TRAINING

The 3B’s therapeutic model is at the heart of everything we do at Belong.  Research and practice has shown it to be highly effective in supporting foster and adoptive families and offers a great way to integrate many therapeutic parenting theories and techniques.  If you subscribe to our mailing list you can now receive a free 5 day email course that outlines the very basics of the model.

The first 500 attendees on this course all rated it at ‘excellent’ and ‘highly applicable’ to their parenting and professional roles.

The 3B’s Therapeutic Parenting Model (Level 1) considers the importance of belonging, beliefs and behaviours within fostering and adoption.

Belonging

We will consider why the issue of belonging is so important to the young people we place in foster or adoptive families. We will look at what advances in neuroscience and psychology over the past decade have to teach us about how the social world affects brain development and the impact for young people of significant relationships with adults. Following on from this we will consider practical ways for you as the parent or professional to develop a positive attachment relationship with your young person.

Believing

This course will explore the two key beliefs all young people need to hold to make life best work for them – that they are lovable and that relationships can feel safe. We will explore how low self-esteem can be improved and how distrust of adults can be experienced and worked with from an attachment focus.

Behaving

The course will consider the range of behaviours shown by young people in foster and adoptive homes, the thinking and emotions behind the behaviours and why traditional methods of behaviour management do not work. Throughout the course you will gain practical methods to support young people living with you and the behaviours they display.

Research shows that over a third of practising foster parents have experienced an allegation and it is legitimate to argue that this figure would be higher if it also represented the number of people who stopped fostering even after an allegation had been investigated and found to be false. Allegations are therefore often seen as an unfortunate and unavoidable occupational hazard.

But what does it mean in reality for a foster parent to experience the allegation process? And how do professionals around them provide support that is effective within the boundaries of legislation?

On this course you will hear the personal story of Fi Newood’s experience of living with a child who made 7 false allegations against her during a short period. She will share with you her thoughts, feelings, behavioural and physiological responses as she was subject to child protection, police investigation and having the child removed and returned.

Furthermore she will share how she continued to work with the child, the personal, professional and practical issues this raised and how and why just 3 months later she and her partner adopted him.

Her son has also briefly contributed to course material about what prompted these allegations, why he hasn’t made any since and what relationship repair means to him.

With the focus of fostering and adopting being on child-centred practice it is easy to overlook the needs of the parent and recognise them within the parent-child relationship.

In doing this we do foster and adoptive parents a disservice. Fostering is so much more than a role to perform and it is so much harder to separate out the personal and professional role.

Parent frequently experience difficulties and often lack the safe spaces in which to share their thoughts and feelings openly. This course is based on research gained by Fi Newood for her book – ‘I Can’t Do This: When Foster and Adoptive Parenting Feels Too Hard.

This course will:

• Encourage parents to think about their own needs and how these are or could be met.
• Normalise the common thoughts, feels and behavioural responses experienced when parenting is really difficult.
• Explore issues facing couples who foster or adopt together.
• Explore issues facing single parents.
• Raise understanding of secondary trauma, how it may be experienced by parents and what they can do about it.
• Develop parents own self-care skills.

The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Shame

We live at a time where all of us fail to meet the unrealistic expectations of our society.  At the basis of so much of human behaviour is a feeling of simply being ‘not good-enough’.  Nowhere is this more true than in the fostering/adoption parent-child relationship.  Parents frequently feel they aren’t good enough to meet the demands of parenting their child.  The previously traumatised child often feels not good-enough for anything or anyone.  The shame leads to shameful thought, feelings and behaviours that prevent family from requesting support.  And if they are able to rise above this, too often services are shame-based in their response to parents anyway.

This will consider:

• What shame is.
• The biological and societal factors it involves.
• How to parent a child with pervasive shame.
• How to recognise our own shame triggers.
• How to build resilience against shame for everyone.
• How services (and therefore professionals) can work with families in a non-shaming approach.

Working Therapeutically with Self-Harming Behaviours

The national statistics for self-harming behaviour in young people is rising and, perhaps unsurprisingly, fostered and adopted young people are considered a significant risk group.

But what really is self-harm?

And what is the best way to support someone who does it?

This course will:

• Explore the different ways in which young people self-harm.
• Raise awareness of the different signs that a young person may be self-harming
• Consider the reasons behind these behaviours.
• Aim to remove the ‘fear factor’ for parents and professionals
• Provide practical advice for working with self-harming behaviour.
• Show how to support a young person in a way that improves their attachment to the parent and their sense of being safe and loved

Loss is (sadly) a fact of life that few of us ever escape. From the big losses to the small ones, we are each impacted. Fostering and adoption in particular is entwined with issue of lose that impact each member of the family. However, whilst there is much discussion now about working with the losses of the child, the losses of the parent frequently goes unnoticed.

