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ENABLING TRAUMATISED CHILDREN TO MANAGE THEIR BEHAVIOUR

Written By

Liza Lomax and Kate Cairns

Learning Outcomes

To achieve this unit a learner must:

1. Describe how carers can enable traumatised children and young people to manage their own impulsive behaviour more effectively
2. Explain how carers can work effectively and safely with sexually traumatised children and young people
3. Identify how carers can work effectively with children and young people whose behaviour is maladaptive
4. Demonstrate how you have used what you have learned in completing this unit in your work with children and young people

Content and Structure

MODULE 1

Enabling traumatised children and young people to manage their own impulsive behaviour more effectively

Unmet attachment needs and poor impulse regulation

• From the very beginning: the foundations of impulse regulation from conception
• The role of empathy in regulating impulse: the early development of empathic functioning
• The impact of traumatic experience on impulse regulation
• Strategies for controlling impulses: selfdistraction, comfort seeking, information seeking

Shame, rage and violence, and attention deficit disorders

• The links between shame dysregulation and impulsive behaviour
• The cycle of violence set up by abuse and neglect
• ADHD and impulsive behaviour: medication and alternative strategies

What can carers do?

• Punishment, sanctions and consequences: what works to help children manage their own behaviour?
• Helping children to think: creating a safe environment; encouraging discussion; providing role models.
• Staying in control: assessing risk and danger; managing feelings; asking for help.

MODULE 2

Working effectively and safely with sexually traumatised children and young people

Developmental impairments and distortions

• The impact of attachments based on sexual abuse
• Signs and indicators of abuse
• Starting points in caring for children and young people who have been sexually abused
• Effects of sexual trauma: when the source of safety becomes the source of danger; ambivalence and distortion of thought and feeling

The impact of sexual abuse on the child and on the care setting

• Shame: feelings of worthlessness, sense of responsibility for self and others including the abuser; attempts to manage shame
• Replicating abuse: attacking boundaries; bullying; controlling; blaming; being provocative; re-enacting
• Truth, deceit and fantasy: the child, the abuser, the non-abusing partner, the extended community

What can carers do?

• Practising safe caring: understanding and reducing risks; boundaries and family rules; sex education and dealing with inappropriate sexual behaviour; times and places; recording; confidentiality; supervision
• Looking after relationships throughout the care setting: the relationship between the carers; birth children of carers; members of the wider kinship group
• Sexual abuse and disability: vulnerability and prevalence; recognising signs and indicators; protecting disabled children from abuse
• Accessing resources: finding and using information to support placements

MODULE 3

Working effectively with children and young people whose behaviour is maladaptive

Adaptive and maladaptive behaviours

• Human adaptability and attachment: survival value in being adaptable; adaptability during periods of brain patterning; persistence of maladaptive survival strategies from infancy
• Adolescence: replaying survival anxiety from infancy; need to adapt when moving towards independence; potential for developing or rediscovering maladaptive behaviours
• Examples of maladaptive behaviour: eating disorders; self-harm; substance misuse

Eating disorders

• Understanding eating disorders: social and psychological origins of disorder; accessing resources to understand eating disorders
• Types of eating disorder: anorexia; bulimia; overeating
• What can carers do?: taking advice; sustaining positive attitudes to food and mealtimes; containing the feelings; discussing with the child; encouraging self-esteem

Self-harm

• Understanding self-harm: incidence and prevalence; types of self-harm; gender and self- harm
• Effects of self-harm on the carers: anxiety and fear; revulsion; anger
• What can carers do?: containing the strong feelings; responding strongly and respectfully to the powerful communication; offering advice on risk management; accessing resources

Substance misuse

• Understanding substance misuse: defining misuse; experimental, recreational and problem users; young people looked after in the care system
• Substances that may be misused: alcohol; nicotine; benzene and propellants; illicit drugs
• What can carers do?: encouraging attachment and dependency on an attachment figure; containing the strong feelings; strengthening identity with carers as role models; helping to maintain educational opportunities

This material provides a notional 30 hours of learning.

Level: 3

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