Trauma Informed Approaches
The experiences of staff and pupils during Covid 19 and lockdown will be different and unique to them. For some this time will have included some enjoyable moments and a have been a period of personal growth however, for others this will have been a challenging time of anxiety and some may have not felt safe in their own homes. Pupils who have previously experienced trauma and/or a significant bereavement are most likely to have be negatively affected by schools being closed for this period of time. The following page provides information and resources that are based on trauma informed practice that can be used to support pupils who have experienced trauma with their return to school.
For staff support please see our page on Staff Wellbeing.
For pupils who have experienced a loss during this time, please see our page on supporting grief and loss.
Education Scotland Resource
With an increasing focus on supporting children and young people with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), the use of nurturing approaches is a key focus and very much on the national agenda. Education Scotland (2018) make the links between nurturing approaches, trauma informed practice and ACEs, highlighting that they all: focus on early intervention; emphasise the importance of relationships; recognise that those who have experienced early trauma and require support to demonstrate later resilience. They are all evidence-based and grounded in psychological theory
We know school staff are not therapists and nor are they expected to be. These pages have been designed to support practitioners to practically apply psychologically informed approaches in the classroom for all children.
Dr Karen Treisman describes how every interaction we have with a child is a potential intervention and highlights that "you don't have to be a therapist, to be therapeutic".
Promoting Resilience in the Face of Trauma
Dr Bessel van Der Kolk is a trauma expert whose work has impacted the way we understand how experiences of trauma can change the wiring of the brain. Dr van Der Kolk, who has spent his career studying how children and adults adapt to traumatic experiences, has defined 7 'pre-conditions' for trauma. The presence of these 7 elements will negatively impact the coping ability of individuals who experience traumatic experiences. These pre-conditions, that will negatively impact ones ability to be resilient to traumatic experiences, are:
Lack of predictability
Immobility
Loss of connection
Numbing or spacing out
Loss of sense of time and sequence
Loss of safety
Loss of sense of purpose
Anything we can do to counter or eliminate these elements, for pupils and ourselves, will ensure a more resilient and positive recovery in the face of trauma. We have summarised some considerations and prompts to support staff to think about how to counter these below:
Dr Bruce Perry: Reaching The Learning Brain
Dr Bruce Perry has developed the ‘Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics’ to help support children who have suffered early trauma and loss. It follows the sequence of how the brain is ordered in children. It begins in the lower brain or the brain stem where sensory and motor input is processed and is the area of the brain that processes stress and determines our response to it (fight/flight/freeze). Next up is the limbic part of the brain where we have developed our sense of how we relate to others through our early experiences. This is where our emotions are processed. Then lastly, the cortex is the thinking and learning part of the brain where information and language are processed.
Drawing from neuropsychology Dr Perry recommends that children who are experiencing challenging emotions can be best supported through the 'Three R's': Regulation, Relating and Reason. We need to connect with children in the same 'bottom up' manner in which their brain develops. We cannot expect a child to be able to reason with us and use their 'thinking' brain, until we have first soothed their 'primitive' brain and then connected with their 'limbic' brain.
In the regulation phase the child is supported to process the difficult emotion they are experiencing so that the adult can then begin to relate and empathise with what the child is feeling and thinking. The final stage is where reflection or reasoning can occur and strategies of how to respond to a similar situation in the future, are discussed. Louise Bomber has recently added a further R to this model which is Repair, and discusses this in her new book 'Know Me To Teach Me'. This model underpins many relational approaches used in schools such as Emotion Coaching. See our visual below for considerations of how to apply these '4 R's' in the classroom:
Beacon House have lots of trauma informed resources including this resource full of ideas to soothe pupils' 'primitive' brain. Activities include ideas for walking, dancing, running, drumming, tapping, singing, breathing, movement and music. Brainstem calmers should be:
relational (offered by a safe adult)
relevant (matched to developmental stage not chronological age)
repetitive (patterned)
rewarding (pleasurable)
rhythmic (resonant with neural patterns)
respectful (of the pupil and family)
