching School
• Follow us on twitter @ Sigma_TSA

The Podcast: Trust, Safety and Everyone’s Wellbeing

Part six of understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma.

The format of this session differs from those previously in the course in that this session is a relatively short podcast. In this podcast JimRogers, Research and CPD lead for the TSC South West, talks with Ian Hunkin about trust, safety, staff and pupil wellbeing. The podcast is hosted by the Teaching School Council and the CPD Portal SW.

To listen to the podcast please click here.

I hope that you found the podcast useful. Please let me know your feedback by completing the form below or by emailing me at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com.

There will be further sessions added to the website every Tuesday at http://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/. Unfortunately, it is likely that at this time of increased stress that, despite our best efforts, there will be an increase in the number of ruptures in relationships. As a result, the next session of this course will focus on What about when it goes wrong?

Free Webinars

In addition, I will be providing a series of three FREE webinars which you are welcome to attend. The webinars will each be an hour long and will focus on Returning to school and making use of trauma-informed approaches.

For further details and to register your place please click here.

We have an opportunity, at this extraordinary time, to become even more caring and inclusive communities by further developing our trauma reducing rather than trauma inducing approaches and interventions.

2nd June 2020.

Signposting

PACE+ Approach courses.

If you’d like to learn more from me (Ian) about evidence-based approaches and interventions to support children and young people who have experienced trauma, then sign up for a PACE+ course which I will be presenting online in the next academic year.

• The PACE+ Approach courses are 6 x 1.5hr sessions
• There is an online course running in the Autumn term and another online course running in the Spring term
• For more details and to book a place, visit our website www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/cpd-leadership/ click on the PACE+ Approach course you are interested in (as shown below).

• You can also find us search for us on Google: Sigma Teaching School
• Follow us on twitter @ Sigma_TSA

What about when it goes wrong?

Part seven of understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma.

Introduction

Unfortunately, it is likely that at this time of increased stress that, despite our best efforts, there will be an increase in the number of ruptures in relationships. As a result, this session of the course will focus on What about when it goes wrong?

In order to best support children and young people who have experienced trauma we need to have a plan as to both what we are going to do when things go wrong and how we are going to do this.

As with the other sessions in this course the aims are:

1. To provide an overview of the key messages from research regarding what works for children and young people who have experienced trauma.
2. Provide an opportunity to reflect on your own practice with regard to these key messages (reassurance and ideally identifying actions to further develop your practice).
3. Signposting to other information.

And once again, as with other sessions, the approaches and interventions will be evidence-based; mostly from the fields of psychology and neuroscience. Some of the evidence-based approaches and interventions informed by the research are deceptively simple. They are, however, also enormously powerful in their impact.

What we’ll cover in this session:

• The 4Rs
• Regulate
• Relate
• Reason
• Repair

I hope that you will find it useful.

The 4Rs

Teacher and Therapist Louise Bomber writes in the introduction of her latest book (Know me to teach me) that ‘Toxic stress results in disruption to the stress response. Tragically, dysregulation and distrust are two of the most significant villains which come into play, as developmental vulnerabilities, as a result. These two villains may imprint how we view ourselves, others, the contexts we find ourselves in and how they may negatively shape our futures. May shape our future, because it’s not an inevitable trajectory – if help is provided. The right kind of support, at the right time, in the right way, to get the lives of traumatised children and young people back on track… Every relationship has the power to confirm or challenge all that has gone before. So these children can either end up being supported, or compromised further.’

Children and young people who have experienced trauma can, at times, present with dysregulated behaviours that can be challenging, frustrating, puzzling, upsetting, disturbing and shocking. At these times, when things go wrong, there is a real danger that our response could make things worse. It is, therefore, important that we have a plan as to what we will do at these times and, as I will highlight in this session, how we will enact our plan.

The research referenced in the previous sessions of this course clearly demonstrates the importance of relationships (in particular, the relational elements of trust and safety) in supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma. There is risk at times of dysregulated behaviour that our relationship with the child or young person will be damaged. We need to be able to continue to provide relational support whilst at the same time being able to support the child or young person to change their behaviour. Psychologist Carol Dweck (famous for her work re the Growth Mindset) encourages us, when we are next in a position of disciplining a student, to consider whether the message we are sending through our actions is that we will judge and punish them or that we will help them to think and learn. The research is very clear that supporting children and young people to think and learn is the most effective way forward. To quote Louise Bomber again, ‘Whilst some adults offer emphatic, relational processes, others use punitive management in the name of zero tolerance. This punitive response engenders fear and compliance.’ The following slide from one of my presentations summarises the limitations of relying on a behavioural approach with children and young people who have experienced trauma.

Source: Portsmouth City Council

In this session we will explore practical ways, informed by psychology and neuroscience, that we can use to support children and young people to reflect upon and change their behaviour whilst maintaining our relationship with them (correction with connection).

Psychiatrist and Neuroscientist Bruce Perry has developed the Neurosequential Model to support children and young people who have experienced trauma. In the model Bruce explains that there is a particular sequence of engagement in which we need to provide our support in order to be effective. This sequence (in the necessary order) is to:

• Regulate
• Relate
• Reason

This sequence of engagement is represented in the picture below.

Source: Bruce D Perry

And explained by Bruce in the following video.

Source: You Tube

“If you remember the principle to regulate somebody, then connect, then reason with them then you’ll be much more successful in your effort to communicate.”

Louise Bomber has suggested that there is additionally a 4^th R (Repair) which is sometimes necessary as well. Let’s consider each of these 4Rs in turn and, in particular, consider both what we can do to be effective and how we need to put our plan into action. I am emphasising the how due to the significance of the non-verbal elements of our communication. As Bruce references in the above video the non-verbal aspects of communication get the meaning and intentionality of our message across to the other person. At times when things are going wrong there is a significant risk that the meaning and the intent of our communication will be misinterpreted. We will, therefore, need to carefully plan and enact the non-verbal elements of our communication as well as our words and actions. We need a plan for the how as well as the what.

Regulate

As discussed in previous sessions of this course one of the effects of experiencing trauma is to reduce a person’s window of tolerance and increase the sensitivity of his/her stress response. This combination makes it more likely that children and young people who have experienced trauma will be triggered into dysregulated defensive states of fight/flight (chaos) or freeze/collapse (rigidity) and will find it more difficult to return quickly to a regulated open and engaged state. Until the child or young person has been supported to return to a regulated state they will not be able to move onto the next important stages in this process (relate, reflect and possibly repair). We must, therefore, begin our support when things go wrong by supporting the child/young person to regulate.

This is a good moment to watch the video below from Psychiatrist Dan Siegel in which he describes what happens when we “flip our lid.”

The nine functions which go ‘offline’ when we flip our lids are:

• physiological regulation
• flexibility of our response and reduction of impulsivity
• emotional balance
• ability to calm fear
• morality
• insight
• intuition
• ability to be attuned with another person
• empathy for others

If you would like further information regarding Dan’s hand model of the brain (including further details of the nine functions that go offline when we flip our lids) then see Dan’s TED Talk signposted at the end of this article. In simple terms our Cortex (the rational part of the brain) goes offline (becomes disconnected) and remains offline until we return to being physiologically regulated (back within our window of tolerance and, therefore, in an open and engaged state).

If a child or young person is not yet physiologically regulated then the first thing that we need to do is to support them to return to a physiologically regulated state (i.e. support them to return to being within their window of tolerance in an open and engaged physiological state). The most effective way to do this is for them to spend time with a calm, empathic, attuned and trusted adult (Louise Bomber describes this as providing ‘time-in’ as opposed to time-out in order for the child/young person to experience co-regulation). We need to be stress regulators for the children and young people.

On some occasions supporting a child to move from emotional dysregulation to regulation will require more than simply the presence of a regulated and trusted adult. On these occasions either breathing and/or somatosensory activities with the trusted adult will be required. As discussed in previous sessions of this course the most effective ways to support someone to regulate are ‘bottom up’ brain activities which calm the lower areas of our brains (the Brainstem and Limbic System). Research demonstrates that the three following actions are the most effective interventions to calm someone’s physiological regulation:

1. Breathing – deep and even breathing and, in particular, a slower/elongated outbreath (e.g. 7-11 breathing. Breathing in to the count of 7 and out to the count of 11).
2. Somatosensory activities – physical and sensory activities to calm, sooth and ground our bodies (e.g. tensing and relaxing our muscles, rhythmic movements or focusing on what we can see and hear in the present moment) .
3. Social connection – relational regulation (e.g. a check-in / time-in with a trusted adult).

Ideally, as a part of our plan to support the child/young person, we will have supported him/her to have tried a number of physiological regulating activities in order to identify which ones work best for him/her before we need them at a time when things are going wrong. Psychologist Karen Treisman has developed a fantastic resource to support this (see Therapeutic treasure deck of grounding, soothing, coping and regulating cards in the signposting section at the end of this article).

You may remember Panda from a video in the first session of this course in which he helped us to understand the window of tolerance. He’s back. Please watch the video below in which Panda’s Island of Regulation is explained.

Source: You Tube

We need to have a plan as to how we are going to de-escalate a situation when a child or young person is dysregulated. The graph below with the rather unfortunate title of the ‘assault cycle’ represents the level of physiological arousal (y axis) over the period of time (x axis) when dysregulation occurs. Clearly this does not always involve an assault, however, a person’s capacity to behave unsafely is highly increased at the peak of their physiological arousal (the crisis phase) and during the early stages of the plateau/recovery phase.

Source: Adrian Faupel

It is useful for us to be aware of the ‘assault cycle’ when we are de-escalating a situation and to continue to risk assess the situation as to which phase of the cycle the child or young person appears to be in and adapt our interventions appropriately. The image below is an extract from the behaviour for learning policy at the school where I was recently the Headteacher. It summarises the range of actions that we would take as a team to de-escalate a dysregulated child or young person.

Source: Portsmouth City Council

The reference to ‘forking’ as part of the use of LIFE in the above image is trying to find something that the dysregulated child or young person is saying that we can agree with or at least reflect back to them to show that we have heard them.

It is also useful to demonstrate that we have ‘heard’ the distress of the dysregulated person communicated in his/her behaviour by matching their energy without matching their emotion (e.g. our tone of voice and gestures increase in urgency, however, we do not become confrontational or defensive). Ideally, we need to aim to attune the energy of our non-verbal communication to be slightly less than the dysregulated person and then gradually reduce these further throughout the course of our de-escalating interaction.

If a child or young person is in freeze/collapse rather than fight/flight then we need to attune to them by slowing down the non-verbal elements of our communication and gradually bringing energy back into the interactions.

The ‘change of face’ is a recognition that a dysregulated adult cannot calm anyone. We need to be in our own physiologically regulated state (open and engaged) in order to take advantage of the contagion of physiological states in a good way (see session 3 of this course). If we are not, at that moment in time, able to remain physiologically regulated ourselves then we need to enact a ‘change of face’ by allowing another adult to swap in and support the child or young person to regulate.

If you would like more detail of the neuroscience of regulation then see the video from Bruce Perry re understanding regulation which is signposted at the end of this article.

Effectively through our use of the interventions described above we are gradually and safely releasing the pressure in the situation.

Once we have supported a child or young person to be regulated then the next step in the sequence of support is to relate.

Relate

In the following video Dan Seigel reminds us of the power of connecting with the child or young person as the next step in the sequence of supporting them when things have gone wrong.

Source: You Tube

“The connection calms her down.”

Use of the PACE Approach (playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy) in our interactions at this relate stage of support is helpful. The p, in this situation when things have gone wrong, is in lower case as this isn’t the time for the use of humour and banter. However, the non-verbal elements of playfulness (our facial expressions, tone of voice, posture and gestures) to demonstrate that we are listening and that we get it are very important. Being accepting and empathic of what the child or young person is communicating is the most effective way of connecting at this time. As we explored in the second session of this course we need to slow down our support and, in particular, stay with the empathy stage of our support for longer than we might normally do without rushing too quickly into either reassurance or problem solving. We also need to clearly communicate our empathy e.g. “I’m really glad that you told me” and/or “I can see that this is stressful and we’ll find a way through this together.”

Reason (Reflect)

Once the child or young person is regulated and we have taken the opportunity to rebuild a connection (relate) then we are ready for the next stage of the sequence of support – which is to reason or reflect. The child or young person is now ready to engage in a problem solving discussion.

The discussion needs to be done with the child or young person and continue to include the elements from the PACE approach. We can now introduce the element of curiosity perhaps by simply inviting the child or young person to “Help me to understand what happened?” and then to make use of our active listening skills (see below).

It may also be useful to clearly communicate our intentions to the child or young person at this point e.g. “I am here to help you and I can help best if I properly understand what happened” or “We’ll work this out together.”

Psychologists Ross Greene and Stuart Ablon have developed an approach called the Collaborative Problem Solving Approach. This is an approach which appears deceptively simple, however, is enormously powerful. It also fits well as a framework to use the PACE Approach in a problem solving interaction. There are three steps to a Collaborative Problem Solving conversation which are perfect for this stage in the sequence of support (the reason / reflect stage). These three steps are (in the necessary order):

1. The empathy step – in this step we use questioning and active listening to identify the child or young person’s concern with them (curiosity and acceptance).
2. The define the problem step – in this step we restate/summarise the child’s concern providing them with the opportunity to correct us or add further detail if needed. Then, once it is agreed that we have understood his/her concern, we state our concern. Our concern does not trump the child or young person’s concern. Instead it sits alongside the child or young person’s concern to define the two aspects of the problem that require solving.
3. The invitation step – in this step the child and young person and the supportive adult explore possible solutions to the problem together and agree what action will be taken to solve the problem. Ideally a range of possible actions to solve the problem are suggested and evaluated to choose the one that best meets everyone’s needs. The step is described as being an invitation step as we encourage the child or young person to contribute possible ways forward as well as the adult.

In the following short video Stuart Ablon describes the Collaborative Problem Solving Approach as using ‘plan B.’

Source: You Tube

“Simple, but not easy.”

Use of the Collaborative Problem Solving Approach helps to avoid this:

And helps to avoid this too:

And looks more like this:

The good news is that research demonstrates that repeated use of the Collaborative Problem Solving Approach overtime with children and young people not only solves problems and builds trusting relationships, in addition, it teaches children and young people to be able to solve problems peacefully for themselves (see signposting section at the end of this article for further links to the effective use of the Collaborative Problem Solving Approach).

The first step in the Collaborative Problem Solving Approach is the most important (i.e. the empathy step) and requires us to apply our active listening skills. We need to establish a listening culture within our school community in which children and young people know that when something goes wrong then our response will be to listen to each other and agree a way of making things better. We achieve this by demonstrating that we will listen first and then work with them to agree the best way forward. This does not mean that we will not apply consequences for children and young people’s behaviour. The way forward after a behavioural incident may need to include providing a change in both structure and boundaries for the child or young person to be successful rather than repeatedly being set up to fail (correction with understanding of the intention of the adult for everyone to be safe and to learn).

In addition to summarising skills to check for understanding our active listening skills will need to include questioning skills to sensitively explore the concern.            Louise Bomber suggests the use of commentaries without judgement e.g. “I noticed that your body did this… I think it might be trying to tell me something?” and Psychologist Dan Hughes suggests that we wonder aloud e.g. “I wonder what that was about?”

It is also worth noting that the movement through the 3 steps of Collaborative Problem Solving is not always linear. For example there may be times when sharing our concerns in step 2 will retrigger dysregulation in the child or young person – in which case we may need to return to step 1 (the empathy step) before progressing again to step 2 (defining the problem step).

In addition to working with the child or young person to agree the best way forward to solve the problem we are also looking to support the child or young person to process and integrate his/her experience as part of the reason/reflection stage of the sequence of support. Processing and integration also has three stages:

1. Acknowledging and expressing the concern or difficulty. Experiencing being listened to (curiosity without comparison or judgement). Dan Siegel describes this as supporting the child or young person to ‘name it to tame it’ (see video below).
2. The concern or difficulty being witnessed/validated by someone that you trust. Experiencing being heard and understood (acceptance and empathy).
3. Continuing to be kept in mind and supported. Integration does not happen as a one off event. We will need to continue to keep connecting and offering the opportunity for more sharing. Ongoing check-ins e.g. “How are you doing? How are you really doing?” or “What’s been happening with you?”

Source: You Tube

“I wonder if you’re feeling…”

The agreed way forward may also include learning new skills to apply in the future when a similar situation arises again. I will focus on teaching the social and emotional skills not yet learned in a future session of this course.

Repair

In the introduction to this session I suggested that unfortunately it is likely that at this time of increased stress that, despite our best efforts, there will be an increase in the number of ruptures in relationships. We may, therefore, on occasions require the 4^th R (Repair).

When there is a rupture in a relationship then we will need to work with those affected to repair the rupture. This may involve a simple act of reaching out in a relational way to the child or young person in order to demonstrate that the relationship is stronger than the incident. This could involve initiating a PACEful interaction at an appropriate time after an incident. This action is sometimes referred to as ‘walking towards’ the child or young person.

The ruptured relationship, however, may require a more significant repair. When this is the case then we can draw on mediation from Restorative Approaches and include the 5 key restorative questions:

1. What happened?
2. What were you thinking and feeling at the time?
3. Who has been affected?
4. How have they been affected?
5. What needs to happen to make it better?

When we use mediation then we need to work with those affected to agree a way forward that understands and meets everyone’s needs and that repairs the relationship. There are a number of principles that it is useful to apply:

• We need to clearly communicate that the aim of the mediation process is to have conversations that bring understanding and actions that repair and restore relationships.
• The process involves understanding everyone’s unmet needs.
• The adult takes the lead in repairing the relationship.
• Consequences, at their best, help the child to make amends and restore the relationship.
• It is at the most challenging times that the child or young person needs connection the most. This is a big ask for the adult.
• A Key Adult works alongside the child or young person to repair the relationship.
• The message to the child is that the relationship is stronger than the incident.

If we apply these principles then we are more likely to achieve a positive outcome for everyone involved. We are, also, less likely to induce further shame in the child or young person. Shame is often a very significant emotion for children and young people who have experienced trauma and can be a barrier to behaviour change. I will dedicate a future session of this online course to shame and vulnerability (we need to talk about shame).

Finally

Early on in this session I made reference to Louise Bomber’s latest book. I am now going to share the cover of this book:

My reason for sharing the book cover is that Louise has represented the 4Rs as a circle. The circle represents a final point that I wanted to highlight: that we need to be responsive to the needs of the individual child or young person whom we are supporting. When things go wrong we need to sequence our support to:

• Regulate – a way of soothing
• Relate – a way of connecting
• Reason – a way of reflecting
• Repair – a way of re-connecting

Louise Bomber encourages us to “Meet the child where he/she is at first.” We may need to move backwards and forwards through these 4Rs in response to his/her individual needs (moving responsively backwards and forwards around the circle).

At this point I would like to invite you to complete the self-review document re making the best use of the 4Rs when things go wrong. The self-review can be found by clicking here.

In summary of this session I’d like to leave you with a simple phrase that if we keep in mind we won’t go too far wrong: We all need a good listening to.

Source: Beacon House (see signposting below)

I hope that you found this session useful. Please let me know how you get on by completing the feedback form below or email me with other feedback, questions, suggestions or examples of best practice to share at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com.

There will be another session of this course added to the website next Tuesday at

http://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/.

9th June 2020

Signposting

• Louise Bomber’s latest book Know me to teach me (2020)

• Louise Bomber’s article re regulation in school for troubled pupils https://touchbase.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/7-Regulation-in-school-for-troubled-pupils.pdf

• Dan Siegel’s TED Talk https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=dan+siegel+connecting+to+calm&&view=detail&mid=756F306DD9D251E9CFBD756F306DD9D251E9CFBD&&FORM=VDRVRV

• Bruce Perry’s video re understanding regulation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3qIYGwmHYY

• Karen Treisman’s Therapeutic treasure deck of grounding, soothing, coping and regulating cards https://www.amazon.co.uk/Therapeutic-Grounding-Regulating-Treasures-Collection/dp/1785925296/ref=asc_df_1785925296/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310856639426&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10659381983688941551&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006472&hvtargid=pla-560808497984&psc=1&th=1&psc=1

• Further information re the Collaborative Problem Solving Approach:

• • A video by Stuart Ablon https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=stuart+ablon+flawless&&view=detail&mid=FE2A383821C99F86B38DFE2A383821C99F86B38D&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dstuart%2Bablon%2Bflawless%26FORM%3DHDRSC4
  • Stuart Ablon’s website http://www.thinkkids.org/
  • Ross Greene’s website https://www.livesinthebalance.org/

• What if we stay curious infographic from Beacon House https://beaconhouse.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/What-if…-1.jpg

PACE+ Approach courses.

If you’d like to learn more from me (Ian) about evidence-based approaches and interventions to support children and young people who have experienced trauma, then sign up for a PACE+ course which I will be presenting online in the next academic year.

• • • The PACE+ Approach courses are 6 x 1.5hr sessions
    • There is an online course running in the Autumn term and another online course running in the Spring term
    • For more details and to book a place, visit our website www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/cpd-leadership/ click on the PACE+ Approach course you are interested in (as shown below).

• • • You can also find us search for us on Google: Sigma Teaching School
    • Follow us on twitter @ Sigma_TSA

A Choice Between Two Webinars

Part eight of understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma.

The format of this session differs from those previously in the course in that this session is a choice between two recorded webinars. Please choose whichever of the two recorded webinars that appears to be the most relevant to you.

Webinar One

The first webinar: In this webinar Erica Wolstenholme, South West Regional Lead for Whole School SEND, talks with Ian Hunkin about returning to school and making use of trauma-informed approaches and, in particular, five key considerations for everyone’s wellbeing.

The webinar was paid for by the DfE and is hosted by Whole School SEND / NASEN.

To listen to the recorded webinar please click here

Webinar Two

The second webinar: In this webinar Aziz Ziriat, Associate Partnerships Manager for Challenge Partners, talks with Ian Hunkin about strategies to understand and support children and young people who have experienced trauma.

Most of all let’s remember, as we rebuild our school communities, that our trauma-informed approaches continue to be underpinned by relationships, relationships, relationships.

I hope that you found these webinars useful. Please let me know your feedback by completing the form below or by emailing me at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com.

There will be further sessions added to the website every Tuesday at http://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/.

The next session will focus on Teaching the social and emotional skills not yet learned.

16th June 2020

Signposting

PACE+ Approach courses.

If you’d like to learn more from me (Ian) about evidence-based approaches and interventions to support children and young people who have experienced trauma, then sign up for a PACE+ course which I will be presenting online in the next academic year.

• The PACE+ Approach courses are 6 x 1.5hr sessions
• There is an online course running in the Autumn term and another online course running in the Spring term
• For more details and to book a place, visit our website www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/cpd-leadership/ click on the PACE+ Approach course you are interested in (as shown below).

• You can also find us search for us on Google: Sigma Teaching School
• Follow us on twitter @ Sigma_TSA

Teaching the social and emotional skills not yet learned

Part nine of understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma.

Introduction

Children and young people who have experienced trauma will often try to be independent from others and potentially attempt to be controlling of others’ behaviours in order to get their own needs met and to feel safe. Unfortunately, a significant outcome of this pseudo-independence is the lack of development of social and emotional skills (relational skills). Relational skills are learned in relationships and, therefore, if we limit these serve and return relational interactions we also limit the development of social and emotional skills see Session Two of this course for more detail).

The good news is that social and emotional skills can be learned and this session will focus on teaching these skills.

As with the other sessions in this course the aims are:

1. To provide an overview of the key messages from research regarding what works for children and young people who have experienced trauma.
2. Provide an opportunity to reflect on your own practice with regard to these key messages (reassurance and ideally identifying actions to further develop your practice).
3. Signposting to other information.

And once again, as with other sessions, the approaches and interventions will be evidence-based; mostly from the fields of psychology and neuroscience. Some of the evidence-based approaches and interventions informed by the research are deceptively simple. They are, however, also enormously powerful in their impact.

What we’ll cover in this session:

• Success and failure cycles
• Relational skills are learned in relationships
• Teaching the social and emotional skills not yet learned
• Behaviour is communication / needs not met
• High quality assessment and interventions matched to individual needs
• The importance of self-regulation for children and young people who have experienced trauma
• Resilience
• Growth Mindset

Special thanks also goes to Cat Walker who has written a section of this session of the course.

I hope that you will find the session useful.

Success and failure cycles

The majority of children and young people will be able to manage the challenges of school and be successful for the majority of the time as represented in the picture of the success cycle below.

Overtime these repeated experiences of success lead to the development of further skills along with increased self-esteem, positive self-image, the development of positive relationships and resilience. All of which is as great as it sounds.

Unfortunately, however, there will be some children and young people who are not yet able to manage all of the demands of school. For these children and young people some of their experiences of school can be better represented by the picture of the failure cycle below.

Some children and young people have not yet developed the social and emotional skills to be able to succeed at all of the challenges that school presents. These children and young people will come across situations which require a greater level of social and emotional skill (Emotional Literacy) than they have yet developed. This can lead to frequent failure and an opposite cycle to the success cycle in which new skills are not developed, self-esteem decreases, a negative self-image develops, positive relationships are not formed and leads to vulnerability rather than resilience. All of which is as negative as it sounds.

An example of this difference is a pupil who wants to join a social group at breaktime. A socially and emotionally skilled pupil will observe the group interactions (without coming across as creepy) and find a skilled way to join the conversation or activity. A less socially and emotionally skilled pupil will have the same need to belong and will want to join the social group, however, they haven’t yet developed the social and emotional skills to do this successfully. In this case he/she is likely to either attempt to join the conversation or activity in a way that leads to rejection (often through trying to control the activity) or will remain withdrawn from the social group and feel isolated with negative thoughts about themselves.

A second example is in a class situation. If a pupil has not understood the instructions for a task and he/she has a high level of social and emotional skills then he/she will use effective strategies to appropriately seek support from the teacher or a peer. Unfortunately, a pupil with less well developed social and emotional skills is likely to spiral into a cycle of fearing looking stupid in front of his/her peers and, as a result, will either become oppositional or withdrawn. Either way the failure cycle and its negative impact are enacted.

These situations will happen in all aspects of school and home life.

We need to help these children and young people to be able to have frequent experiences of success and this includes:

• Teaching the children and young people the social and emotional skills they have not yet learned
• Scaffolding the child or young person’s learning environment with support to prevent them repeatedly failing whilst they are in the process of learning these new skills (e.g. a lunchtime club for the child in the first example above and perhaps a whole class card system to communicate that a pupil needs some help with a task for the child in the second example).

Social and emotional skills are learned in relationships

An additional barrier for children and young people to learn the social and emotional skills they have not yet learned is that these relational skills are learned in relationships. As I stated in the introduction to this session children and young people who have experienced trauma often try to be independent from others and potentially attempt to be controlling of others’ behaviours in order to get their own needs met and to feel safe. In the second session of this course (Rebuilding Trust) we explored the approaches and interventions that we need to use in order to support a child or young person to move from mistrust to trust and, therefore, allowing us to have some influence over them (PACE Approaches). In order to help children and young people who have experienced trauma we need to rebuild a trusting relationship and then teach the social and emotional skills not yet learned through this relationship. Therapist David Taransaud summarises this by reminding us that, ‘Relationships are the vehicle for social and emotional growth.’

Once we have rebuilt trust and supported a child or young person to feel safe then we need to make the most of this opportunity to use the relationship, in a good way, to teach the social and emotional skills not yet learned (PACE+ Approach).

Teaching the social and emotional skills not yet learned

Teaching the skills not yet learned is the bit that we already have expertise in at all schools. We need to provide high quality practice of the skills not yet learned. Research demonstrates that this practice is most effective when it includes the following elements:

1. Targeted at the skills not yet learned
2. Repeated
3. Proactive
4. Real life situations (although sometimes we need to use metaphor rather than a real life example)
5. Includes modelling of the skills alongside questioning (e.g. “What am I doing?” and “Why am I doing it?”)
6. With a trusted other (Key Adult)

Further good news is that PACEful interactions and use of the Collaborative Problem Solving Approach as part of our interventions to support children and young people are excellent ways of providing this high quality practice (see Session Two and Session Seven of this course).

Psychiatrist and Neuroscientist Bruce Perry states that, ‘We need to provide repetition of compensatory experiences.’

Psychologist Dan Hughes (who developed the PACE Approach) reminds us of the importance of these  compensatory experiences including experiences of joy and comfort within a relationship in which the child or young person feels safe help to build the foundations of trust and safety. These social experiences also provide the safe mobilisation (playfulness and joy) and safe immobilisation (co-regulation and comfort) in relationships which when repeated overtime help to re-expand a child or young person’s window of tolerance and return their sensitised stress response to a more neurotypical response (see Session One of this course).

Psychologist Ross Greene (who developed the Collaborative Problem Solving Approach) states that, ‘Behind every challenging behaviour is an unsolved problem or skills that have not yet been learned (or both).’ We need to support pupils to solve his/her problems and teach them the skills they have not yet learned.

All school lessons provide an opportunity to include high quality practice of the social and emotional skills not yet learned. In addition, some children and young people will need targeted interventions on 1:1 or in small groups in order to be supported to learn these skills. I have included some resources which we have found to be especially useful for teaching social and emotional skills on a 1:1 or in small groups in the signposting section at the end of this session.

Table tennis player and journalist Mathew Syed reminds us in the following video of the significant role of high quality practice to develop our skills whether that is in table tennis or social and emotional skills.

Source: You Tube

Behaviour is communication / Needs not met

It is often stated that all behaviour is communication. In the case of social and emotional skills the child or young person’s behaviour can indicate to us the skills they have not yet learned and that we, therefore, need to teach them.

We can usefully reflect on the communication behind a child or young person’s behaviour in two ways:

1. The ‘Communicative Function’ of the behaviour and, therefore, the functionally equivalent behaviours to teach.
2. The functionally related skills to teach.

I will consider each of these in turn. With regard to the functionally equivalent behaviours it is useful as part of our assessment to consider what legitimate need the child or young person’s behaviour is a best attempt to meet. As represented in the success and failure cycles this involves taking the stance that the child or young person’s behaviour is an attempt to meet a need which he/she may or may not yet have learned the skills to manage successfully. Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs provides us with a useful framework to reflect upon a pupil’s behaviour in relation to the functionally equivalent behaviour (the needs not yet met).

Source: Wikipedia

If we consider each level of need on the above hierarchy in turn starting with our most basic needs (i.e. the bottom of the hierarchy) then we can start to reflect upon which needs the pupil is able to positively meet through effective pro-social behaviours and which needs he/she is currently attempting to meet through less effective behaviours. The table below can be used by staff as a way of reflecting upon an individual pupil’s behaviours and to identify which of his/her needs that we need to support him/her to learn more effective and pro-social ways of getting met.

