Blog Post

Releasing Trauma: How our bodies play a part in releasing trauma & how to go about helping the process with children & young people - Recorded webinar

  • by CourseWeDo & Worth Publishing Ltd
  • 08 Jul, 2021

Recorded webinar - 1st July 2021

A very special CourseWeDo webinar with Dr Dan Hughes and colleagues from Family Futures.

Family Futures has been working with and supporting adoptive, foster, and special guardian families for over 20 years, developing an expertise in working with children and young people who have experienced significant trauma. For nearly all this time, Family Futures has had a long standing relationship with child and adolescent psychologist Dr Daniel Hughes, from their first meeting with him in Boston USA in 2000 to our first inviting him to come to the UK to present and offers his trainings to British professionals and parents.

Together, Family Futures and Daniel Hughes have developed best practice in what helps traumatised children heal, recognising the vital importance of regulation and attunement. Trauma in infancy leads to dysregulation of feeling states so helping children being more regulated is a vital to parenting, and indeed, learning in school.  

Alongside this, the formation of secure attachments in infancy is crucial as it becomes the cornerstone for all of life’s interpersonal interactions. Calming the body and regulating the nervous system is essential for children who have experienced trauma and their families, whatever therapy approach is being offered, and whatever the setting for learning.  

Family Futures specialises in integrating sensory, somatic and body-based approaches into all aspects of therapy; ideas from their practice can also be integrated into school and home life. This work is the essential foundation which is required to enable both children and adults to find an internal sense of calm so that they can begin to access their feelings and make sense of their experiences. It is the body to body, nervous system to nervous system interaction that is key!  

Comments on the webinar

  • Just brilliant. Both Jay and Dan's presentations were both fantastic. Jay's soothing tones to get us all noticing at the start of the webinar was just brilliant and set up both the body and brain for some fantastic learning. Thanks so much
  • Thank you really helped me to understand more and to examine my language and his body communication. I hope there will be more.
  • thank you for all the work you are doing..
  • Dan is always so inspiring and adds something to my study of his work but I found the Family Futures input very interesting on how work with the body helped one young person in particular.
  • These webinars are perfectly pitched to offer a supportive and educational space both professionally as a therapist and personally as a parent - thank you!
  • Thoroughly enjoyable webinar, I will be recommended my work colleagues to attend one in the near future.
  • So thought provoking, I especially like the suggestion of not always reverting to the caring voice and - like others- have been screamed at for staying so irritatingly calm!
  • All so helpful to think about and will recommend to others. Thank you so much.
  • Dan was truly inspirational and it was interesting to learn more about the valuable work of Family Futures
  • Thank you, inspirational webinar
  • Fantastic session, inspirational and motivating, thank you to all who made it happen.
  • Thank you this has been amazing and such vital information
  • Thank you brilliant webinar great for my foster children
  • Really enjoyable session - thanks so much :)
  • Really useful webinar has been the highlight of my day, thank you
  • Thank you so much, this has been so useful and thought provoking
  • I’ve written *pages* of notes, and will definitely watch this again - SO much to take on board thank you
  • Thank you all. So much information! Can we have family futures centres all over the country!
  • Thank you all so much, lovely to hear Dan again, very useful ideas and thought provoking
  • Thank you SO much for a fascinating webinar. It is always lovely to hear Dan and Jay.x
  • thank you for an amazing webinar! lots to think about 😁
  • Thank you very much for this opportunity and for giving your time to facilitate this for us all x
  • Thank you all so much, I am inspired.
  • amazing.  thank you all.  inspired :)
  • Thank you so much! Such an inspirational webinar
  • Thanks so much - such good information and ways of thinking
  • this has been brilliant ,my first of many, thankyou
by CourseWeDo & Worth Publishing Ltd 15 Mar, 2024
Life in school post Covid - absenteeism and mental health difficulties - share effective, supportive practice and innovation
by CourseWeDo & Worth Publishing Ltd 15 Mar, 2024
To celebrate BLACK HISTORY MONTH: Meet Dr Elaine Arnold, whose extraordinary & unique career in education, social work, counselling, attachment, migration & culture, family separation & intergenerational trauma spans, amazingly, some seven decades.
by CourseWeDo & Worth Publishing Ltd 15 Mar, 2024
Presenting the Reach4CARE App - for foster carers, adoptive parents, special guardians and input from those living & working with children looked after and adopted
by CourseWeDo & Worth Publishing Ltd 09 Nov, 2021
Presenting the Reach4CARE App - for foster carers, adoptive parents, special guardians and input from those living & working with children looked after and adopted
by CourseWeDo & Worth Publishing Ltd 30 Jun, 2021
This is a unique opportunity to spend time with Dr Heather Geddes who has spent her working life enabling children and young people settle to learn, especially those whose attachment difficulties and experience of extremely difficult early lives first moved her to focus on their predicament and challenges. B.A.S.E.® Babywatching programme creates unique experiences for whole classes, whilst also embracing and supporting the journey of each unique pupil. This deceptively simple programme creates conscious and subconscious links for individual children and groups, because the atmosphere it creates that has a huge impact. Children (and adults) are engaged and drawn in by the process: it provides opportunities for sustained shared watching, talking. listening, and critical thinking; and it provides focus on the development of relationships through attunement and empathy. In gentle, unobtrusive ways, the B.A.S.E.® Babywatching programme enhances pupils and community experience and capacity in a lasting manner.
by CourseWeDo & Worth Publishing Ltd 27 May, 2021
An interactive webinar including a visit from a 15 week old baby and his parents to enable us to have a live session. B.A.S.E.® Babywatching programme creates unique experiences for whole classes, whilst also embracing and supporting the journey of each unique pupil. This deceptively simple programme creates conscious and subconscious links for individual children and groups, because the atmosphere it creates that has a huge impact. Children (and adults) are engaged and drawn in by the process: it provides opportunities for sustained shared watching, talking. listening, and critical thinking; and it provides focus on the development of relationships through attunement and empathy. In gentle, unobtrusive ways, the B.A.S.E.® Babywatching programme enhances pupils and community experience and capacity in a lasting manner.
by Worth Publishing / CourseWeDo 13 May, 2021
Worth Publishing/CourseWeDo interview Heather Geddes, an educational therapist and author of Attachment in the Classroom, drawing on a wealth of experience, explores the significance of the relationship between the pupil, the teacher and the learning task, linking it to emotional development, behaviour and attachment experiences.
by CourseWeDo & Worth Publishing Ltd 30 Apr, 2021
This webinar will explore our relationship with nature, through the eyes of some who have promoted and explored the benefits in different ways over time, with children, young people and adults, what they have been given as well as given back: alongside an opportunity for all of us to share what we have experienced personally, loved and appreciated, through Covid..And what happens when our own empathy gets blocked? How can we free ourselves up again to empathise with our pupils and clients, carers and parents, our colleagues, our community and ourselves?
by Worth Publishing / CourseWeDo 23 Mar, 2021
Trainer, author, presenter and former Virtual School Head, Sheila Mulvenney discusses her book Overcoming Barrier to Learning and shows how relationships with staff in school are critical to enabling pupils and students to feel secure.
by CourseWeDo & Worth Publishing Ltd 23 Mar, 2021
A Worth Publishing / CourseWeDo webinar that shares experiences on how the 'schools re-opening week' and the 'recovery curriculum' have been going; even whilst we know schools have been open, with staff working imaginatively and incredibly hard in so many ways, all through pandemic lockdown. And what happens when our own empathy gets blocked? How can we free ourselves up again to empathise with our pupils and clients, carers and parents, our colleagues, our community and ourselves?
Show More
Share by: