childhood trauma: understanding the basis of change and ... trauma conference4 - 8...his...

Childhood Trauma: Understanding the basis

of change and recovery. An International Conference on Innovation

in Therapeutic Approaches with Children, Young People and Families.

Unique International Trauma Conference, 4-8 August 2014, Melbourne Convention Centre

childtraumaconf.org

http://www.childtraumaconf.org

In the brain, the collective actions of individual nerve cells connect in intricate networks to shape behaviour, form and retrieve memories, evoke emotions, react to danger and build relationships with others.

Knowledge about brain-body science has challenged and resourced exciting innovation in the ways that children, young people and adults are supported to recover from the effects of violence, disruption and relational disconnection.

The neurobiology of childhood trauma and attachment is now integral to practice approaches of professionals from education, child protection, mental health, family support, drug and alcohol, police, out of home care and criminal justice services.

In this unique event, the Australian Childhood Foundation has assembled thought leaders in interpersonal neurobiology, trauma and therapy in a conference format that promises to engage, challenge and integrate perspectives about working with children, young people and families.

The conference has three separate components, each offering options for participants to follow their own interests and plan a program that is specific to their learning objectives.

Component 1. Masterclass Workshops There are six full day Masterclass workshops offered during the first and last day of the conference. These are opportunities for delegates to engage with a selection of key note speakers in an extended training session focusing on a cutting edge topic in the field of neurobiology, trauma, attachment and therapeutic intervention. One of the Masterclass workshops is specifically for foster carers and kinship carers.

Component 2. Key Note Speaker Seminars There are two full days of concurrent key note speaker seminars. The seminars run for 1.5 hours each. Delegates can choose from a selection of insightful and thought provoking presentations. Many of the presentations are repeated to ensure that delegates do not miss out on the many seminars of interest in the program. The end of each day of seminars will feature two plenary closing panels featuring International and Australian experts answering questions from delegates.

Component 3. Paper Presentations by Conference Delegates A call for abstracts will be issued in November 2013. Selected papers will be presented by delegates during the middle day of the conference. The papers can be research, practice or policy focussed. These papers will be presented in thematic sessions that will be moderated by the international speakers. This day will conclude with each of the moderators coming together in a plenary panel to discuss their reflections on the issues raised during the presentations.

A selection of papers from the conference will be published in a special edition of Children Australia in 2015.

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…the brain is a social organ...made to be in relationship. It’s hardwired to take in signals from the social environment, which in turn influences a person’s inner world….what happens between brains has a great deal to do with what happens within each individual brain. Self and community are fundamentally inter-related, since every brain is continually constructed by its interactions with others. The me discovers meaning by joining and belonging to we…. Dan Siegel (2012)

Unique International Trauma Conference

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Who are the Keynote Speakers?

Cindy Blackstock Cindy Blackstock is the Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada and an associate professor at the University of Alberta. A member of the Gitksan Nation, Cindy has worked in the field of child and family services for over 20 years. An author of over 50 publications, her key interests include exploring, and addressing, the causes of disadvantage for Aboriginal children and families and promoting equitable and culturally based interventions. She holds fellowships with the Ashoka Foundation and the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and has received numerous awards and distinctions, including a National Aboriginal Achievement Award.

Emeritus Professor

Judy Atkinson

Emeritus Professor Judy Atkinson is a Jiman - Aboriginal Australian (from Central west Queensland) / Bundjalung (Northern New South Wales) woman, who also has Anglo-Celtic, and German heritage. She holds a BA from the University of Canberra, and a PhD from Queensland University of Technology. She is also a graduate of the Harvard University - Program for Refugee Trauma - Global Mental Health Trauma and Recovery certificate course. Her primary academic and research focus has been in the area of violence, with its relational trauma, and healing or recovery for Indigenous, and indeed all peoples. In 2006, while Head of the College of Indigenous Australian Peoples at Southern Cross University, she won the Carrick Neville Bonner Award for her curriculum development and innovative teaching practice. In 2011 she was awarded the Fritz Redlich Memorial award for Human Rights and Mental Health from the Harvard University Program for Refugee Trauma. She co-authored the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence Report, for the Queensland government. Her book in 2005: Trauma Trails – Recreating Songlines: The Transgenerational Effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia, provides context to the life stories of people who have moved/been moved from their country in a process that has created trauma trails, and the changes that can occur in the lives of people as they make connections with each other, and share their stories of healing.