Source: Wikipedia

If we return to our earlier examples related to the failure cycle:

• The child or young person who wants to join the social interaction at breaktime but does not yet have the social and emotional skills to do so successfully would be identified on the table above as needing our support to learn ways of positively meeting his/her need to belong to a group.
• The child or young person who had not understood the instructions for a task in a lesson and didn’t yet have the social and emotional skills to seek help in an effective way would be identified on the table above as needing our support to learn ways of positively meeting his/her need for self-esteem as his/her behaviour was driven by a need not to lose face in front of peers.

Being able to effectively target our teaching can be informed by reflecting upon the child or young person’s functionally equivalent behaviours (the legitimate need the behaviour is an attempt to meet). However, to be able to target our teaching effectively then in addition to assessing the functionally equivalent behaviour we also need to assess the child or young person’s functionally related skills.

The functionally related skills are the set of skills required to be able to enact the effective functionally equivalent behaviour. If, again, I take the example of the child or young person who wants to join the social interaction at breaktime. We have identified the functionally equivalent behaviour as needing to belong to a group. However, if he/she does not have the skills to observe the social interaction prior to joining it, to plan an effective way of interjecting (e.g. with a relevant question) and the awareness of his/her non-verbal skills (smiling and open gestures) then we will need to teach these skills in order for him/her to be able to break into the success cycle and get his/her need to belong met.

These functionally related equivalent social and emotional skills (aka Emotional Literacy or Emotional Intelligence) are grouped into 5 strands:

• Self-awareness
• Self-regulation
• Self-motivation
• Social skills
• Empathy

I have made this all sound very complicated. Thankfully, the good news is that, Deputy Headteacher Cat Walker has developed an extremely useful assessment tool for identifying the social and emotional skills that a child or young person needs to be taught. And the even better news is that Cat has written the following section of this session to introduce us to her assessment tool.

Just before we turn to Cat’s section of this session this is a good time to watch the following short video introducing the concept of Emotional Intelligence (aka Emotional Literacy or social and emotional skills).

Source: You Tube

“Enhancing your Emotional Intelligence can be achieved with sustained practice.”

High quality assessment and interventions matched to individual needs

An enormous thank you goes to Cat Walker who has kindly written this next section of this session for me (see below in italics). Cat has produced an enormously helpful tool to assess and track children and young peoples’ social and emotional skills (Emotional Literacy) development.

The momentous find that the simple mosquito net saves more lives per pound spent than anything else humans have ever discovered, led to a revolution across the world and millions of lives saved. The meta-analysis by the London School of Economics for the Department of Health in 2011 demands a similar quantum shift in our approach to social and emotional and mental health difficulties. The headline news from this research was that for every £1 spent on teaching social and emotional skills £84 was saved in society. Like the mosquito net, teaching these skills has a bigger payback than many other factors put together. 

In similar work, Daniel Goleman collated 50 years of research from studies about social and emotional skills and found that these skills far outweigh the contribution towards life quality than the previously heralded IQ. This meta-analysis found that emotional literacy skills contribute to 80% of life-success; factors such as having good relationships with your parents, your siblings, your spouse, your children, your friends, enjoying your work and feeling motivated, being able to choose work you enjoy, choosing a good life partner etc. I find it interesting comparing how often I use the facts I committed to precious neurone downloading space for A Level chemistry (I’m still waiting for one of those ingots to be needed) with say, listening skills, which come up about every half an hour in my work and home life. Similarly, in our schools, we can inadvertently leave children heading home at 3pm thinking it was more important to have learnt the three times table than it was to have been kind to somebody at breaktime. 

If a child’s family is a large contributor to a child’s mental health and emotional difficulties, problems will have been exacerbated during Lockdown and, due to the pandemic meaning people are losing their lives or their health, mental health problems around anxiety are likely to have risen. 

For these reasons, now is a good time to consider how we will review social and emotional skills in our schools. An approach I find helpful is to look at teaching these skills as you would any other subject. To do this, consider the ‘behaviour problem’ you are presented with as a child who is missing some skills which need to be taught, this is then a joint mission, they have something to learn and we have something to teach – teaching is our area of expertise! If a child wasn’t able to complete their sharing challenges in maths, we wouldn’t tell them they were doing something wrong and give them detention over their breaktime, we would work out what skills were missing in their understanding of division and break it down into smaller and smaller concepts to teach until they grasped it. It can be empowering to think of Emotional Literacy skills in this way too. If a child isn’t sharing at breaktime, consider what skills they are missing and break the concepts down into smaller and smaller skills to teach until they can grasp it. To help with this method of developing social and emotional skills, I have devised a finely graded Emotional Literacy assessment tool which will support you to break these skills down as low as you need to. This will enable you to teach at the right level for each child. The lowest levels are in line with emerging language and the highest levels include some skills you might expect from an experienced counsellor so all stages of development are covered. The grids cover the five strands of Emotional Literacy: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. These are broken down further into sub-units such as managing anxiety and each has seven steps to work upwards through the grids. 

If you want to change something, first measure it. If you start by assessing where the strengths and gaps are in a child’s Emotional Literacy skills, you are then able to work out what to teach next. You can also use your assessment to show parents what their child would benefit from learning next, set targets, inform other staff and to boost everybody’s motivation by showing progress against these skills over time. This process allows the quantum shift from feeling that Emotional Literacy is unachievable and ungraspable, to realising it is simply a set of skills to be learnt and that these skills are available to us all.

Click here for a copy of Cat Walker’s Emotional Literacy skills assessment tool.

There is, additionally, a lower level skills version of the same tool for children and young people whose Emotional Literacy skills are at an earlier stage of development. Click here for the lower level version.

The most effective way to use the Emotional Literacy skills assessment tool is for staff who know the pupil to complete a baseline from their observations of the pupil and then revisit the assessment at regular intervals (e.g. each half term) to update the assessment with progress and other formative assessment notes. We have found that it is useful to:

• Use a blue highlighter pen for the baseline.
• Start at the bottom of each of the 5 strands of Emotional Literacy and move upwards until you reach skills that the pupil has not yet developed. Remember that these skills are cumulative and we need to learn the lower skills before we can build on these foundations.
• If the pupil’s skills are below the lowest skills listed on the assessment tool then switch to using the lower level skills version.
• Highlight the percentage of each statement to represent the percentage of the time that we believe that the individual pupil can currently achieve the skill.
• Use a green highlighter for future updates along with dates written onto the form. Adding to the percentage of time that the child or young person can now use the skill and the new skills that have been learned.
• Identify a small number of individual skills as the next skills needing to be taught and add these as targets on the pupil’s individual plan.
• Ensure that the individual plan includes actions to teach the identified skills to learn (provide high quality practice). We need to ensure that we develop a plan to support the child or young person to learn the next identified skill and not just targets and motivations (rewards and consequences).

The importance of self-regulation for children and young people who have experienced trauma

In previous sessions of this course I have highlighted the importance of physiological regulation for children and young people who have experienced trauma. Children and young people who have experienced trauma are likely to have a narrower window of tolerance and a sensitised stress response. This combination results in these children and young people often oscillating between being in a freeze/collapse state and a fight/flight state with only limited time in an open and engaged state. Teaching children and young people self-regulation skills will enable them to be able to spend more time in an open and engaged state (where they can learn, problem solve, behave flexibly and engage socially) and have effective strategies to return themselves to their open and engaged state when they are triggered into fight/flight or freeze/collapse.

In order to learn to self-regulate children and young people need repeated experiences of co-regulation (physiological regulation through time-in with a trusted adult). In addition children and young people who have experienced trauma need to be supported to practice somatosensory activities to help them to identify the activities that help them to regulate. Ideally this practice takes the form of experimentation of trying different somatosensory activities (e.g. 7-11 breathing, muscle tensing and relaxing, distracting, grounding/noticing) and then continuing to practice making use of the ones which work best for him/her (both proactively and reactively).

Psychologist Karen Treisman has produced a useful resource to support this process of experimentation and practice of different regulating activities. She introduces the resource in the following short video. And, no, I’m not on commission with these – although perhaps I should be.

Source: You Tube

Resilience

You will probably remember from previous sessions in this course that the research from neuroscience demonstrates that resilience can be developed by providing relational support (relational buffering) in response to stress which is moderate, predictable and controllable. As represented in the following graph.

Source: Dr Bruce D. Perry

In addition, research demonstrates that factors which help to develop resilience (the ability to bounce back from adversity) can be broken into two main groups:

1. Environmental protective factors i.e.
   1. Having an adult in his/her life who believes in him/her as a worthwhile person
   2. A sense of belonging to a community
   3. High expectations alongside the support to achieve – being encouraged to do your best in all situations
2. Personal protective factors i.e.
   1. Social and emotional skills
   2. Problem solving skills
   3. Positive thinking skills (a Growth Mindset)

The good news is that the environmental protective factors can be provided by a school community which uses trauma-informed / relational approaches (as explored in previous sessions of this course) and the personal protective factors can all be learned.

We have explored teaching the social and emotional skills in this session and the teaching of problem solving skills through the use of the Collaborative Problem Solving Approach in the previous session. We have not yet explored developing a Growth Mindset.

Growth Mindset

The following video provides a good introduction to the work of Psychologist Carol Dweck regarding a Growth Mindset.

Source: You Tube

The actions we can take to support children and young people to develop a Growth Mindset are as follows:

• Praise process instead of talent i.e. praise effort, strategy, persistence and progress/learning.
• Demonstrate that failure is part of learning e.g. use the language “not yet.”
• Teach about the how practising skills changes the structure of our brains.
• Convey the value of effort, learning and struggling with new things.
• Model all of the above with regard to our own learning.

We have found it useful to use the following videos with children and young people.

Source: Vimeo.com

Source: You Tube

Finally

Please click here for a self-review form if you would like to review your practice against the key messages from this session

I’ll end this session with two quotes:

“Children are invariably trying to solve a problem rather than be one. Their solutions are often misguided because their conception of the problem is faulty, or because their skills leave much to be desired (or both).”

Martin Herbert

“We need a plan so cunning that you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.”

Edmund Blackadder

Our cunning plan needs to include actions to teach the social and emotional skills not yet learned.

Source: dailymotion.com

I hope that you found this session useful. Please let me know how you get on by completing the feedback form below or email me with other feedback, questions, suggestions or examples of best practice to share at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com. I would especially welcome any recommendations re useful resources for teaching social and emotional skills that I will then share with a wider audience.

There will be another session of this course added to the website next Tuesday at

http://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/.

The plan for the topics of the next sessions of this course are:

• We need to talk about shame
• The right intervention at the right time

22nd June 2020

Signposting

If you would like more training regarding how best to support children and young people who have experienced trauma:

PACE+ Approach courses.

If you’d like to learn more from me (Ian) about evidence-based approaches and interventions to support children and young people who have experienced trauma, then sign up for a PACE+ course which I will be presenting online in the next academic year.

• • • The PACE+ Approach courses are 6 x 1.5hr sessions
    • There is an online course running in the Autumn term and another online course running in the Spring term
    • For more details and to book a place, visit our website www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/cpd-leadership/ click on the PACE+ Approach course you are interested in (as shown below).

• • • You can also find us search for us on Google: Sigma Teaching School
    • Follow us on twitter @ Sigma_TSA

If you would like to know more about effective ways of teaching Emotional Literacy (social and emotional skills):

• Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence a summary of which is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6MRsGwyMuQ
• Meta-analysis for the Department of Health at http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/39300/1/Mental_health_promotion_and_mental_illness_prevention(author).pdf
• Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) advice re teaching social and emotional skills at
  • https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/tools/guidance-reports/social-and-emotional-learning/ and
  • https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evidence-summaries/teaching-learning-toolkit/social-and-emotional-learning/

If you would like to explore some useful resources for teaching social and emotional skills to individual and small groups of pupils then you may want to take a look at some of the following:

• Karen Treisman’s books and other resources especially
  • Therapeutic treasure decks of grounding, soothing and regulating cards (really, I’m not on a commission)
  • Therapeutic treasure box for working with children and adolescents who have experienced trauma
  • Presley the pug
• Margot Sunderland’s books especially
  • Draw on your emotions
  • Draw on your relationships
• Kate Collins-Donelly’s books especially
  • Starving the anxiety gremlin
  • Starving the anger gremlin
• The feelings diary by Gillian Shotton
• Help I’ve an alarm bell going off in my head by K. Aspen
• Anger management: A practical guide by Adrian Faupel
• Apps
  • Universe of emotions
  • Think ninja
  • Chill panda
• Stories and films for metaphor work especially
  • Inside out
  • A monster calls
  • The hulk
  • Harry Potter
• For an example of exploring the key themes of the film Inside out see the following link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp71BH0UlvE

We Need to Talk About Shame

Part ten of understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma.

Introduction

Children and young people who have experienced trauma have a high likelihood of developing Toxic Shame which then acts as a significantly barrier for behaviour change.

The good news is that we can support these children and young people to overcome their Shield of Shame and this session will explore the strategies and approaches that we can use to achieve this.

As with the other sessions in this course the aims are:

1. To provide an overview of the key messages from research regarding what works for children and young people who have experienced trauma.
2. Provide an opportunity to reflect on your own practice with regard to these key messages (reassurance and ideally identifying actions to further develop your practice).
3. Signposting to other information.

And once again, as with other sessions, the approaches and interventions will be evidence-based; mostly from the fields of psychology and neuroscience. Some of the evidence-based approaches and interventions informed by the research are deceptively simple. They are, however, also enormously powerful in their impact.

What we will cover in this session:

• What we need to know about shame: The shield of shame
• What we need to do about shame: Vulnerability and the power of empathy
• Teaching children and young people about the neuroscience

I hope that you will find the session useful.

What we need to know about shame: The shield of shame

Shame is an intense emotion that makes us feel excruciatingly uncomfortable. Shame can, however, also be adaptive in that it can help us to learn socially acceptable behaviour and, therefore, develop relationships.

Shame v guilt:

• Shame =
  • Evaluation of the self – i.e. I am a bad person. There is something inherently wrong with me
  • Focus on self
  • Feeling worthless, powerless and unlovable – self orientated distress
  • Behavioural attempts to deny, hide or escape the situation – duck the heat
  • No behavioural change
• Guilt =
  • Evaluation of specific behaviour – i.e. I did something wrong
  • Focus on behaviour
  • Feeling regret and remorse – perspective taking (empathy)
  • Behavioural attempts to take reparative action, apologising or undoing – face the music
  • Behavioural change

Shame can become a particular challenge for children and young people who have experienced trauma. Shame is challenging for all of us and can become toxic shame for some which then becomes overwhelming. When a child or young person develops Toxic Shame:

• These children and young people have developed a self-image of being not enough, powerless and unworthy of love, connection and belonging.
• They then feel that they are about to be exposed as not enough at any moment and, therefore, rejected from the social connections.
• This feeling of shame is overwhelming and, as a result, these children and young people develop other strategies to shield themselves from the overwhelming pain of the shame. These strategies take the form of the shield of shame and can include (one or a combination of) the following defensive behaviours:
• Lying – “It wasn’t me.”
• Blaming someone else – “It wasn’t my fault this wouldn’t have happened if he/she hadn’t done…”
• Minimising – “It’s not a big deal. You’re making too much of an issue out of this.”
• Raging –
  • Externalised – “You always blame me!”
  • Internalised – “You’re right I’m useless/bad/unworthy.”

This can be represented by the Shield of Shame:

Source: Kim Goulding

Supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma to overcome toxic shame is very important as being prone to shame self-talk correlates with a number of negative outcomes including addiction, depression, bullying, violence, eating disorders and suicide. Whereas being prone to guilt self-talk is inversely correlated with these outcomes.

