Using Empathy to Support Compassion Fatigue, Co-Regulation & Attachment - Advanced (Zoom)

Providing foster care for children who have often experienced abuse, neglect, trauma, and loss is highly demanding. The complex demands of these children require foster carers to have robust mental health and well-being.

Understanding our attachment patterns is key to offering a supportive relationship to our young people. This is achieved through a clear understanding of our own history and unmet childhood needs, as it is estimated that 40% of adults have a reactionary attachment pattern. In this course, we will explore the critical tenets of attachment in interpersonal relationships and support understanding adult attachment patterns and how this can lead to blocked care.

Blocked care can cause placement breakdown or Compassion Fatigue. This is generally defined as a combination of emotional and physical burnout and secondary traumatic stress. Because the foster carer's home is also their place of work, there is little opportunity to take a break, rest and re-charge. As well as affecting their mental health and well-being, this situation also impacts the quality and consistency of care provided to the vulnerable children they look after.

 

Learning Objectives:

1. Explore how the changes to family dynamics brought about by fostering causes stress
2. To enhance knowledge and understanding of attachment theory
3. To know the effect on adult relationships
4. To know how we assess our patterns
5. Understand the possible attachment pattern we may have developed
6. Learn the implications of your caring relationship
7. Develop an understanding of how you can alter your pattern
8. Identify ways of maintaining positive elements of "pre-fostering life" and self-care
9. Analyse factors that lead to compassion fatigue in your work
10. Identify coping strategies that you can use to increase your resiliency
11. Develop ways to find support for yourself and give support to your colleagues

Format: This is a live training session through the platform "Zoom". It includes taught sections, small group work, work in pairs, and whole group discussion.

Hand-outs: Full hand-outs and sources of further information will be provided

Certificate: A certificate will be provided upon the completion and evaluation of the course

Each training programme can be purchased individually for your team or drawn together into a very dynamic package. When purchased together, we will discount the overall cost by 5%, on top of the usual 5% for pre-paying.