Fundamental of Trauma: Understanding and Assessing Child and Adolescent Trauma Using the Trauma System

This training programme has been developed in response to the growing concerns and challenges of those who interact and work with young people. The program is designed to equip them with the necessary toolkit and working knowledge required to gain valuable theoretical and practical information to better serve those they interact with daily.

Programme Description

This programme will provide participants with a comprehensive foundation that incorporates common concepts (general theory and foundational knowledge), components (intervention and treatment elements), and skills (practitioner skills) underlying evidence-based treatment for traumatized children and adolescents. The program will highlight the role of development, culture, and empirical evidence in trauma-specific interventions with children, adolescents, and their families.  It will address the level of functioning of primary caregiving environments and assess the capacity of the community to facilitate restorative processes.

Course Objectives & Outcomes

Participants will:

1. History of Trauma and What Constitutes Trauma?
2. Be able to explain how traumatic experiences inherently complex and present differential interventions for children and adolescents are who may exhibit a variety of responses following exposure to a traumatic event.
3. Understand the neurobiological consequences of exposure to trauma.
4. Be able to illustrate how trauma can interact with and exacerbate pre-existing vulnerabilities (e.g., history of prior trauma, loss, or psychopathology) across development.
5. Understand how pre-existing protective and promotive factors (e.g., positive attachment relationship with primary caregiver, family cohesion, social support, adaptive coping, and social competence) can reduce the adverse impacts of trauma exposure across development.
6. Be able to introduce and understand the way trauma exposure may generate adverse life events and circumstances (secondary adversities) that may continue to transmit the adverse effects of trauma over time and across development.
7. Be able to provide interventions for trauma-exposed children and adolescents including promoting the children or adolescent’s external (objective) safety and internal (psychological) safety.
8. Examine the way cultural factors and processes may profoundly influence trauma exposure and systematically consider at all stages of intervention.
9. Be able to provide a framework for interventions that address the level of functioning of primary caregiving environments, including the parent/caregiver, family unit, and their relationship with the child or adolescent.
10. Understand the importance of ethical and legal issues as these arise while providing interventions for the trauma exposed.
11. Be able to explore how interventions with trauma-exposed children and adolescents affect the practitioner in working with these populations.