Source: You Tube

A call for self-compassion. “Let’s stop judging ourselves and others by unreal standards.” We need to recognise that we all make mistakes and can learn to make amends when we do.

What we need to do about shame: Vulnerability and the power of empathy

The good news is that the trauma-informed / relational approaches explored throughout this course are the key to support these children and young people to overcome toxic shame. In particular:

• Using cues of safety from Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory (see session one for more details)
• Rebuilding trust from Dan Hughes’ PACE Approach (see session two for more details)
• Using the 4Rs from Bruce Perry’s Neurosequential Model (see session seven for more details)
• Teaching the social and emotional skills not yet learned (see session nine for more details)

We can unintentionally trigger the shield of shame and reinforce the children and young people’s defensive behaviours. To support children and young people who have experienced trauma we need to be on the look out for the shield of shame being triggered and adapt our approaches and interventions to attune to the needs of the child or young person in that moment.

Neuroscientist Stephen Porges (The Polyvagal Theory guy) describes this as ‘titrating’ our support into doses that are manageable for the child/young person.

Therapist and Teacher Louise Bomber reminds us that we need to regularly “press the pause button and be curious” both about what is happening for us and for the child/young person we are supporting. We need to consider what the interaction is communicating both through the word content and equally importantly the non-verbal elements of the communication (which is a more accurate communicator of the person’s physiological state). Louise suggests that we need to assess and attune our interventions depending on the child/young person’s responses and be prepared to move backwards and forwards through the 4Rs in a needs led way. Louise represents this in the following way:

Psychologist Kim Golding summarises this in the following table:

A longer video now (but it is well worth it) from the fabulous Shame Researcher Brené Brown.

Source: You Tube

“Shame cannot survive being spoken. Shame requires you to believe you are alone to maintain its power. The antidote to shame is empathy. If you put shame in a petri dish and dowse it with three things it will grow exponentially – secrecy, silence and judgement. However, if you dowse shame with empathy you have created an environment which is hostile to shame. If you don’t think you’re alone you can’t stay in shame.”

Brené Brown also makes reference to the work of Researcher Theresa Wiseman which is summarised in the following short video which we also watched in session two of this course (you’ll recognise the voice behind the animation).

Source: You Tube

“What makes something better is connection.”

We need to support the child or young person to:

• Feel connected (not to feel alone) by providing an empathetic response and not rushing too quickly to either reassurance or problem solving (although both reassurance and problem solving may be very useful as part of our support following on from connection through empathy).
• Feel safe enough to be able to be vulnerable (admit to mistakes/struggles and accept help) and, therefore, take responsibility for his/her actions.
• Be supported to make amends for any harm done by his/her behaviour (repair).

We need to help a child or young person to manage his/her shame adaptively i.e. moving from shame to guilt and, therefore, the following steps:

1. Admit to doing something wrong through providing connection (safety and trust) to be able to be vulnerable enough to be curious and, therefore, experience empathy for the other person.
2. Take responsibility for the effects of our actions (feel guilt and remorse).
3. Making amends for the harm done (reparation and behavioural change).

Vulnerability = creating an environment in which people are able to feel safe enough to ask for help and to admit when they’ve made a mistake. Without vulnerability people will feel the need to lie, hide the truth and fake it. Being vulnerable requires courage.

We need to start by practising empathy to see what is going on for the child or young person i.e. being concerned about the child or young person and not just about his/her behaviour. Louise Bomber would describe this as ‘starting where the child or young person is at.’ I’ll illustrate this with an example. When we find our self in a position where we need to talk with a child or young person about a behavioural incident we can say either:

• “That behaviour is unacceptable and it needs to change.” (evaluation instead of empathy) or
• “Are you ok? I’m worried about you. What’s going on?” (empathy instead of evaluation)

The response which starts with empathy is necessary practice for children and young people who have experienced trauma and good practice for all children and young people.

This does not mean that the child or young person will not be face the music. They will be supported to reflect and learn from their mistakes which could include consequences and/or changes to the learning environment to prevent the child or young person from repeatedly failing whilst they are in the process of learning new skills (see session nine of this course for more detail).

The message we need to give is “You are a great person and you made a mistake”, we need to communicate that children and young people are safe enough to find the courage to be vulnerable and remember that every interaction we have communicates the culture of our organisation.

All of the above begins with compassion (both compassion for others and self-compassion). Compassion is the foundation for empathy. This requires effort and reflective practice from us as adults. Theologian Henri Nouwen powerfully writes, ‘Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to places where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.’

Teaching children and young people about the neuroscience

Teaching children and young people about the neuroscience of being human can help them to better understand themselves and potentially support them to move from feelings of shame to curiosity and vulnerability. It can help them to feel that their physiological responses are ‘normal’, that they are enough and empower them to make changes. We need to teach children and young people about:

• The neuroscience of physiological states (see session one of this course). Stephen Porges describes this as providing a ‘handbook of the human condition.’
• The shield of shame
• Emotions and learning to manage emotions

Below I have referenced a few resources that we have found useful to teach children and young people about the neuroscience of being human.

Panda’s window of tolerance explained (we watched this in the first session of this course).

Source: You Tube

Stress on the brain rap from a group of very talented young people from Islington.

Source: You Tube

Building core capabilities for life.

Source: You Tube

An animated video from Mental Health services in Norway about our feelings.

Source: You Tube

Use of the play or film A Monster Calls with older young people to explore the impact of shame, feeling alone and eventually being able to speak about the shameful thoughts with a trusted other. See the trailer for the film below (if you haven’t seen the film then, without wanting to become a sofa correspondent (“Hello to Jason Isaacs”) then I’d recommend it).

Source: You Tube

Simply teaching and regularly referring to the representation of our different physiological states using the concentric circle representation. Click here for a copy. I keep this on the wall of my office for reference in my teaching both proactively and reactively with children and young people and adults (see session nine of this course for further details).

Please let me know if you find creative ways to use these resources or if you have found other useful resources to achieve this and I will share them more widely (see my email address below).

Finally

Please click here for a self review based on Brené Brown’s  checklist of giving constructive feedback.

The checklist is based on the following.

Source: Brené Brown

We need to take actions to help children and young people to:

• Believe that they are worthy of love, belonging and connection.
• Feel safe enough in their relationship with us to be vulnerable.
• Know that they are enough.
• Empower them to know that they are able to make changes (more on this in the next session of this course re the right intervention at the right time).

This is summarised in the following video (again from the wonderful Brené Brown).

Source: You Tube

“Shame is the fear of disconnection. The fear of not being worthy of connection.”

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of joy, creativity, belonging and love.”

“Connection is why we are here. It brings purpose and meaning to our lives. This is what it is all about.”

What is your current physiological state

Source: Brené Brown

Connection leading to vulnerability, vulnerability leading to curiosity, curiosity leading to empathy, empathy leading to guilt, guilt leading to remorse and remorse leading to behaviour change is illustrated in an entertaining way in this short sketch from Mitchell and Webb.

Source: You Tube

I hope that you found this session useful. Please let me know how you get on by completing the feedback form below or email me with other feedback, questions, suggestions or examples of best practice to share at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com.

Session Eleven of this course will be added to the website next Tuesday which will focus on the right intervention at the right time. You be able to find this by visiting:

http://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/.

30th June 2020

Signposting

PACE+ Approach courses.

If you have found these sessions useful and would like to learn more about the evidence-based approaches and interventions that we have started to explore then sign up for a PACE+ course which I will be presenting online in the next academic year.

• The PACE+ Approach courses are 6 x 1.5hr sessions
• There is an online course running in the Autumn term and another online course running in the Spring term
• For more details and to book a place, visit our website www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/cpd-leadership/ click on the PACE+ Approach course you are interested in (as shown below).

• You can also find us search for us on Google: Sigma Teaching School
• Follow us on twitter @ Sigma_TSA

More from Brené Brown (I think we would all benefit from more Brené Brown in our lives):

• Listening to shame TED talk at https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame?language=en
• Daring Greatly book
• https://brenebrown.com/daringclassrooms/

More on shame in children and young people who have experienced trauma:

• Chapter three in Kim Golding’s book Everyday parenting with security and love
• Betsy de Thierry’s book The simple guide to understanding shame in children

Two additional webinars

Part eleven of understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma.

This session offers you the opportunity to listen to two additional webinar recordings which were commissioned by Whole School SEND / NASEN. The webinars provide a summary of some of the content from the earlier sessions in this course.

In each of the webinars Erica Wolstenholme, South West Regional Lead for Whole School SEND, talks with Ian Hunkin about Returning to school and making use of trauma-informed approaches. The webinars were paid for by the DfE and are hosted by Whole School SEND / NASEN.

Webinar One

The first webinar focuses on the transformative power of feeling safe and what about when it goes wrong. To listen to the first recorded webinar please click here.

Webinar Two

The second webinar focuses on rebuilding trust and the importance of our own wellbeing. To listen to the second recorded webinar please click here.

These webinars are part of a series of three and if you missed the first of the trilogy then you can listen to a recording of this by selecting session eight of this free online course. Click here for Session Eight.

I hope that you found these webinars useful. Please let me know your feedback by completing the form below or by emailing me at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com.

There will be a twelfth session added to the website next Tuesday and will focus on The right intervention at the right time.

8th July 2020

Signposting

I have been asked by a number of colleagues from schools about recommended reading, therefore, please see some options that you may want to consider below.

If you like to know more about the PACE Approach:

• Website – https://ddpnetwork.org/about-ddp/meant-pace/
• Video of Dan Hughes explaining PACE – Google: Dan Hughes The child who mistrusts good care
• Free online CPD session re PACE – http://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/#tab-id-2
• Books from Dan Hughes. He’s written lots and they’re all excellent but none are specific to schools. Healing Relational Trauma with Attachment-Focused Interventions has a great intro to PACE. However, the most accessible book re PACE is from Kim Golding – Everyday parenting with security and love (a great introduction to PACE but again written for parents/carers so needs adapting).

If you’d like to know more about the Polyvagal Theory:

• Video of Stephen Porges’ son Seth introducing the Polyvagal Theory – Google: Seth Porges the Polyvagal Theory
• Free online CPD session re Polyvagal Theory – http://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/#tab-id-1
• Book from Stephen Porges – The pocket guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The transformative power of feeling safe

If you’d like more from Louise Bomber:

• Website – https://touchbase.org.uk/
• Latest book – Know me to teach me
• Other great books – Inside I’m Hurting and What About Me?

If you’d like more from Karen Treisman:

• A great video – Google: Karen Treisman Good relationships are the key to healing trauma
• Fabulous resource of cards for teaching physiological regulation activities – A therapeutic treasure deck of grounding, soothing and regulating cards

If you’d like more on your own wellbeing:

• Website (including monthly wellbeing action calendars) – https://www.actionforhappiness.org/
• Free online CPD session re your own wellbeing and organisational care – http://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/#tab-id-3
• Free online CPD session re Mindfulness – http://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/#tab-id-4
• Mindfulness website – https://www.headspace.com/

Other fabulous related books:

• Bruce Perry ‘Born for Love’
• Brené Brown ‘Daring Greatly’
• Charlie Mackesy ‘The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse’

I hope that’s useful. I’d also welcome hearing your reading recommendations too. Happy reading.

PACE+ Approach courses.

If you’d like to learn more from me (Ian) about evidence-based approaches and interventions to support children and young people who have experienced trauma, then sign up for a PACE+ course which I will be presenting online in the next academic year.

• The PACE+ Approach courses are 6 x 1.5hr sessions
• There is an online course running in the Autumn term and another online course running in the Spring term
• For more details and to book a place, visit our website www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/cpd-leadership/ click on the PACE+ Approach course you are interested in (as shown below).

• You can also find us search for us on Google: Sigma Teaching School
• Follow us on twitter @ Sigma_TSA

The Right Intervention at the Right Time

Part twelve of understanding and supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma.

Introduction

In order to best support a child or young person who has experienced trauma we need to match our approaches and interventions to his/her individual needs. This session will focus on ways in which we can helpfully understand these individual needs and therefore target our support effectively.

The good news is that the Trauma Recovery Model provides us with a very useful framework for tailoring evidence-based interventions to the individual needs of each child or young person. This means that, rather than interventions being a scatter-gun of short term efforts to address different symptoms we strive to understand the causes of the behaviours and target ways of meeting these needs in a co-ordinated way.

As with the other sessions in this course the aims are:

1. To provide an overview of the key messages from research regarding what works for children and young people who have experienced trauma.
2. Provide an opportunity to reflect on your own practice with regard to these key messages (reassurance and ideally identifying actions to further develop your practice).
3. Signposting to other information.

And once again, as with other sessions, the approaches and interventions will be evidence-based; mostly from the fields of psychology and neuroscience. Some of the evidence-based approaches and interventions informed by the research are deceptively simple. They are, however, also enormously powerful in their impact.

What we will cover in this session:

• A reminder of what we have already covered re assessment of needs in the earlier sessions of this course
• The Trauma Recovery Model
• Building on successes
• Taking actions for our own wellbeing

I hope that you will find this session useful.

A reminder of what we have already covered re assessment of needs in the earlier sessions of this course

Prior to exploring the Trauma Recovery Model and its adaptation for schools I will briefly remind you of the context from earlier sessions in this course with regard to matching our approaches and interventions to the child or young person’s individual needs.

Throughout the course we have emphasised a relational approach in order to be both trauma-informed and trauma reducing. In particular, the emphasis has been on building trust and taking actions to support children and young people to feel safe. The research is very clear that we do not have a choice to make between focusing on relationships or on learning – our children and young people need us to focus on both relationships and learning. Without both trust and feelings of safety learning simply will not be able to happen as pictorially represented below.

The requirement to have trust and to feel safe for learning to take place is true for all of us (children and adults). Children and young people who have experienced trauma are less likely to have trust and feel safe and, therefore, we will need to intentionally take actions to support building trust and felt safety for these children and young people in order for them to then be able to learn (see sessions one and two of this course for more details).

In addition, in a previous session of this course we explored the assessment and teaching of the social and emotional skills not yet learned (see session nine of this course). In order to help children and young people who have experienced trauma we need to rebuild a trusting relationship and then teach the social and emotional skills not yet learned through this relationship. This is represented in the equation below.

We have also explored the importance of attuning our interventions to start where the child or young person is and to continuously assess and re-attune throughout our interactions depending on the child’s/young person’s responses whilst being prepared to move backwards and forwards through the 4Rs (Regulate, Relate, Reflect and Repair) in a needs led way (see sessions seven and ten of this course for more details). Therapist and Teacher Louise Bomber represents this in the following way:

Source: Louise Bomber

The assessment of needs summarised above are built into the Trauma Recovery Model i.e.

1. A relational approach that focuses on building trust and felt safety for children and young people who do not yet have these.
2. Assessing and teaching the social and emotional skills not yet learned through the relationships we establish.
3. Attuning our interventions throughout our interactions in response to the child or young person’s needs.

The Trauma Recovery Model

The Trauma Recovery Model provides us with a framework to match our approaches and interventions to the individual needs of each child or young person.

The Trauma Recovery Model was developed by Psychologist Tricia Skuse and Social Worker and Criminologist Jonny Matthew for young people with complex needs in the Youth Justice Service. The aim of the Trauma Recovery Model is to avoid interventions being a ‘scatter-gun of short term efforts to address different symptoms we strive to understand the causes of behaviour and target these in a co-ordinated way’ i.e. to ensure that we provide the right intervention at the right time.

