How we're supporting adoptive parents and foster carers

Being a parent is a challenging occupation at the best of times but being the parent or carer of a child that has experienced trauma and loss can, at times, feel like an impossible task. Your child's early experiences, which are likely to involve loss or trauma, will have a profound impact on the development of their social and emotional needs. These early unmet developmental needs impact on the child's ability to manage their emotions, they find it hard to regulate themselves and become overwhelmed with emotions.

Your child's early experiences are likely to have an impact on the relationships they develop with others. As a parent or carer this can be challenging as we reach out to form secure relationships but sometime find our actions are received with hostility or even rejection. If a child has experienced adults, whom they should be able to trust, as someone that has let them down, rejected them, been violent or mistrusting then they will approach any new relationship with this pre conceived expectation.

In the very early months and years of a child's life they need to experience the feeling of safety, being special and having their needs met. This enables them to develop an effective stress management system that equips them to be resilient and manage life stresses.

The Thrive Approach uses findings from neuroscience to help understand the impact early experiences have on the development of the brain. The Approach explores the importance of relationships and will enable you to develop strategies to meet these early unmet needs in an age appropriate way. You will be introduced to the Thrive-Online program which will enable you to carry out an assessment of your child's emotional well-being and then create an action plan to support them.

Thrive Approach offers 3 different courses for parents, carers and for staff working to support adopted children and children in care.

This is a 3 day course, designed for foster and adopted parents and carers. It will help you develop a deeper understanding of the impact of early experiences, particularly loss, trauma and grief. The course will enable you to identify unmet developmental needs and use the on line tool to carry out an assessment, develop strategies and activities that can be used at home.

This is a 7 day course that is designed for all social care professionals supporting vulnerable families and children, this includes birth, foster and adopted families. This course will explore the Thrive developmental model and will enable you to carry out an assessment of a child's social and emotional well-being, create action plans and monitor the progress over time.

For professionals that carry out direct work with children there is the option to complete 2 further training days to convert this into licensed practitioner status.

This is a one day CPD day designed for licensed practitioner working with foster and adopted children in school.

For further information on all Thrive Training Courses, please click here.

Author: Kate Anthony (13th January 2016)

Over to you

Reduced anxiety and behavioural incidents. Calmer classrooms filled with engaged leaners. Improved relationships with parents and carers. These are just some of the outcomes reported by settings embedding Thrive’s whole-school approach to mental health and wellbeing. Are you ready to join them? Click here to get started.