Dr Dan Siegel Dr Dan Siegel is currently clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine where he is on the faculty of the Centre for Culture, Brain, and Development and the Co-Director of the Mindful Awareness Research Centre (Los Angeles, USA). An award-winning educator, he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and recipient of several honorary fellowships. Dr. Siegel is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational organization, which offers online learning and in-person lectures that focus on how the development of mindsight in individuals, families and communities can be enhanced by examining the interface of human relationships and basic biological processes. Dr. Siegel has published extensively for the professional audience. He is the co-editor of the Handbook of Psychiatry and the author of numerous articles, chapters, and the internationally acclaimed text, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (Guilford, 1999). This book introduces the field of interpersonal neurobiology, and has been utilized by a number of clinical and research organizations worldwide, including the U.S. Department of Justice, The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family, Microsoft and Google. The Developing Mind, Second Edition was published on March 14, 2012. Dr. Siegel serves as the Founding Editor for the Norton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology which now includes more than 20 textbooks. His professional book, The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being (Norton, 2007), explores the nature of mindful awareness as a process that harnesses the social circuitry of the brain as it promotes mental, physical, and relational health. His latest professional text, The Mindful Therapist: A Clinician’s Guide to Mindsight and Neural Integration (Norton, 2010), explores the application of focusing techniques for the clinician’s own development, as well as their clients’ development of mindsight and neural integration. His latest book is Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology:An Integrative Handbook of the Mind (Norton, 2012).

Dr. Allan Schore Dr. Allan Schore is on the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioural Sciences, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, and at the UCLA Centre for Culture, Brain, and Development (Los Angeles USA). He is author of four seminal volumes, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self, Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self, and The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy, as well as numerous articles and chapters. His Regulation Theory, is grounded in developmental neuroscience and developmental psychoanalysis. His contributions appear in multiple disciplines, including developmental neuroscience, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, attachment theory, trauma studies, behavioural biology, clinical psychology and social work. His ground breaking integration of neuroscience with attachment theory has lead to his description as the American Bowlby with emotional development as the world’s leading authority on how our right hemisphere regulates emotion and processes our sense of self. The American Psychoanalytic Association has described Dr. Schore as a monumental figure in psychoanalytic and neuropsychoanalytic studies.

Pat Ogden Pat Ogden, Ph.D., is a pioneer in somatic psychology and the founder/director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy® Institute in Colorado (USA), an internationally recognized school specializing in somatic–cognitive approaches for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder and attachment disturbances. She is co-founder of the Hakomi Institute, a clinician, consultant, international lecturer and trainer, and first author of Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy. Her second book, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment, due out in Spring, 2014, is a practical guide to a integrate Sensorimotor Psychotherapy® interventions into the treatment of trauma and attachment issues. Dr. Ogden is currently developing Sensorimotor Psychotherapy for Children, adolescents and families with colleagues.

Dr Ed Tronick Dr Ed Tronick (University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA) is a developmental and clinical psychologist and is recognized internationally as a researcher on infants and children and parenting. He has co-authored and authored more than 200 scientific papers and chapters. Dr. Tronick’s research focuses on social-emotional development and self-regulatory processes in normal and compromised infants and young children and the effects of stress on infants and parents. He developed the Still-Face Paradigm and the Model of Mutual Regulation. More recently he has worked on co-creative processes of the expansion meaning in the infant-adult in the therapeutic dyadic. He has carried out research in Zaire, Peru, and India on child rearing and development. He co-developed the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment and the Touchpoints Program with Berry Brazelton and is a master trainer. Recently, he and his colleague, Barry Lester published the NICU Network Neurobehavioral Assessment, a standardized instrument for assessing the neurobehavioral status of the newborn that has proved effective in making long term predictions. Dr. Tronick’s current research with his research team focuses on the area of Relational Psychophysiology.

Kim Golding Kim Golding is a Clinical Psychologist working in Worcestershire, England. Her career has focused on working with children and families within the NHS since her training was completed in 1985. Kim has been involved in the establishment and evaluation of the Integrated Service for Looked After Children. ISL provides support for foster, adoptive and residential parents, schools and the range of professionals around the children growing up in care or in adoptive families. She is the author of Nurturing Attachments: Supporting Children who are Fostered and Adopted, co-author with Dan Hughes of Creating Loving Attachments: Parenting with Pace and lead author of observational checklists designed for use in educational settings, Observing Children with Attachment Difficulties in Preschool Settings. She has written a group work programme to use with foster carers and adopters: The Nurturing Attachments Training Resource. All of these have been published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. She is currently working on a book of short therapeutic stories for children, their parents and the practitioners who support them.

…Many people are left with a fragmented memory of their traumatic experiences, a host of easily reactivated neurobiological responses, and baffling, intense, nonverbal memories – sensorimotor reactions and symptoms that tell the story without words, as though the body knows what they do not now cognitively. They are often unaware that these reactions – intrusive body sensations, images, smells, physical pain and constriction, numbing, and the inability to modulate arousal – are in fact remnants of past trauma…traumatised individuals interpret these reactivated sensorimotor responses as statements about their identity or selfhood: I am never safe, I am worthless and unlovable. These beliefs are reflected in the body and affect posture, breathing, freedom of movement, even heart rate and respiration… Pat Ogden (2006)

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Dr. Sue Carter Dr. Sue Carter is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina (USA). She is Professor Emerita of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago and has formerly held the position of Distinguished University Professor of Biology at the University of Maryland and prior to that was Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Ecology, Ethology and Evolution at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Carter is past president of the International Behavioural Neuroscience Society and holds fellow status in that Society and in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has authored over 275 publications, including editorship of 5 books. The most recent of these is Attachment and Bonding; A New Synthesis (MIT Press). Research from Dr. Carter’s laboratory documented the role of oxytocin and vasopressin in social bond formation. Her most recent work focuses on the developmental consequences of oxytocin, including perinatal exposure to synthetic oxytocin, and the protective role of this peptide in the regulation of behavioural and autonomic reactivity to stressful experiences.

Dr Stephen Porges Dr Stephen Porges is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina (USA). He is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he directed the Brain-Body Centre. Dr. Porges is also Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland where served as Chair of the Department of Human Development and Director of the Institute for Child Study. He is a former president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research and also of the Federation of Behavioural, Psychological, and Cognitive Sciences. He is a former recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Development Award. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers across several disciplines including anaesthesiology, critical care medicine, ergonomics, exercise physiology, gerontology, neurology, obstetrics, paediatrics, psychiatry, psychology, space medicine, and substance abuse. In 1994 he proposed the Polyvagal Theory, a theory that links the evolution of the vertebrate autonomic nervous system to the emergence of social behaviour. The theory provides insights into the mechanisms mediating symptoms observed in several behavioural, psychiatric, and physical disorders. The theory has stimulated research and treatments that emphasize the importance of physiological state and behavioural regulation in the expression of several psychiatric disorders and provides a theoretical perspective to study and to treat stress and trauma. He is the author of The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation (Norton, 2011) and is currently writing Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe (Norton, 2014).

Dr Dan Hughes Dr Dan Hughes has been a psychologist specializing in the treatment of children and youth with severe emotional and behavioural problems. His work has focused on children and youth who experienced developmental trauma and attachment disorganization along with their foster and adoptive families. Dan has borrowed heavily from attachment theory and neurobiology research to develop a model of treatment that he calls Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy. DDP is a nondirective yet directive, client-cantered approach, influenced by psychodynamic, gestalt, Rogerian, and Ericksonian traditions, brought together within the dance of affect attunement that is seen most powerfully in the relationship between a parent and her/his infant and toddler. The DDP model is described well in Building the Bonds of Attachment, 2nd Edition (2006). He expanded the treatment model so that it was applicable to all families, which led to the publication of Attachment-Focused Family Therapy Workbook in 2011 and Attachment-Focused Parenting in 2009. In 2012 he wrote Brain-Based Parenting with Jon Baylin and Creating Loving Attachments with Kim Golding.

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The conference program is described in the table below. The unique conference format offers delegates the opportunity to:

• listen to plenary sessions about new directions in neuroscience and practice from thought leaders in the field;

• attend keynote speaker seminars with international experts on Tuesday and Thursday - some of these sessions are repeated to enable delegates to hear from a range of speakers;

• present and listen to papers focusing on research, practice and policy informed by interpersonal neurobiology and trauma delivered by fellow

delegates and moderated by international speakers with an interest in this area; and,

• listen to a panel of international and Australian experts who come together at the end of each day to share their reflections and actively participate in a broad discussion about emerging themes in innovative practice with children, young people and families.