The Trauma Recovery Model:

• Supports us to look beyond the presenting behaviours by the child or young person to understand and meet the needs behind the behaviours.
• Provides a framework upon which practical, evidence-based interventions can be tailored to individual needs and sequentially applied.
• This means that, rather than interventions being a scatter-gun of short term efforts to address different symptoms we strive to understand the causes of behaviours and target ways of meeting these needs in a co-ordinated way.
• Series of layers of intervention that are sequenced according to the child or young person’s needs.

If interventions are sequenced appropriately, this can ensure the most effective and efficient use of available resources, as well as maximising the opportunities for children and young people to succeed in the longer term.

The focus should be on a relational approach to mediate the impact of trauma before cognitive interventions can be effective. It is not until young people have successfully negotiated the first two layers of the model that they feel safe enough, perhaps for the first time, to begin to think about and articulate and address what has happened in the past.

The Trauma Recovery Model is represented by the diagram below:

Source: Tricia Skuse and Jonny Matthew

If you would like more detail about the application of the Trauma Recovery Model in the Youth Justice System then see the signposting section at the end of this article.

I have translated the Trauma Recovery Model into a framework to use in schools by identifying a number of personalised pathways matched to individual needs.

Each child or young person can be assessed to identify which of the four pathways best matches his/her current individual needs and then appropriate interventions and approaches for that pathway can be identified and enacted. The lower levels of the pyramid need to be securely achieved as foundations for the higher levels to be built upon. The aim is to support children and young people to progress up through the pathways by providing the right intervention at the right time.

A more detailed version of the Trauma Recovery Model Pathways for schools can be accessed by clicking here.

In this more detailed version you have the descriptions of a range of presenting behaviours within the pyramid, underlying needs on the right hand side and potential interventions and approaches to match to the individual needs on the left hand side.

I’d invite you to try the following activity:

1. Think of a specific child or young person whom you are supporting.
2. Look at the descriptions of presenting behaviours on the pyramid, start at the bottom of the pyramid and work your way up until you identify which of the boxes is the closest match to the child or young person you are thinking about.
3. Then look at the corresponding underlying needs / unmet needs on the right hand side (i.e. those parallel to the best fit box). It is an important stage of reflecting upon how best to meet the needs of a child or young person to consider what these needs are and, although that sounds obvious, these needs often get overlooked in our rush to do something about the behaviours. We are looking to identify the underlying needs that he/she is trying to meet with his/her limited social and emotional skills.
4. Finally, then look at the corresponding evidenced-based approaches and interventions on the left hand side (i.e. again those that are parallel to the best fit box). This list of evidence-based approaches and interventions provides the opportunity to consider which of these actions are already in place and other actions which could usefully be taken to better meet the needs not yet met. The lists of approaches and intervention are not intended to be a checklist with all of these actions being necessarily required for each individual child or young person. However, they do provide a useful tool for reflection re which evidence-based approaches and interventions could be tailored to best meet his/her current needs.

Tricia Skuse and Jonny Matthew additionally emphasise three essential qualities of our support as a key part of the Trauma Recovery Model:

1. Respect
2. Optimism
3. Perseverance

Jonny Matthew writes the following in his book Working with Troubled Children and Teenagers, ‘If young people can feel that we aren’t judging them but, on the contrary, that we accept them as they are, then there’s a hope that they will feel safe enough to trust us. If we afford children and young people the respect of acceptance, then we’re on our way to real change. Demanding conformity doesn’t work. Acceptance and trust come first. Only then can we help children and young people to change their behaviour.’

He encourages us to ‘cultivate curiosity’ about young people by being determined to get beyond the superficial and understand each individual. Curiosity will lead to compassion and compassion to empathy. He encourages us to:

• Think about the kinds of emotions his/her experiences might have left him/her with.
• Ask ourselves how we might have felt if X had happened to us.
• Then ask ourselves how it might have felt if we didn’t have our support network, our friends and our colleagues to fall back on.

As key adults in the child or young person’s life we need to bring hope and optimism for the future. Tricia Skuse and Jonny Matthew describe optimism as a ‘foundational belief underpinning the Trauma Recovery Model.’ Optimism is built upon the key belief that children and young people are redeemable, that their behaviours can change and that they can have a positive future.

Supporting children and young people who have experienced trauma requires perseverance. Children and young people whose needs are best represented by the engagement/re-engagement pathway (the base of the Trauma Recovery pyramid) desperately need us to build a trusting relationship with them, however, even when we use the evidenced-based strategies this is likely to be a lengthy process. Sometimes it can take dozens of missed appointments to get a few seconds of contact and even more attempts to get a genuine interaction. However, the trusting relationship that we build with the child or young person through persevering with respectful and optimistic interactions has the power to make a significant difference to the child or young person both now and in his/her future. 

As Jonny Matthew states, “Whether or not young people believe that we care will affect pretty much everything we do with or for them. Trust will only be established if we genuinely care.”

Building on successes

Children and young people who have experienced trauma will need help from us to recognise the progress that they are making. Solution-Focused Approaches provide us with some really useful tools to help us to achieve this. Solution-Focused Approaches can be summarised as making use of the following:

• Problem free talk – if we are to establish and maintain a helping relationship with a child or young person then some of our interactions will need to involve being curious about the lives of the child/young person and not always about his/her problems e.g. “How did your art session go?”
• Exceptions – focusing on times when the problem behaviours have not occurred or are less frequent or severe can be very useful in recognising progress with the child or young person and better understanding the issues e.g. “It sounds like music is often a good lesson for you? What is it that works well in music?”
• Scales – scaling questions are fabulous. I use these frequently as they are a quick way to engage someone in a respectful, optimistic and future orientated conversation. Again, these are a really helpful way of recognising progress with the child or young person and better understanding the issues as well as planning for the next steps e.g. “On a scale of 1 to 10 how is your day going so far? What has gone well so far for it to be X and not lower? What could we do to make it one point higher on the scale by the end of the day?” or “On a scale of 1 to 10 how calm did you feel before and after the relaxation technique we have just tried together?” or “The last time we met you said that school was a 5. How has it been this week? What is different?”
• Preferred futures – traditionally this involves asking the miracle question i.e. If a miracle happened what would change? I have worked with colleagues who have been able to use this technique with significant success. However, for me the miracle question often takes me down a less helpful cul-de-sac (e.g. “You’d be dead Ian and then I wouldn’t have to sit here and answer these questions!” or “My Mum and dad wouldn’t have split up.”). Instead I ask preferred future questions using scales which work better for me e.g. “What would an 8 look like? What would need to happen to achieve this?”
• Coping talk – is another useful technique e.g. “That sounds really difficult. How are you coping?” Coping talk can also be combined with scales (did I mention that I love scales!) e.g. “On a scale of 1 to 10 how well did you cope with that stressful situation? What made it a 4 and not lower? What could we do next time to make it a 5 or 6?”
• Motivational Challenges – strictly this isn’t a Solution-Focused Approach, however, it fits really well alongside the approaches described above. Motivational Challenge is simply asking the child or young person what action he/she can take to make the next improvement to his/her learning e.g. “What could you do now to make it even better?” or “This looks like a piece of work that we could add to your Wow Book (see explanation of Wow Books later in this section of the article). Is there anything we could do to improve it further?”

The power of using scaling questions in order to support others to identify the best way forward is demonstrated in the following video by Therapist Mark Tyrrell. Mark is using scaling questions to explore a client’s pain and feelings of low mood and anxiety but I’m sure that you will be able to see how you could adapt these questions to explore a different issue with children and young people.

Source: You Tube

Children and young people who have experienced trauma often have developed Learned Helplessness – a belief that he/she is not capable of overcoming difficulties. This is often combined with low self-esteem (low confidence and self-worth), a negative self-image (a view of themselves as being bad, deficient and/or undeserving) and low self-efficacy (a belief that he/she cannot enact changes or impact positively on his/her own outcomes). As a result, children and young people who have experienced trauma tend to also:

• Think in all or nothing ways
• Feel helpless to enact changes
• Feel hopeless about an improved future

Scaling questions can be a very effective way of working with children and young people to support a shift overtime away from Learned Helplessness to develop higher Self-Efficacy (the belief that his/her actions will have an impact on outcomes). Use of scaling questions provide us with the opportunity to work with the child or young person to support him/her to:

• Move the dialogue on from being all or nothing (ten or zero / perfect or disastrous) to more realistic gradations of life experience
• Recognise progress
• Link progress to his/her actions
• Agree the best way forward / next steps with him/her
• Agree ways of supporting him/her to achieve the agreed next steps

Supporting children and young people to recognise and build upon their progress will additionally help him/her to develop a Growth Mindset (see session nine of this course for more details re a Growth Mindset). For example, if someone says that they have progressed from a 5 to a 6 we can explore what made it a 5 and not lower and, also, what has happened for the progress to a 6. Then perhaps how we can build upon this to achieve a 7.

Scales are fabulous – if you don’t use them already then I’d encourage you to give them a go.

Additionally, children and young people who have experienced trauma will often require us to have concrete evidence of successes and progress. Without these they may dismiss them or even deny that they ever happened as they may not fit with his/her self-image. Keeping evidence of successes and progress provides us with a useful resource that we can refer to when supporting the child or young person to build upon successes. These records of evidence can usefully include photographs of the child or young person being successful in activities as well as pieces of work to remember and celebrate. Ideally these become part of our school culture (e.g. we called them Wow Books) and they can be shared by the child or young person with a range of key adults. The good news is that this is a very effective way of impacting positively on self-esteem, self-image and self-efficacy. Thinking about Wow Books always brings a smile to my face as it reminds me of many wonderful conversations that I have had with children and young people as I am curious whilst they proudly share their successes with me.

Building on our own successes: At this point I would like to invite you to complete a solution-focused review of your own practice to support children and young people who have experienced trauma (you won’t be surprised that I’ve included some scaling questions in the self-review) which can be found here.

If you would like the opportunity to learn more about evidence-based approaches and interventions to be able to continue to improve your support for children and young people who have experienced trauma then please come to one of my online PACE+ courses – see details in the signposting section at the end of this article.

Taking actions for our own wellbeing

Looking after our own wellbeing and that of our colleagues is essential practice if we are to provide the secure base that children and young people who have experienced trauma need us to be.

As we approach the summer break after what has been an extraordinary few months with the pandemic it is even more important than usual (can it be more important than essential?) that we take action to look after our own wellbeing.

We have all been working exceptionally hard to be trauma-informed and trauma reducing. As informed by the neuroscience we have been taking actions to try to make the stress for everyone in our school communities as predictable, moderate and controllable as we can.

Source: Bruce D. Perry

And, again as informed by the neuroscience, we have been providing the necessary relational support to the children and young people in our care.

My question to you is: Have we also been taking trauma-informed and trauma reducing actions for ourselves?

I have had the privilege to work with thousands of fabulous colleagues throughout my career and one of the themes that has emerged is how good people are at considering and meeting the needs of everyone in their care whilst, in addition, not always being as attentive as we need to be to our own needs.

There is a danger that we are reaching the end of this school year feeling like this.

Or perhaps like this.

Source: Pixabay

I would, therefore, encourage you to prioritise taking a break from work and to intentionally take actions for your own wellbeing both during the approaching school holiday and as you return to work in the new academic year.

The following recorded webinar provides an overview of the evidence-based actions that each of us can take in order to look after our own wellbeing. Click here to watch the webinar.

If you would like to complete the self-review re your own wellbeing (as referenced in the webinar) then you can access that here.

At the base of the Trauma Recovery Model approaches and interventions is the necessary action for all adults involved in supporting the children and young people to work together with effective self-care and support networks. We need to remember that self-care is not selfish. As Louise Bomber reminds us, “We need to put our own emotional oxygen masks on first.” For more detail on evidence-based self-care and organisational care see session three of this course.

Finally

I’d like to end this session by returning to where we started twelve sessions ago – with the TED Talk from Psychologist Karen Treisman. Therefore, to remind ourselves that, “Relationships are the most powerful mental health intervention known to mankind.”

A quote from Tricia Skuse and Jonny Matthew:

“Interventions that work towards repairing young people’s relatedness to others are necessarily crucial to the way forward.”

And a couple of quotes from Psychiatrist and Neuroscientist Bruce Perry from his book Born for Love:

‘My experience, as well as research, suggests that the most important healing experiences in the lives of children do not occur in therapy itself. All the children who ultimately thrived following our treatment did so because of a strong social network that surrounded and supported them.’

‘What maltreated and traumatised children most need is a healthy community to buffer the pain, distress and loss caused by their earlier trauma. What works to heal them is anything that increases the number and quality of a child’s relationships. What helps is consistent, patient, repetitive loving care.’

I hope that you have found this session and the previous sessions of this course useful. As always I’d welcome your feedback either by completing the form below or by emailing me at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com.

If you have found the sessions useful and you would like to learn more about evidence-based approaches and interventions to be able to continue to improve your support for children and young people who have experienced trauma then please come to one of my online PACE+ courses – see details in the signposting section below.

I would like to take the opportunity to wish you a fabulous break away from work for at least some part of the summer holidays.

21st July 2020

Signposting

For more information from Tricia Skuse and Jonny Matthew re the Trauma Recovery Model click here and turn to page 16 of the journal or explore Jonny’s website at https://jonnymatthew.com/.

If you’d like to learn more from me (Ian) about evidence-based approaches and interventions to support children and young people who have experienced trauma, then sign up for a PACE+ course which I will be presenting online in the next academic year.

• The PACE+ Approach courses are 6 x 1.5hr sessions
• There is an online course running in the Autumn term and another online course running in the Spring term
• For more details and to book a place, visit our website

www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/cpd-leadership/ click on the PACE+ Approach course you are interested in (as shown below).

You can also find us by searching on Google: Sigma Teaching School

Or follow us on twitter @ Sigma_TSA

Mission Possible: A Summary of the Key Messages from Neuroscience and Psychology re Supporting Children and Young People in the New Normal

Introduction

I have been asked by colleagues from a significant number of schools to provide a summary of the key evidence-based actions that we can take to support children and young people in the new normal. Staff have asked ideally for an overview which can be read in an hour or less with a favourite beverage. What follows is my attempt to provide a summary of the key messages from neuroscience and psychology re the practical actions that we can take to support children and young people at this extraordinary time. Given that the following article is a summary I hope that you find it useful and, additionally, that it will leave you wanting to find our more. The signposting section at the end of the article is, therefore, designed to point you in the direction of further useful information and resources.

The following summary covers:

• Understanding the impact of trauma
• Providing relational support
• The four cornerstones of a trauma-informed approach
  • The transformative power of feeling safe
  • Focusing on trust as well as learning
  • Taking actions to make stress as predictable, moderate and controllable as we can
  • The importance of our own wellbeing
• Conclusion
• Signposting

Understanding the impact of trauma

I am not suggesting that we are all going to be traumatised by the current situation with the pandemic, however, we will all be affected and some of us will be traumatised. It is, therefore, an opportunity for us to review our practices in order to become even more trauma-reducing for everyone and trauma-informed for those who need these approaches the most. The approaches and interventions described in this article are essential practice for children and young people who have been traumatised and they are also good practice for all children and young people.

