Therapeutic care

At Action for Children Fostering, we offer an approach that above all is child-centred and focuses on offering safe, stable, supportive homes for children and young people who have a history of attachment disruption, abuse, neglect and trauma. We believe it’s really important to ensure that our foster carers are fully equipped to deal with children in their care that may have complex needs as a result of trauma.

Everyone of us develops into who we are based on our past experiences and interactions with others. For young people in care, who have experienced trauma, this is far from simple. How they behave is often a direct result of this trauma. It’s not their fault, it’s often not intentional and it’s not something that can change overnight.

Our fostering HOMES framework aims to build supportive homes for children who have experienced trauma and loss Find out more about HOMES.

We aim to provide safe and stable homes, where young people feel listened to and trusted.

We believe that it’s important to empower our foster carers, work collaboratively with them and involve them in decision-making, ensuring that they have the necessary resources and skills to meet the needs of the children and young people they care for.

We aim to establish joint goals and a common understanding through open, transparent communication, to respect the views of others and to ensure a learning culture and celebrate success.

By developing a shared understanding of the young person, we provide a tailored plan to support their needs and build upon their strengths. The children and young people that we support have often had life experiences resulting in:

• Developmental trauma
• Histories of attachment disruption
• Neglect
• Ongoing attachment/relational needs
• Trauma-related needs
• Executive functioning difficulties
• Vulnerability within relationships
• Social communication difficulties (e.g. Autistic Spectrum conditions)

As a result, these children and young people may present with a range of complex and high-risk behaviours.

At Action for Children Fostering we believe that this open and shared understanding gives us the insight and opportunity to best support the needs of the young person and their foster carers. Through our therapeutic approach we will give our foster carers the skills they need to look beyond the behaviours a young person may be displaying, to understand the meaning behind these behaviours and to understand how best to respond in the moment. This may be to learn how and when it is appropriate to just let the situation play out and then how to talk and understand the young person’s emotions and how to gain their trust.

All of our staff are trained in attachment and developmental trauma and multiple therapeutic techniques such as PACE (Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity, Empathy). This aligns perfectly with our ethos of ‘connection before correction’ which enables our foster carers to connect and understand the young person they’re caring for.

There is no judgement and no blame in therapeutic parenting.