A selection of papers from the conference will be published in a special edition of Children Australia in 2015.

What is the Conference Program?

Monday 4/08/2014Masterclass Workshops

Tuesday 5/08/2014Keynote Speaker Seminars

Wednesday 6/08/2014Paper Presentations

Thursday 7/08/2014Keynote Speaker Seminars

Friday 8/08/2014Masterclass Workshops

Opening Plenary

Alan Schore

Kim Golding and Dan Hughes

Pat Ogden

Alan Schore Cindy Blackstock

Ed Tronick Dan SiegelJudy Atkinson

Dan Siegel

Judy Atkinson

Dan Hughes (Carers only)

Morning Dan HughesKim Golding Pat Ogden Stephen Porges

Papers

Dan SiegelDan HughesCindy BlackstockSue Carter

Afternoon Kim Golding Pat OgdenAlan SchoreEd Tronick

Papers

Dan SiegelJudy AtkinsonStephen PorgesEd Tronick

Closing Plenary

International and Australian Expert Panel - Summary



…Trauma-informed services and trauma-specific care models reach into the hearts of children who are victims/survivors of trauma and into those of their families. Practitioners and service providers write of providing education and therapeutic and enrichment initiatives designed to respond to children’s needs including their neurodevelopmental growth. Many of their reported practices are grounded within the richness of children’s cultural and spiritual heritage. Such culturally informed approaches recognise Indigenous worldviews for strengthening cultural and spiritual identity, in early childhood and across the lifespan…. Judy Atkinson (2013)

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Delegates can choose to register for a full day Masterclass with select speakers on Monday and Friday. The Masterclass workshops are smaller group opportunities to hear from influential practitioners about their most recent areas of study, practice and innovation.

On Monday, delegates can register to • join Dr Allan Schore on his 30th anniversary of the publication of his seminal book entitled: Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self;

• hear from both Dan Hughes and Kim Golding together for the first time in Australia to share their practice wisdom about working therapeutically with children, young people and carers in the out of home care system;

• take part in an experiential workshop with Pat Ogden as she describes her approach to using a sensorimotor approach to therapeutic work with children, young people and adults.

On Friday, delegates can register to• listen to Dan Siegel explore his most recent work in applying his model of interpersonal neurobiology to mindful practices of intervention;

• take part in Judy Atkinson’s exploration of intergenerational trauma in indigenous communities.

Also on Friday, foster carers and kinship carers are invited to take part in a special one day workshop with Dan Hughes aimed at exploring practical strategies in supporting traumatised children and young people in their care. This is a unique opportunity for carers to hear from a world class speaker who has translated attachment and neuroscience into practical principles of care.

Masterclass Workshop Program

…I don’t think the infant knows what the danger may be…but the angry face makes him feel threatened by what is happening…it is analogous to a sense of doom people experience when no doom is obvious, it just is. And when the mother smiles, he smiles back, knowing that his world is again safe, but he does not know what makes for the feeling….the infant reacts as a whole system…Arms, posture, facial expression, gaze, his physiology changed in reaction to the threat and then continued to change as the disruption was repaired and the threat changes to safety and pleasure… Ed Tronick (2009)

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The Australian Childhood Foundation is at the national forefront of translating the evidence base of the neurobiology of trauma and attachment into specialist therapeutic intervention for traumatised children and their families, therapeutic foster care and residential care programs, and professional education initiatives.

The Foundation is a leading specialist provider of therapeutic programs for children who have experienced abuse related trauma. It currently runs these programs in Victoria, Tasmania, Northern Territory, South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory and Western Australia. It has more than 25 partnerships with other non-government organisations to support direct trauma based therapeutic programs for children and young people. These partnerships include Oz Child (VIC), UnitingCare Gippsland (VIC), Barnados (ACT), Salvation Army (VIC), Gippsland and East Gippsland Aboriginal Cooperative, Anglicare (SA and VIC), Relationships Australia (NT), and Centrecare (WA).