This course will:

* Examine the many losses that foster and adoptive parents experience.
* Consider the grieving process for losses that aren’t related to bereavement.
* Explore the true impact of loss.
* Consider how to support the child with their grief whilst also grieving yourself.
* Normalise responses to moving young people on positively and also placement breakdowns.
* Think about what can be gained from loss and how to move forwards

Child to Parent Violence.
Adolescent to Parent Abuse.
Parent Abuse.
Adolescent Violence in the Home.
Battered parent syndrome.

Call it what you wish but no longer can we ignore the fact that it happens or the devastating effect it has upon the parent, the child and those close to them.

Research into the issue is currently in the early stages, procedures and policies that safeguard parents are rarely in place and there is a significant lack of awareness both within the general public and also professional services. And yet the issue is thought to be escalating, especially within fostering and adoption, and increasing number of family breakdowns are occurring as a result.

This course will examine:

* What it means to live alongside a violent child.
* If violence can ever be worked with in a family setting.
* Therapeutic techniques for promoting safety within the home.
* How to access support if needed.
* The true impact of violence in the home for foster and adoptive parents.
* Issues relating to parental shame.
* How professionals, family and friends might provide better support.

Your trainer for this course has personal experience of living alongside young people who display violent behaviours. She will share her story of what has worked and what hasn’t worked in her situation as part of the training.

Love.

The Greeks had 4 words for it but, despite its various forms, experiences, emotions and challenges, we have just one.

So what is love? How do we show it? How do we understand it? and Why do some children find it so hard to receive the love a foster or adoptive parent can offer?

This course will explore the concept of the five languages of love and consider how they can become distorted when a young person experiences abuse, neglect, trauma, separation and/or loss. We will consider the relationship difficulties this can cause young people and the effect that has upon their ability to feel loved and cared for.

As well as reflecting on our own love languages and how these impact our work, we will also learn practical ways of speaking love to young people who may have little understanding of what that truly means.

So is the love you offer your child enough?

Will your love ever make a difference or be appreciated?

Will you ever feel love from them?

This course will explore those question

Love.

The Greeks had 4 words for it but, despite its various forms, experiences, emotions and challenges, we have just one.

So what is love? How do we show it? How do we understand it? and Why do some children find it so hard to receive the love a foster or adoptive parent can offer?

This course will explore the concept of the five languages of love and consider how they can become distorted when a young person experiences abuse, neglect, trauma, separation and/or loss. We will consider the relationship difficulties this can cause young people and the effect that has upon their ability to feel loved and cared for.

As well as reflecting on our own love languages and how these impact our work, we will also learn practical ways of speaking love to young people who may have little understanding of what that truly means.

So is the love you offer your child enough?

Will your love ever make a difference or be appreciated?

Will you ever feel love from them?

This course will explore those questions and more

Much debate exists about whether or not to keep siblings together in fostering and adoption. It is also recognised that re-parenting siblings who have experienced trauma presents a great challenge to foster and adoptive parents.

This course will:

• Examine the legislation and current research finding on sibling placements.
• Highlight the qualities of relationships between siblings and how they might be effected by trauma.
• Raise awareness of the pull to re-create birth family dynamics in the new family.
• Give practical methods for working alongside sibling issues.
• Help parents and practitioners to decide when to keep siblings together and when to separate them.

This course will be run by either Fi or Gail Newood. Between 2008 and 2009 they reunited 3 siblings who had been separated within the foster care system with the view that they could not live together again. In 2015 they became the proud adoptive parents of these three boys. They will share the highs and lows of their experience, what has worked, what didn’t and what their overall learning has been.

We live in a society where all of us fail to meet the unrealistic expectations of our society.  At the basis of so much of human behaviour is a feeling of simply being ‘not good-enough’.  Nowhere is this more true than in the fostering/adoption parent-child relationship.  Parents frequently feel they aren’t good enough to meet the demands of parenting their child.  The previously traumatised child often feels not good-enough for anything or anyone.  The shame leads to shameful thought, feelings and behaviours that prevent family from requesting support.  And if they are able to rise above this, too often services are shame-based in their response to parents anyway.

This will consider:

• What shame is.
• The biological and societal factors it involves.
• How to parent a child with pervasive shame.
• How to recognise our own shame triggers.
• How to build resilience against shame for everyone.
• How services (and therefore professionals) can work with families in a non-shaming approach.

Accessing therapy is often recommended for fostered and adopted young people. But what is the role of the parent within this and how effective is it likely to be?

With a plethora of different types of therapy available how will you know which therapy is right for your child or what the experience of therapy may be for them.

This course will:

• Consider the therapy options available for young people.
• Give guidelines about accessing services.
• Raise understanding about the different therapies available and their effectiveness with different young people.
• Explore what research tells us ‘good therapy’ looks like.
• Offer practical ways of supporting young people accessing therapy, including those who are not wanting to engage.
• Discuss the pros and cons of parents being in the therapy sessions.
• Raise awareness of different ways to support the child outside of the session.
• Raise debate about whether therapy is always necessary and/or appropriate for traumatised children.