It is helpful for us to understand that trauma has a physiological impact as well as a psychological impact. The neuroscience is very clear that, when we experience stress which is unpredictable, extreme and prolonged (especially in the absence of relational support) then we are likely to develop a sensitised stress response and a reduced window of tolerance. This results in us being more likely to be involuntarily and subconsciously pushed outside of our open and engaged physiological state into a defensive autonomic nervous state (either fight/flight or freeze/collapse). This is significant as we need to be in our open and engaged physiological state in order to be able to successfully interact pro-socially with others, feel good, stay healthy and to learn. How we perceive and interact with the world depends upon our physiological state:

• Open and engaged (feeling safe) – we are calm and connected and, therefore, able to socialise, reflect, use our problem solving abilities, behave flexibly, be curious, have the capacity to learn and be healthy.
• Fight/flight (defensive mobilisation) – we behave in a way which is chaotic, oppositional, controlling, our cortex is offline, middle ear muscles tighten (limiting our capacity to distinguish the human voice from other background sounds) and we are mobilised with alarm.
• Freeze/collapse (defensive immobilisation) – we behave in a way which is rigid, withdrawn, dissociated, inaccessible, numb and we are immobilised with terror.

Our physiological state underpins how we perceive and interact with the world as represented by the iceberg diagram above from Complete Coherence. We need to support the children and young people in our care to be in their open and engaged state (the green person in the image below) for as much of the time as is possible.

All of us can be pushed outside of our window of tolerance for brief periods of time into a fight/flight or freeze/collapse physiological state, however, people who have been traumatised are more likely to spend their time oscillating between a freeze/collapsed state and a fight/flight state with only limited time in their open and engaged state.

The following short video explains the window of tolerance through the metaphor of Panda’s river of life.

Source: You Tube

The good news is that repeated experiences of predictable, moderate and controllable stress alongside relational support will not only help the child or young person at the time of stress but will, over time, support him/her to                re-expand his/her window of tolerance, to return from a sensitised stress response to a more neurotypical stress response and to build resilience.

Providing relational support

The most important ingredient to being trauma-informed and trauma-reducing is relational support. Once again psychology and neuroscience help to inform us how we can be most effective in providing this relational support. In order to support children and young people to avoid and/or recover from trauma we need to provide what Psychiatrist and Neuroscientist Bruce Perry calls ‘Relational Buffering’ to the stressful situation. In particular, we need to provide relational support that helps children and young people to feel safe and that builds trust. This relational support needs to be proactive, as well as reactive at times of difficulty, so that the protective factors of connection, belonging and community are in place. As represented in the picture below if we do not focus on the relational elements of trust and safety then learning simply will not be able to take place. The messages from neuroscience are very clear: it is not a choice between focusing on relationships (in particular trust and safety) or learning. Our pupils will need us to focus on trust, safety and learning. Trust and safety are two of the cornerstones of a trauma-informed approach. I will, therefore, explore these in more detail below.

Being trauma-informed and trauma-reducing really is about: Relationships, Relationships, Relationships!

We need to focus on relationships as well as focusing on learning and, in particular, we need to provide experiences of trust and safety through relational support.

The transformative power of feeling safe

Feeling safe transforms how we perceive and interact with the world. As summarised in the earlier section of this article, when we are able to remain in our open and engaged physiological state (i.e. feeling safe and not defensive) then we are able to socialise, reflect, use our problem solving abilities, behave flexibly, be curious, have the capacity to learn and be healthy.

The question, therefore, becomes – how do we support children and young people to feel safe? Once again neuroscience has the answers. Children and young people who have experienced trauma will have a much narrower window of tolerance which, like all of us, will reduce even further when we are in stressful situations. We can support a child or young person to remain within their window of tolerance by creating an environment which feels as safe as possible for them. Children and young people who have experienced trauma have a higher threshold for feeling safe and we need to intentionally provide cues of safety through our interactions with them.

The research of Neuroscientist Stephen Porges (The Polyvagal Theory) demonstrates that a significant element of feeling safe comes from the interactions with the people around us. Porges’ research identifies that one of the most significant factors in feeling safe is scanning the people around us for signs of safety or threat (Neuroception). We all subconsciously scan (this is a function of our Amygdala in the Limbic System of our brain) the other people in our environment to identify cues of threat or cues of safety. We, therefore, need to be aware of the cues that we are transmitting and make a conscious effort to intentionally increase the cues of safety and, most powerfully of all, the non-verbal elements of our communication i.e.

• Smiling faces as opposed to flat facial expression.
• Prosody (‘sing song’ intonation) in our voices rather than monotone.
• Large, welcoming and open gestures and body language.

The idea of smiling, having prosody in our voice and welcoming gestures sounds simple, however, achieving this requires self-awareness and practice. These important non-verbal communications of safety to others become even more difficult to achieve in such uncertain and extraordinary times of the ‘new normal.’ We will, therefore, return to this later in this article when we consider the importance of our own wellbeing.

Providing cues of safety through our interactions – especially the nonverbal elements of our communication (smiling, prosody in our tone of voice and open gestures) has a significant impact on supporting others to feel safe. When we feel safe we are able to remain within our window of tolerance (in an open and engaged physiological state) where we can behave flexibly, interact socially and learn.

We also need to have a plan of what we are going to do and how we are going to do it for when things go wrong for a child or young person and he/she starts to feel unsafe (defensive) i.e. our reactive relational support. Psychiatrist and Neuroscientist Bruce Perry reminds us that in these situations we need to support a child or young person to physiologically regulate, then to relate and only then to reflect and possibly engage in repair to the situation (The Neurosequential Model or 4Rs Approach). We need to provide our reactive relational support in the following order:

1. Regulate
2. Relate
3. Reflect
4. Repair

If we try to engage a child or young person to reflect or repair when they are not yet physiologically regulated or feeling safe through relational connection then he/she will not have the capacity to engage positively in the process and this is when incidents can escalate. Until he/she is physiologically regulated the areas of the brain required to engage in reflecting, reasoning and problem solving (the Cortex) are effectively offline as represented below.

We need to learn to recognise if a child or young person is not yet physiologically regulated and to support them to regulate before moving to the next stages of our planned support. When we feel unsafe and are triggered into a defensive state (fight/flight or freeze/collapse) then one of the most effective ways of returning to our open and engaged state (felt safety) is to spend ‘time-in’ co-regulating with a trusted adult. This involves time in the presence of a regulated (calm) person.

On some occasions, supporting a child to move from physiological dysregulation to regulation will require more than simply the presence of a regulated and trusted adult. On these occasions either breathing and/or somatosensory activities with the trusted adult will be required. The most effective ways to support someone to regulate are ‘bottom up’ brain activities which calm the lower areas of our brains (the Brainstem and Limbic System). As referenced in the earlier section of this article research demonstrates that the three following actions are the most effective interventions to calm someone’s physiological regulation (ideally these will have been practised prior to this reactive / emergency use of these approaches):

1. Breathing – deep and even breathing and, in particular, a slower/elongated outbreath (e.g. 7-11 breathing. Breathing in to the count of 7 and out to the count of 11).
2. Somatosensory activities – rhythmic physical and sensory activities to calm, sooth and ground our bodies (e.g. tensing and relaxing our muscles, repeated rhythmic movements or ‘grounding’ by focusing on what we can see and hear in the present moment).
3. Social connection – relational regulation (e.g. a check-in / ‘time-in’ with a trusted adult).

I’ll return to these physiological regulating activities later in this article.

Trainer and Therapist Louise Bomber, in her latest book Know me to teach me, represents this staged 4Rs approach (Regulate, Relate, Reflect and Repair) in the picture below and suggests that we attune our support to the needs of the child or young person in that moment of interaction with them – moving backwards and forwards through the 4Rs as necessary.

It is these experiences of feeling safe in social interactions and co-regulating to return to an open and engaged state that, when experienced repeatedly over time, support children and young people who have experienced trauma to return to a neurotypical stress response (as opposed to a sensitised stress response). Children and young people learn to self-regulate through these repeated experiences of co-regulation.

We can support a child or young person to expand their window of tolerance (increase resilience and reduce vulnerability) by:

• Providing repeated experiences of ‘relational buffering’ (co-regulation with a trusted adult) in response to situations that the child or young person finds stressful.
• Providing experiences of joy/play in a safe relationship (safe mobilisation) and experiences of comfort in a safe relationship (safe immobilisation).

Once we have supported the child or young person to be regulated and they are feeling the safe connection to us (relate) we may need to support him/her to reflect and possibly even repair the damage done to any relationships as a result of the incident. Psychologists Ross Greene and Stuart Ablon have developed an approach called the Collaborative Problem Solving Approach (CPSA) which is particularly useful for the reflect and repair stages of the 4Rs Approach. This is another approach which appears deceptively simple, however, is enormously powerful. There are three steps to a Collaborative Problem Solving conversation these three steps are (in the necessary order):

1. The empathy step – in this step we use questioning and active listening to identify the child or young person’s concern with them (curiosity and acceptance).
2. The define the problem step – in this step we restate/summarise the child’s concern providing them with the opportunity to correct us or add further detail if needed. Then, once it is agreed that we have understood his/her concern, we state our concern. Our concern does not trump the child or young person’s concern. Instead it sits alongside the child or young person’s concern to define the two aspects of the problem that requires solving.
3. The invitation step – in this step the child/young person and the supportive adult explore possible solutions to the problem together and agree what action will be taken to solve the problem. Ideally a range of possible actions to solve the problem are suggested and evaluated to choose the one that best meets everyone’s needs. The step is described as being an invitation step as we encourage the child or young person to contribute possible ways forward as well as the adult. The way forward may include sanctions (ideally ones that are educative), relational repair (drawing on Mediation from Restorative Approaches) and/or teaching the social and emotional skills not yet learned (in order to support the child or young person to be able to respond differently when a similar situation occurs again in the future).

Use of CPSA overtime solves problems with the child or young person, builds relationships and teaches him/her how to solve problems in a prosocial way. As represented in the illustration below it models the use of power with pupils rather than doing things to or for them (which is especially important for many children and young people who have experienced trauma). What’s not to love.

Before I move on from my summary of CPSA I would like to emphasise that the first step of the collaborative problem solving conversation is the most important and children and young people may need us to actively listen to them repeatedly in order to process (Integrate) and make sense of their difficult experience. In addition to working with the child or young person to agree the best way forward to solve the problem we are also looking to support the child or young person to process and integrate his/her experience as part of the reason/reflection stage of the sequence of support. Integrating an experience makes it less likely to become overwhelming. Processing and integration also has three stages that we need to support the child or young person to:

1. Acknowledge and express the concern or difficulty. Experience being listened to (curiosity without comparison or judgement). Psychiatrist Dan Siegel describes this as supporting the child or young person to ‘name it to tame it.’
2. Have the concern or difficulty witnessed/validated by someone that he/she trusts. Experience being heard and understood (acceptance and empathy).
3. Continue to be kept in mind and supported. Integration does not happen as a one off event. We will need to continue to keep connecting and offering the opportunity for more sharing. Ongoing check-ins e.g. “How are you doing? How are you really doing?” or “What’s been happening with you?”

Supporting children and young to feel safe, to be physiologically regulated and to integrate difficult experiences are essential to support them to learn. If a child or young person does not feel safe, is dysregulated or overwhelmed by a difficult experience then the areas of his/her brain required for learning will be offline and he/she will not be able to learn. We need to focus on supporting children and young people to feel safe in order to avoid the development of an achievement gap as a result of them not being able to access the learning available to them. 

Focusing on trust as well as learning

Trusting relationships with key adults make an enormous difference to the effectiveness of each of the interventions highlighted above. As I’m sure we all know from our personal experience we are significantly more able to support a child or young person if we have established a trusting relationship with them. For children and young people who have experienced trauma the most effective help that we can provide is through a relational approach. However, an additional challenge for children and young people who have experienced trauma is that they are likely to develop Blocked Trust. Blocked Trust is a term used by Psychologist Dan Hughes. He describes Blocked Trust as ‘When children block the pain of rejection and the capacity to delight in order to survive in a world without comfort and joy.’ We need to take actions to support a traumatised child or young person to rebuild trust so that he/she is open to accepting the relational support that he/she needs.

Children and young people develop Blocked Trust due to the lack of good enough care and, in particular, the lack of ‘relational buffering’ in response to stressful situations (both of which are far more likely under a prolonged period of stress in the family). It is a sad reality that children and young people who develop Blocked Trust continue to block interactions with adults who are able to provide this good enough care. As Dan Hughes observes in his work with adopted children and young people: Even when good care is readily available to these children in a new home, school and/or therapy they continue to mistrust and block reciprocal relational interactions.

When a child or young person has Blocked Trust he/she will:

• Mistrust the intention of other peoples’ behaviour towards him/her
• Block reciprocal interactions (serve and return) and, therefore, not allow others to have influence on him/her
• Try to be self-reliant
• Seek to control and manipulate the behaviours of others in order to get his/her needs met and to feel safe
• Not seek joy or comfort from relational connection and interactions
• Not learn social and emotional skills, as relational skills are learned in relationships
• Have a limited capacity to learn

Effectively children and young people who have experienced trauma build a defensive wall around themselves to protect them from further harm. Sadly, the wall that they build also blocks them from the relational interactions which are necessary for them to heal.

Children and young people who have developed Blocked Trust are likely to try to control our behaviour towards them in order to feel safe rather than be open to our influence on them. We need to support these children and young people to overcome Blocked Trust, rebuild their trust in authority figures and allow us to have some influence on them.

The good news is that Psychologist Dan Hughes has developed the PACE Approach as a way of interacting with children and young people to build trust and overcome Blocked Trust. Those of you who know me will have listened to one (or possibly many!) of my monologues about the power of the PACE Approach in building trusting relationships with children and young people who have had difficult relational experiences in the past. Like many approaches for children and young people with additional needs, the PACE Approach is essential practice and also works well with all children and young people. PACE stands for Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy. A brief introduction to PACE is:

• Playfulness: Light, hopeful, open and spontaneous. Especially the non-verbal elements to communicate safety – e.g. “Hey, it’s good to see you. I thought of you the other day when I saw…”
• Acceptance: Listening to understand. Respecting the individual experience of the other person. Finding ways of demonstrating that he/she is worthwhile and wanted including correction being carried out while maintaining connection – e.g. “We will work this out together. Help me to understand so that I can help.”
• Curiosity: Non-judgemental, not-knowing, active interest in the others’ experience. Curiosity leads to reflection and learning – solving problems collaboratively – e.g. “Are you ok? I’m worried about you. What’s going on?”
• Empathy: Felt sense of the other; actively experienced and communicated with compassion / care. When someone understands you it creates a strong connection – e.g. “Thank you so much for telling me. That sounds really stressful.”

Being PACEful in our interactions with children and young people, where it is possible and appropriate, builds relationships. Researcher Brené Brown uses the metaphor of marbles in a jar to illustrate the building of trust over time through multiple investments of marbles into the jar. PACEful interactions are a great way of making these investments into a trusting relationship. As illustrated in the picture below it is connection to a key individual that leads to a sense of belonging and community.

Using the PACE Approach in our interactions with others builds trust. Use of PACEful interactions over time wears down children and young people’s mistrust and re-engages them in reciprocal (serve and return) interactions i.e. enables them to be open to influence from us rather than trying to control us.

Before I move on from this brief introduction to the PACE Approach I want to add a little bit more detail about empathy. Dan Hughes emphasises the importance of empathy as a key part of the PACE Approach. He states, ‘I can’t overstate the importance of empathy. Empathy is not just the start of our helping it is the most important and effective part of our help.’

One of many lessons that I have learned from Dan Hughes is to spend longer on the empathy element of my support with children and young people and not to rush on to either reassurance or problem solving too quickly.

The following short video from Shame and Vulnerability Researcher Brené Brown provides a useful summary of the elements of empathy.

“Rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection… Empathy fuels connection.”

Taking actions to make stress as predictable, moderate and controllable as we can

A third cornerstone of a trauma-informed approach is to take actions to make the stress for the children and young people in our care as predictable, moderate and controllable as we can. Remember if we can take actions to make the stress for others as predictable, moderate and controllable as possible alongside providing the relational support described above then we are being trauma reducing and, at the same time, supporting others to build resilience (as represented in the diagram below from Psychiatrist and Neuroscientist Bruce Perry).

Although it is clearly not fully within our control to make the stress for our pupils predictable, moderate and controllable there are a number of actions that we can take to help to achieve this:

• Clear structure to the day and routines for key tasks (consistency without rigidity)
• Increase the regularity and clarity of communication re changes and also what is remaining the same (e.g. use of visual timetables)
• Minimise the pace of further changes as far as possible
• Break big changes / transitions into a series of smaller changes / transitions where we can
• Calendars of key dates including any significant changes or events
• Managing each transition within the day including the use of physiological regulation breaks (see 3-part transitions below)
• Have fun – playfulness is a very effective way of reducing defensiveness
• Consider the cognitive demand of tasks – our stretch zone for learning is likely to be narrower too and we will feel overwhelmed more easily
• Maintain connection with key staff – even though we may need to be creative in how we do this due to social distancing measures

Additionally we can make use of 3-part transitions. Further useful messages from neuroscience:

• Transitions are stressors for all of us
• We can manage each transition within the day to be more predictable, moderate and controllable by having 3-parts to each transition i.e.
  1. Pre-transition phase – countdowns, markers and communications
  2. Transition phase – an opportunity to build in brief physiological regulation breaks (see below)
  3. Post-transition phase – routine to resettle to learning and follow up with brief relational check-ins
• Effective physiological regulation breaks with the children and young people help to make the stress more manageable (these only need to be brief e.g. a couple of minutes). As referenced earlier in this summary the research shows that the most effective physiological regulation breaks can be summarised in the three following categories:
  1. Calming breathing activities – for example 7-11 breathing (slow, deep and even breathing in to the count of 7 and out to the count of 11) or box breathing (breathing in to the count of 4, holding our breath for the count of 4, breathing out to the count of 4 and holding our breath for the count of 4).
  2. Somatosensory activities – physical and sensory activities to calm, sooth and ground our bodies and minds (e.g. age appropriate repetitive rhythmic movements: alongside rhyming books, music or group yoga positions or muscle tensing and relaxing, grounding ourselves: 5-4-3-2-1 using our senses to notice 5 things in our environment that we can see, 4 that we can touch etc or a soothing activity: hand massage). Use slower and heavier movements to calm and faster and lighter movements to re-energise. I’m sure you’ll find something that works for you with your pupils.
  3. Social connection – relational regulation (e.g. a two minute check-in with a clam/regulated person).

A fabulous resource for teaching physiological regulation breaks is Psychologist Karen Treisman’s Treasure Deck of Grounding, Soothing, Coping and Regulating Cards (see signposting section at the end of this article for more details).

Making use of these regular, brief physiological regulation breaks throughout the day help us to manage stress, stay within our window of tolerance (open and engaged physiological state) and reduce the likelihood of becoming overwhelmed (into fight/flight or freeze/collapse) by the cumulative effect of stressors throughout the day. Bruce Perry represents this on the following graphs. The first graph represents regular, brief physiological regulation breaks throughout the day and the second graph the absence of these except for a break at lunchtime and toward the end of the day. In each of the graphs the y axis represents the level of physiological arousal and the x axis time throughout the day.

Proactively building regular, brief physiological regulation breaks into the daily routines with our pupils (e.g. as part of 3 part transitions) makes it far more likely for them to remain open and engaged and far less likely for them to become disengaged or disrupted by being pushed outside of their open and engaged physiological state (window of tolerance) into a defensive / overwhelmed state of fight/flight or freeze/collapse. In addition, this also provides our pupils with the opportunity for practising these self-regulation skills in preparation for difficult times that they need to use them to return to a regulated state within their window of tolerance.

The importance of our own wellbeing

If we are going to continue to be the secure base that our school communities need us to be, including enacting the trauma-informed approaches summarised in this article, then we need to take action to look after our own wellbeing. Our own wellbeing, therefore, is the fourth cornerstone of a trauma-informed approach.

The research regarding our own wellbeing can be separated into two groups of findings:

1. Actions that we probably know that we should take but that we may not do.
2. Actions that we may not know about and that we definitely need to do.

I will take each of these in turn. Firstly, then, actions that we probably know that we should take but that we may not do. Over a decade ago now a meta-analysis of hundreds of studies identified the five most effective actions that we can take in order to impact positively on our emotional wellbeing. This top five, in no particular order, are as follows:

• Be physically active
• Connect with others
• Keep learning
• Give to others
• Take notice – press pause and be curious

Other evidence-based actions that we can take for our emotional wellbeing that are worthy of an honourable mention include:

• Connect with nature
• Be creative
• Play – have fun, do things you enjoy and that make you laugh
• Sing or play a wind instrument
• Yoga (especially Pranayama Yoga)
• Have some ‘me time’ – self-care (Hygge)
• Be grateful – remind yourself of the things in your life that mean the most to you and the things that you are grateful for
• Get your basic needs met (eat, drink and sleep)
• Avoid unhealthy habits – don’t rely on alcohol, smoking or caffeine as ways of coping
• Take a break from the stressors but don’t avoid them completely
• Reflect or talk it through with someone you trust (or journal) and make a plan
• Regular (brief) activities to calm, sooth and ground our bodies (see below)

NB – There isn’t one size fits all. We need to find what works best for us.

I have been fortunate to work with thousands of wonderful colleagues throughout my career in education and almost without exception they have been brilliant at looking after the needs of others. They have not, however, always been as brilliant at looking after their own needs. My question to you, therefore, is do you make the time to prioritise actions from the lists above in order to look after your own emotional wellbeing? And I’m not only talking about actions that you take in the school holidays. In addition, at this extraordinary time, when we are not able to engage in some of our usual actions for our own wellbeing we need to redouble our efforts with those actions that we can take and, perhaps, try out some new self-care actions too.

Secondly, then, the actions that we may not know about and that we definitely need to do. For these we are returning to a theme from earlier in this article: Physiological regulation breaks. In exactly the same way as for our pupils we need to build regular, brief physiological regulation breaks into our daily routine.

The regular (brief) activities to calm, sooth and ground our bodies through calming breathing activities, somatosensory activities and social connection are just as important for us to use proactively in order to remain within our own window of tolerance. Just like the children and young people we need regular (brief) physiological breaks to help us to remain within our own open and engaged physiological state. The research encourages us to build regular, brief physiological regulation breaks into our daily routine. Again this is about trying these out to see what works best for you. Perhaps you could try:

1. Calming breathing. Calming breathing, in particular, slow, deep breathing with our diaphragm at six breaths a minute (i.e. coherent or resonant breathing in for 5 seconds and out for 5 seconds) and/or an elongated exhale (e.g. 7-11 breathing) help us to manage stress by calming our physiology. They have been utilised for centuries by Buddhist Monks and Yogis and are now used widely by all sorts of people including the American Special Forces i.e. Navy SEALs. These breathing techniques are scientifically proven physiological hacks that we all need to learn to utilise as they are the most effective way of regulating our physiological state. Research demonstrates that even a couple of minutes of these types of deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing that are relaxed and not strained will have a significant calming impact upon us (centring us into an open and engaged physiological state). We can also using breathing techniques to re-energise (a couple of minutes of breathing in for 6 seconds and out quickly for 2 seconds) and to assist us in getting to sleep (a couple of minutes of breathing in deeply for 4 seconds, holding our breath for 7 seconds and breathing out slowly for 8 seconds). Once again you need to find what works best for you. There are a couple of fabulous Apps to teach these breathing techniques which you may like to try (see signposting section below). These are a really quick and effective way to impact on our physiological regulation. I’d encourage you to learn to make use of them and then, when you’ve learned about them, teach them to the children and young people. We need to remember to breathe!
2. Somatosensory activities. We need to build these into our daily routine e.g. joining in with these as part of our 3 part transitions with pupils (see earlier section of this article), massaging our hands after our frequent washing regime, progressively tensing and relaxing the muscles throughout our bodies and/or combining a walk with a grounding activity by pausing and noticing with all of our senses. Remember to use slower and heavier rhythmical movements to calm yourself and faster paced and lighter rhythmical movements if you need to re-energise. Mindfulness is another grounding technique that many people find very effective (see an online session entitled Mindfulness is a Superpower as one of the free online staff CPD sessions available at the Sigma Teaching School in the signposting section below).
3. Social connection. We can use PACEful interactions with our colleagues too. PACE works equally as well with colleagues, friends, partners and our own children as it does with our pupils. Spending time with people who are in an open and engaged physiological state supports us to remain in our own open and engaged state. Remember physiological states are contagious and we need to use this in a good way. We need to spend time with the people who recharge our batteries.

As Psychiatrist and Neuroscientist Bruce Perry states, “A dysregulated person can never calm anyone.”  Physiological states are contagious. We need to be stress regulators for our children and young people i.e. looking after our own wellbeing so that we can provide interactions that are represented in the picture below.

And not interactions that are represented in the following picture:

I’ll end this section on the importance of our own wellbeing with three quotes. One from Teacher and Psychologist Haim Ginott, ‘I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a student’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humour, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a student humanised or de-humanised.’

A second from Researcher Brené Brown, “I’m here to get it right, not to be right.”

And a third from Trainer and Therapist Louise Bomber that in order to be the decisive element in our classrooms (in a good way) “We need to put on our own emotional oxygen masks first.”

Physiological states are contagious. We need to use this in a good way. We need to be the secure base for the children and young people in our care, therefore, we need to take actions for our own self-care.

Conclusion

The good news at this extraordinary time is that there are clear messages from the research in neuroscience and psychology as to how we can best help the children and young people in our care. This includes taking action to:

1. Utilise the transformative power of feeling safe
2. Focus on building trust as well as on learning
3. Make stress as predictable, moderate and controllable as possible
4. Look after our own wellbeing

I’d like to end with two final quotes. Firstly, a quote from Neuroscientist and Psychiatrist Bruce Perry that, “What traumatised children need most is a healthy community to buffer the pain, distress and loss caused by the earlier trauma. What works to heal them is anything that increases the number and quality of the child’s relationships. What helps is consistent, patient, repetitive loving care.”

And a quote from Psychologist Karen Treisman’s TED Talk (see signposting section below) that, “Relationships are the most powerful mental health intervention known to mankind.”

We have an opportunity to become even more caring and inclusive communities by further developing our trauma-informed approaches and interventions. We need to be trauma-reducing rather than trauma inducing.

I hope that you have found this summary both reassuring and that it has provided you with at least one additional approach or intervention to add to your toolkit. As I stated in the introduction, I also hope that this summary will leave you wanting to find out more – hence the signposting section below.

If you have any feedback, questions or other comments then please email me on i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com.

Signposting

If you are reading this document on the Sigma website or in a pdf format then the hyperlinks in the signposting section below should work. If you are having any difficulties with the links then please go to the online training at the Sigma Teaching School website (www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/) and select the tab on the left hand side of the page for the 13^th session.

As you will see the signposting covers a range of links to further information and resources. I would like to take the opportunity to highlight the PACE+ Approaches Course (6 x 1.5hr live webinars) as something for you to consider for yourself and/or your colleagues. The course comes highly recommended with average rating of 6.9 out of 7 from the hundreds of staff who have attended to date, with 100% reporting learning approaches and interventions which have made a difference for children and young people and with feedback including “The best training ever!” See the link in the PACE+ Approaches Course bullet point below for more details.

The PACE+ Approaches course which in addition to going into further details regarding the four cornerstones of a trauma-informed approach also builds upon these with other evidence-based actions that we can take to support children and young people who have experienced trauma including:

• Teaching the social and emotional skills not yet learned
• What about when it goes wrong?
• Behaviour as communication
• We need to talk about shame
• Repairing relationships
• Supporting children and young people to integrate experiences
• Being a reflective practitioner
• Working as a team
• Keeping the focus on self-care and organisational-care
• The right intervention at the right time
• Building on successes

• If you would like to listen to a short podcast summarising these trauma-informed messages then please click here.
• If you would like to watch a series of YouTube videos re making use of trauma-informed approaches then click on the following:
  • For an overview of the five key considerations for everyone’s wellbeing click here.
  • For an overview of the transformative power of feeling safe and what about when it goes wrong click here.
  • For an overview of rebuilding trust and the importance of our own wellbeing click here.
• If you would like to access free online CPD sessions to understand and support children and young people who have experienced trauma then please scroll back to the top of this article and choose from the tabs on the left hand side of the screen to select the session that you would like to read.
• If you would like to attend an online training course re using trauma-informed approaches and interventions in schools then click on the CPD & Leadership tab at the top of the screen and follow the links for the PACE+ Approach courses in the current courses section of the web page.
• If you would like to join an online Pastoral Network which meets three times a year to continue your professional development and keep up to with the latest research and resource publications then click on the CPD & Leadership tab at the top of the screen and follow the links for the Pastoral Network in the Current Courses section of the web page.
• If you would like to learn more about Karen Treisman’s Therapeutic Treasure Deck of Regulating Cards then click here.
• If you would like to watch Karen Treisman’s TED Talk then click here.
• The breathing App from Eddie Stern is simply called The Breathing App. You can find out more about it here.
• A second fabulous breathing App is called Breathwrk: Breathing Exercises. You can find out more about it here.

• You may also find the evidence-based resources from the Anna Freud Centre You can access these here.

• If you would like to contact me with any questions or to commission any specific work for your school, service or authority then please email me on i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com.

Staff Wellbeing

Firstly, an enormous thank you for taking an interest in your own wellbeing. I’m viewing that as a validation of us recognising the importance of looking after ourselves even more than usual during this extraordinary time.

Self-care is far from selfish and the research from neuroscience and psychology is very clear that we need to look after our own wellbeing in order to continue to be the secure-base providing the compassionate relational care that our communities need from us. The good news is that neuroscience and psychology also provide us with very clear evidence-based actions that we can take to look after our own emotional wellbeing. We will explore these actions in this session.

This session (the 14th) of the free online Trauma-Informed CPD for staff will, therefore, focus on our own wellbeing. This course within a course will consist of 4 x recordings of webinars followed by signposting to resources and other links referenced in each of the recordings. I hope that you will find the session useful.

Session 1: The 1^st of 4 staff wellbeing sessions

In session 1 we will focus on the messages from psychology and neuroscience re our own wellbeing and the evidence-based actions that we can take to look after our own emotional wellbeing. This session will include:

• The impact of unpredictable, prolonged and/or extreme stress on all of us.
• The actions that we probably know but may not do.
• The actions that we may not know and definitely need to do.
• Breathing techniques that we can use to manage stress, regulate and calm our physiology and even re-energise ourselves when we need to.
• Signposting to wellbeing resources for staff including a self-care self review.

Watch the first session regarding the importance of our own wellbeing here.

This video is longer (1 hour) than the other 3 x videos which follow (approx. 30 minutes each) as the first video includes the ‘science bit’ of how unpredictable, extreme and/or prolonged stress impacts on all of us as well as introducing some practical actions that we can take.

The resources and links referenced in this video are:

• A self-review re our self-care which you can download as a pdf here.

• The simple but (hopefully) useful resource representing our 3 x physiological states as concentric circles (The Polyvagal Theory) which you can download as a pdf here.

• A reminder of the importance of knowing about and managing our physiological state with a link to a website re 7-11 breathing which you can download here.

• If you would like to learn more about making effective use of trauma-informed approaches with the children and young people in your care then please either access the online resources at https://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/ or, even better than that, book yourself a place on one of our PACE+ (Trauma-Informed) Approaches courses which can be found in the Current Courses section of the webpage at https://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/cpd-leadership/
• The Tim Minchin speech is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoEezZD71sc
• The Unlocking Us interview with the Nagoski sisters by Brené Brown is at https://www.breaker.audio/unlocking-us-with-brene-brown/e/73880267
• The interview with Dan Goleman by Action for Happiness (the interview starts about 1 minute into the video) is at https://www.facebook.com/actionforhappiness/videos/join-dan-goleman-to-learn-how-emotional-intelligence-can-help-us-live-happier-li/138262157677196/
•  The Action for Happiness website for the wellbeing action calendars and other good stuff is at https://www.actionforhappiness.org/
•  The breathing apps are Breathwrk Breathing Exercises (including a free 7 day foundation course) at https://www.breathwrk.com/ and Eddie Stern’s The Breathing App at https://eddiestern.com/the-breathing-app/
•  A couple of websites re 7-11 breathing can be found at https://www.hgi.org.uk/resources/delve-our-extensive-library/resources-and-techniques/7-11-breathing-how-does-deep and https://www.in8.uk.com/information-resources/7-11-breathing/
• If you’d rather read a book than use an app or a website then any of the following a great place to start (I’ve listed them in below in order from brief introduction to more detailed exploration):o Danny Penman’s The Art of Breathingo Jean Hall’s Breatheo Richie Bostock’s ExhaleI hope that you found this first part of the staff wellbeing course useful. I would welcome your feedback (positive and negative), comments, recommendations of resources or questions. Please use the form below to contact us or email me at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com.
  

  Session 2: The 2^nd of 4 staff wellbeing sessions

  In this session we will continue to focus on evidence-based actions that we can take to manage our stress. This session will include:

  • A quick review of breathing techniques that we can use to manage stress, regulate and calm our physiology and even re-energise ourselves when we need to.
  • Mindfulness is a superpower leading to increased calm, focus and resilience.
  • Signposting to additional wellbeing resources.

  Watch the second session regarding the importance of our own wellbeing here.

  This video is a little over 30 minutes (those of you who know me won’t be surprised that I didn’t quite manage to keep to the promise of a 30 minute session, sorry).

  The resources and links referenced in this second video are:

  • Free online session re Mindfulness with additional guided Mindful meditations can be accessed at https://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/#tab-id-4 or you can click on the tab on the left hand side of the screen for session 4: Our own wellbeing part 2 – Mindfulness is a Superpower.
  • The Mindfulness Apps with free guided meditations are
    • Andy Puddicombe’s Headspace App at https://www.headspace.com/headspace-meditation-app
    • Danny Penman’s Mindfulness App at http://franticworld.com/mindfulness-apps/
    • The Insight Timer App at https://insighttimer.com/meditation-app
  • The websites with free guided meditations are:
    • Headspace at https://www.headspace.com/
    • Finding Peace in a Frantic World at http://franticworld.com/
    • Insight Timer at https://insighttimer.com/
  • If you would like to know more about the research evidence for the effectiveness of Mindfulness then the video by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBg2i7ZsXgk
  • If you’d prefer to read a book rather than use an app or a website then Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World by Danny Penman and Mark Williams is a great resource as it includes a number of guided meditations to practice on a CD.
  • The book Draw Breath: The Art of Breathing, Mindfulness and Meditation by Tom Granger is also a great resource if you want something a bit different – it combines drawing with Mindful and breathing activities. You can learn more about this resource (and access some free stuff too) at https://www.drawbreath.com/

  I hope that you found this second part of the staff wellbeing course useful. I would welcome your feedback (positive and negative), comments, recommendations of other resources, questions or just to let me know how you’re getting on with the wellbeing actions. Please use the form below to contact us or email me at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com.

Session 3: The 3^rd of 4 staff wellbeing sessions.

In this session we will continue to focus on evidence-based actions that we can take to manage our stress and, in particular, on adding to our toolkit of grounding, regulating, coping and soothing activities.

Watch the third session regarding the importance of our own wellbeing here.

The video is a little over 30 minutes long and has a couple of moments when the sound drops out (apologies) but stick with it as the sound quickly returns.

The resources and links referenced in this 3^rd video are:

• Teacher and Therapist Claire Wilson’s TED Talk about the necessity for each of us to be grounded in order to be able to best support the children and young people in our care is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msJnpcP-i1k
• Claire Wilson’s book is Grounded: Discovering the missing piece in the puzzle of children’s behaviour (2018)
• Psychologist Karen Treisman’s Therapeutic Treasure Deck of grounding, soothing, coping and regulating cards (which as the name suggests teaches a wide range of physiological regulating activities) are introduced by Karen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfw_bGIcMcM
• The first of Therapist and Trainer Louise Bomber’s Sofa Time sessions which teach more physiological regulation activities is available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OInJVfzvN9w

Session 4: The 4th of 7 Staff Wellbeing Sessions

Welcome back. In this session we will focus on the evidence-based actions that we can take to get through a tough week. Because it happens…

Watch the fourth session regarding the importance of our own wellbeing here.

The resources and links referenced in this 4th video are:

Sleep.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       A course on emotional wellbeing would not be complete without some information on sleep. You might like to explore some of the following –

• Matt Walker’s TED Talk Sleep is your superpower is at https://www.ted.com/talks/matt_walker_sleep_is_your_superpower?language=en#t-30409
•  Matt Walker’s video re 6 tips for better sleep is at https://www.ted.com/talks/matt_walker_6_tips_for_better_sleep?language=en#t-2130
•  Matt Walker’s book is Why We Sleep (2017)
• Guy Meadow’s interview with Radio 4 re Insomnia is at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07wzmgw
• Headspace (The Mindfulness organisation) also have a number of useful resources to help us sleep –
• A short guided meditation for sleep at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFAUPT3ZrII
• A short video reminding us about letting go of effort to relax into meditation at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyj8l9miy4w
•  A 10 minute audio guided meditation for sleep at https://www.headspace.com/meditation/sleep o Tips for how to get back to sleep at https://www.headspace.com/sleep/fall-back-asleep

Healthy eating 

•  Dr Mike Evans’ video re What’s the best diet: Healthy eating 101 is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqhYBTg73fw&t
•  Julia Rucklidge’s Ted Talk re The surprisingly dramatic role of nutrition in mental health is at https://www.tedxchristchurch.com/julia-rucklidge

 Physical activity 

• Dr Mike Evans’ (him again) video re physical activity entitled 23 and a half hours is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F5Sly9JQao

I hope that you found this fourth part of the staff wellbeing course useful. I would welcome your feedback (positive and negative), comments, recommendations of other resources, questions or just to let me know how you’re getting on with the wellbeing actions. Please use the form below to contact us or email me at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com.

The eagle eyed of you will have noticed that this session is no longer the last of four sessions in this course. I’m delighted to add an additional three sessions which will cover:

• Reflective practice
• Yoga for emotional wellbeing – with special guest Melanie Lovegrove (a fabulous yoga teacher)
• Brining it all together.

Session 5: The 5th of 7 Staff Wellbeing Sessions

Welcome back. In this session we will focus on the importance of being a reflective practitioner including:

1. Reflecting to integrate and learn from difficult experiences

2. Reflecting to reduce anxiety on a future event

3. Practicing gratitude

4. Building on successes – Solution-Focused Approaches and a Growth Mindset

Watch the fifth session regarding the importance of our own wellbeing here.

The resources and links referenced in this 5th video are:

· A simple but useful representation of the Polyvagal Theory as 3 x concentric circles is available here.

· The self reflection tool using the 2 x icebergs is available here.

· Info re the What’s Good app from Action for Happiness is at https://www.actionforhappiness.org/whats-good#:~:text=What’s%20Good%20is%20a%20new,on%20iOS%20at%20the%20moment.

· The Nagoski sisters’ interview with Brene Brown: Unlocking us avoiding burnout is at https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-with-emily-and-amelia-nagoski-on-burnout-and-how-to-complete-the-stress-cycle/

· What it means to ‘hear shark music’ and what to do about it with Kirstie Pretti-Frontczak is at https://youtu.be/VKeGjgd7vWY

· Martin Seligman’s interview (also including Richard Layard) with Action for Happiness is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po8ZP8FU7Pc

· An introduction to Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset is at https://fs.blog/2015/03/carol-dweck-mindset/

I hope that you found this fifth part of the staff wellbeing course useful. I would welcome your feedback (positive and negative), comments, recommendations of other resources, questions or just to let me know how you’re getting on with the wellbeing actions.

Please use the form below to contact us or email me at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com.

There are two further sessions to follow in the staff wellbeing course. These are:

o Yoga for emotional wellbeing – with special guest Melanie Lovegrove (a fabulous yoga teacher)

o Bringing it all together.

The next video of the staff wellbeing course with further links to resources will be added to this webpage on Friday 12th March

Remember to take time to press your own pause button, be curious and breathe!

25th February 2021

Headteachers’ and Senior Leaders’ Wellbeing

Firstly, an enormous thank you for taking an interest in your own wellbeing. I’m viewing that as a validation of us recognising the importance of looking after ourselves even more than usual during this extraordinary time.

I have had the privilege of working with thousands of Headteachers and Senior Leaders in education and, almost without exception, they have been incredible at looking after the needs of everyone in their care (staff, children, young people and families). There has also, however, been a theme that we are not always as good at prioritising and looking after our own wellbeing.

Self-care is far from selfish and the research from neuroscience and psychology is very clear that we need to look after our own wellbeing in order to continue to be:

• the secure-base – providing the compassionate relational care that our communities need from us and
• able to continue to make good quality decisions.

The good news is that neuroscience and psychology also provide us with very clear evidence-based actions that we can take to look after our own emotional wellbeing. We will explore the most efficient and effective actions that each of us can take to look after our own wellbeing in this session.

This session (the 15th) of the free online Trauma-Informed CPD for staff will, therefore, focus on our own wellbeing as school leaders. The session will consist of 2 x recordings of webinars followed by signposting to resources and other links referenced in each of the recordings. I hope that you will find the session useful.

The first recorded webinar

In the first recorded webinar (see link below) we will focus on the messages from psychology and neuroscience re our own wellbeing and the evidence-based actions that we can take to look after our own emotional wellbeing. This session will include:

• The impact of unpredictable, prolonged and/or extreme stress on all of us.
• The actions that we probably know but may not do.
• The actions that we may not know and definitely need to do.
• Self-care is not selfish.
• Signposting to resources and information.

To watch the first recorded webinar regarding Headteachers’ and Senior Leaders’ Wellbeing please click here.

The links and resources referenced in this video are:

• The TED Talk by Teacher and Therapist Claire Wilson is a reminder of the importance of looking after our own wellbeing so that we can be the emotional support that others in our care need us to be and can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msJnpcP-i1k

•  If you like Claire’s approach then her book is called Grounded: Discovering the missing piece in the puzzle of children’s behaviour (2018).

• Psychologist Karen Treisman introduces her Therapeutic Treasure Deck of Grounding, Soothing, Coping and Regulating Cards (a great resource for trying out a range of evidence-based regulating activities) in the following short video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfw_bGIcMcM

• Therapist and trainer Louise Bomber has also recorded a series of videos introducing a range of regulating activities. You can access these by Googling Louise Bomber Sofa Time. The first of these is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OInJVfzvN9w

• There are a series of FREE online sessions available on the Sigma website that you and your staff can access at any time. Click on the following link and select the session that you’d like from the tabs on the left hand side https://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/

• The FREE online sessions include a series of recorded webinars for staff focusing on their own wellbeing at Online Training – https://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/#tab-id-14 

• More information on the breathing apps is available at https://eddiestern.com/the-breathing-app/ and at https://www.breathwrk.com/ (this second one is the one which includes the free 7 session introduction to different breathing techniques)

• There are also a couple of useful websites specifically about 7-11 breathing at http://www.in8.uk.com/information-resources/7-11-breathing/ and https://www.hgi.org.uk/resources/delve-our-extensive-library/resources-and-techniques/7-11-breathing-how-does-deep

• The breathing book that I made reference to is Exhale by Richie Bostock (2020)

• The Action for Happiness website for evidence-informed actions for your emotional wellbeing (including calendars and talks by experts) is at https://www.actionforhappiness.org/

•  The entertaining video by Tim Minchin re actions we can take for our own wellbeing (in the form of a graduation speech) is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoEezZD71sc

If you can make the time then please have at look at a couple of the links above that appear interesting to you and, even more importantly, please have a go at some of the evidence-based actions for your emotional wellbeing that we began to explore in the first webinar.

I hope that you found this first part of the Headteachers’ and Senior Leaders’ Wellbeing session useful. I would welcome your feedback (positive and negative), comments, recommendations of other resources, questions or just to let me know how you’re getting on with the wellbeing actions. Please use the form below to contact us or email me at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com.

The second recorded webinar

In the second recorded webinar (see link below) we will focus on understanding the dangers of decision fatigue, analysis paralysis and burnout and the actions that we can take to avoid each of these.  This session will include:

• Understanding and taking action to avoid decision fatigue, analysis paralysis and burnout.
• Forming new habits.
• Being a reflective practitioner and integrating difficult experiences.
• Getting through a tough week.
• Self-care is not selfish.
• Signposting to further wellbeing resources for staff.

To watch the second recorded webinar regarding Headteachers’ and Senior Leaders’ Wellbeing click here.

The links and resources referenced in this video are:

• The self-review covering the self-care actions for our own emotional wellbeing from both sessions is available here.
• The Polyvagal Theory (3 x physiological states) represented as concentric circles is available here.
• And finally the self-reflection tool of 2 x icebergs is available here.
• The video of Brene Brown interviewing the Nagoski sisters is an hour long but I would still recommend a listen at https://www.breaker.audio/unlocking-us-with-brene-brown/e/73880267
• If you’d rather go old school and read a book then the book by the Nagoski sisters is called Burnout (2020)
• You can book a place on the new Leadership course re Evidence-Based Organisational Care (which is 3 x online twilight sessions starting in March) in the Current Courses section of the following webpage https://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/cpd-leadership/
• The staff wellbeing videos if you’d like to watch these (the 4^th one includes the evidence-based actions re sleep, healthy eating, exercise etc) or share them with your staff to promote action for their own wellbeing are available at  https://www.sigmateachingschool.org.uk/online-training/#tab-id-14
• If you haven’t watched Claire Wilson’s TED Talk re being regulated so that we can be the secure-base for others then it is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msJnpcP-i1k

If you can make the time then please have at look at a couple of the links above that appear interesting to you and, even more importantly, please build some of the evidence-based actions for your emotional wellbeing into your routine.

I hope that you found these two Headteachers’ and Senior Leaders’ Wellbeing sessions useful. I would welcome your feedback (positive and negative), comments, recommendations of other resources, questions or just to let me know how you’re getting on with the wellbeing actions.

Please use the form below to contact us or email me at i.hunkin@deltaeducationtrust.com.

And finally, please remember that self-care is not selfish but it does require effort by us to establish good self-care habits as part of our routine.

Remember to take time to press your own pause button, be curious and breathe!

3rd February 2021

Yoga for Emotional Wellbeing

COMING SOON!!! A free resource of recorded videos by Yoga Teacher Melanie Lovegrove to teach yoga in schools with particular focus on emotional wellbeing. Click here watch an interview with Melanie

The videos will be available on this webpage by the end of February.

In the meantime if you would like to learn more about Melanie’s Yoga click here