The Foundation is a Registered Training Organisation delivering nationally accredited competency based training courses. The Foundation currently has four qualifications on its scope of registration including the Certificate IV in Child, Youth and Family Intervention (Residential and Out of Home Care), the Vocational Graduate Certificate in Community Services Practice (Statutory child protection) and the Vocational Graduate Certificate in Development Trauma.

The Vocational Graduate Certificate in Developmental Trauma has been developed by the Foundation in response to an identified industry need. There is currently no other course of its kind in the vocational education and training system

The Foundation runs national professional education and development programs focused on neurobiology, trauma and attachment. It reaches more than 7000 professionals each year nationally. It runs annual international speaker tours in capital cities nationally. It runs the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy® Training Program in conjunction with the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy® Institute (USA) and the Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy Training in conjunction with Dan Hughes (USA).

It runs a range of workforce development programs for a number of state and territory government departments in Australia including Education Departments in South Australia, where it has run the SMART (Strategies for Managing Abuse Related Trauma) Program for the last nine years across SA, in the Northern Territory where it replicated the SMART Program across schools in the NT, and has a contract with the Tasmanian Department of Education to implement a similar initiative statewide addressing the issues of student engagement and disconnection in secondary school. The Foundation has also run workforce development programs for child protection staff and managers in Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory.

The Foundation has implemented national community awareness and child abuse prevention initiatives. These have included Play Your Part and Stop Child Abuse Now campaigns. Its Safeguarding Children Program is unique in Australia and provides effective standards, training and an accreditation program that help organisations to strengthen their capacity to protect children and young people in their care. The Foundation’s parenting support program has distributed more 1.5 million parenting education booklets nationally, as well as provided parenting material translated into 16 languages as a talking book and talking website (www.kidscount.com.au). It has recently implemented a national network of parenting education groups through its Bringing Up Great Kids Program.

The Foundation has a partnership with Child Abuse Prevention and Research Australia at Monash University with whom it undertakes joint research projects.

Find out more about the work of the Foundation and the opportunities available to take part in its training programs by visiting our website www.childhood.org.au/training

Who is the Australian Childhood Foundation?

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…All children deserve the kind of caregiving that fosters the development of secure attachment and puts them on a trajectory towards social and emotional resilience. Too many children only know the kind of safety that comes intermittently and disappears with a parent’s inattentiveness, defensiveness, disinterest, or loss of control. This kind of fleeting, sporadic safety forces children to play defense much too early in life, making them hypervigilant in one setting where they should be able to relax deeply and feel “safe to the bone’ … Dan Hughes (2012)

http://www.childhood.org.au/training

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Conference details & registration fees

…the right hemisphere is dominant in the change process of therapy…although the left hemisphere is specialised for coping with predictable representations and strategies, the right predominates not only for organising the human stress response but also for coping with and assimilating novel situations and ensuring the formation of a new program of interaction with a new environment… Allan Schore (2012)

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Conference Details

When: 4-8 August, 2014

Where: Melbourne Convention Centre, 1 Convention Centre Place, South Wharf, Victoria.

Registrations Open: 14 November 2013

Call for Abstracts: 14 November 2013

Abstracts Close: 14 March, 2014

Conference Program Published (Abstract Notification):

24 March, 2014

Registration Fees All fees are GST inclusive and include morning and afternoon tea and lunch. Book early and save.

Super Early Bird Fee – Open to previous Australian Childhood Foundation Workshop Attendees

(Registration received on or prior to 20/12/13)

$995 N/A N/A N/A

Early Bird Fee


$1195 $995 $795 $995

Standard Fee


$1395 $1195 $995 $1195

Late Fee

(Registration received after 25/07/14)

$1595 $1395 $1195 $1395

childtraumaconf.org

Masterclass Day 1 + Conference + Masterclass Day 2

Masterclass Day 1 + Conference

Conference Day 2-4 Conference + Masterclass Day 5

All children and adults pictured in this document are models.


Australian Childhood FoundationPO BOX 525 Ringwood VIC 3134Phone: (03) 9874 3922Fax: (03) 9879 7388www.childhood.org.au/training

childtraumaconf.org

The Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) is Australia’s most versatile convention and exhibition facility with the flexibility to host a range of conferences, conventions, exhibitions, meetings,

seminars and gala dinners. MCEC is the only 6 star convention centre in the world.

1 Convention Centre Place, South Wharf, Victoria. www.mcec.com.au

http://www.childhood.org.au/training


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