A Course for Care Workers

organised by

The Planned Environment Therapy Trust with Mulberry Bush Training

This course aims to introduce the principles of working in therapeutic childcare management and practice.  The course relies on understanding disordered attachment and early childhood damage to make sense of distressed behaviour in children and young people and its impact on staff.  Participants will be encouraged to make use of their own feeling responses as a tool for staff management, treatment and nurturing care.  the relevance of approaches based on social pedagogy will also be explored.

Workers will discover that seeking to understa\nd behaviour through their own emotional responses will give them the tools to work alongside children and young people with more confidence and less stress.

The working method will reflect daily practice in therapeutic communities by using psychodynamic and group-analaytic approaches for understanding behaviour.  It will offer a programme of practice discussions and reflective workshops as well as facilitated self-experience reflective groups.  In all these sessions participants will have the opportunity to make connections gbetween their personal life experiences, their practice experience and theoretical learning.  Each workshop builds on the previous one, the course should be embarked on as a whole.

This course will be of benefit to people who would like to develop their capacity to work with their own feeling responses with an interest and/or experience in working with emotiionally troubled children and young people in any setting.  They are likely to come from fields such as residential or day-care, specialist social work (adoption, fostering, disability), mental health or education.  Groups will be about 14 participa\nts.  We can accept a maximum of 2 bookings from any work organisation.

Staff:

Teresa von Sommaruga Howard is a group-analytic psychotherapist, an architect and an organisational consultant.  She conducted the experiential group on the Reading University MA in Therapeutic Child Care.

Deborah Best: is an independent trainer in therapeutic child care, and has taught on courses for Diploma level (Lioncare, Brighton) to MA (Reading University, Carlow College, the Tavistock and Portman) with many years' experience of SEBD education.

Dr. Linnet McMahon is a play therapist a\nd was course leader of the Reading University MA in Therapeutic Child Care.

Dave Roberts is Head of Training and Consultancy at the Mulberry Bush Organisation and Programme Leader for the Foundation Degree in Therapeutic Work with Children and Young People validated by the University of the West of England.

Course Dates:  11-13 May, 15-16 July; 23 24 September

Cost:   The fee for the course, including all meals and accommodation, will be £1,150.  Payment may be divided as follows:  £450 for the first workshop and £350 for each of the following two.

Bookings:  Contact Joanna Jansen at P.E.T.T., Barns Centre, Church Lane, Toddington, Cheltenham, GL54 5DQ, Tel: 01242 621200, or by email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for a brochure and booking form.