Post-Qualifying Certificate: Working Therapeutically with Adopted and Fostered Children and their Families

With option of attending individual days and webinars.

When a child needs an alternative family, and is welcomed into a new home, this often has positive connotations. However, the child’s experiences prior to being placed in an adoptive, foster, or special guardianship family, can make family life challenging.

The experience of developmental trauma (abuse, neglect, attachment breaks) and other adversities will affect the child’s development, and especially their subsequent relationships with parents/carers, siblings, teachers and peers. In addition, the child is likely to have critical questions about their birth family, their life story, their identity (who is the ‘real’ me?) Parenting these children requests a therapeutic approach and specific skills, whilst the parents/carers also bring their own histories and triggers to family life. A suitably trained therapist can be a significant support in helping these children and their families to understand themselves better, and to gradually become places of healing and growth.

Course Format

Course Fees

Full course: £1990 / In-person full days: £250 each / Live evening webinars: £125 each

Course Aim

This training course will equip qualified therapists with key knowledge and skills in undertaking therapeutic work with adopted, fostered, and special guardianship children, and their families. The course can help you become eligible to provide therapeutic support funded by the Adoption Support Fund.

Admissions

You need to be a qualified and registered therapist, counsellor or psychologist (e.g. BACP, UKCP, ACP, BPS, HCPC) who has a good knowledge of child development, attachment and trauma, and who has worked with children/adolescents for a minimum of 2 years.

Staffing

The course is staffed by experienced therapists, counsellors, psychologists, social workers and adoptive parents who have worked in the field for many years.

Course Director: Franca Brenninkmeyer 
Franca worked at PAC-UK (formerly Post-Adoption Centre) for 25 years in various capacities: as a counsellor (with adoptive families, adopted adults, birth parents), trainer and manager of the Child and Family service. She has BA, MA, and MSc degrees in Pedagogy and Counselling Psychology from Belgium and the UK, and is a member of the BPS. Franca has presented in the UK and abroad; she has contributed to publications on complex trauma, adoption support practice and the importance of early intervention.

Outcomes

Full course participants will be able to:

• formulate an initial assessment and intervention plan that is informed by the specific needs of adopted, fostered and special guardianship children, and their families

• use some specific assessment skills for these children and their families

• provide therapeutic interventions specifically tailored to these children and their families

• liaise effectively with the network around these families

• know how to approach local authorities/fostering agencies to get onto their therapy provider lists, secure funding, manage evaluations and report writing

• forge relationships with other course participants for potential future peer support