Community Healing...
Additional Information
Within community living we practice boundaries not barriers. Everybody within the community has a role supporting children and stewarding towards holistic wellbeing of all its members. Around each child there are adults who think and hold different parts of the child but who also work collectively as a community. Our therapeutic parents hold the child’s history and good enough safe parenting through role modelling, attentiveness and attunement to the child’s needs.
They very much deal with the here and now. Individual one to one Therapy support is offered on a weekly basis, where the children are offered opportunities to express and process their trauma, using emotional-distancing techniques – such as metaphor, embodiment, role, story and improvised play. This enables ‘stress / trauma memories’ to be disconnected from the stress response – therefore reducing Complex-PTSD, dissociation and dangerous forms of self-soothing and acting out their distress.
Therapeutic Life Story Work is offered on a bi-weekly basis, with the child and their Key Carer. This space provides support to the child’s development of a positive identity and making sense of their past. The care team are trained to facilitate emotional co-regulation and engagement in trauma resolution. They provide the children with verbal and non-verbal cues of safety, opportunities for social contribution and responsibility.
The therapeutic parents are available at times when children most need it. This may be during the times that children experience their loss, fear and despair most intensely, such as bedtimes; or at times of playful, social and physical activity – in order to support opportunities for developing confidence and competence beyond their ‘comfort zone’