Videos now available: 'Healing the Hurt' trauma forum

Berry Street's Take Two program recently ran an online forum called 'Healing the Hurt'.

The forum focussed on the trauma lens Take Two uses to address the mental health impacts on babies, children and young people as a result of the abuse, neglect and other adverse events they've experienced.

You can now watch the videos of all four sessions online.

All sessions include captions, but please be aware they are auto-generated, so may contain some errors.

Session 1: Developing a shared language and understanding about the issues

Presenters: Assoc. Professor Sandra Radovini, Director, Mindful - Centre for Training and Research in Developmental Health (University of Melbourne), and Marell Lynch, Clinical Manager, Take Two.

This session explored the theme of complexity. Working with children and young people who have experienced abuse, neglect and other adversities requires us to sit with, and respond to, high levels of risk, uncertainty, complex behaviours and intersecting systems. Placing trauma-informed practices at the centre of this complexity, and considering multiple lenses, is challenging but essential to effective collaborative interventions.

Session 2: Growing stability from instability in children's lives

Presenters: Holly Mosse, Assistant Director, Take Two & Adam Dunn, Aboriginal Team Leader, Take Two.

Often the children and young people in out-of-home care who are most distressed are the hardest to work with. Their lives are often chaotic, their behaviours are frequently challenging or high-risk, and they have few if any stable relationships with adults who care about them. These children need our help, but the system can create all sorts of barriers to them accessing it. This session focussed on a case study of Take Two client and how practitioners can work within that instability, and provide therapeutic interventions that will assist the child.

Session 3: Developing inclusive and broad approaches to assessment

Presenters: Dr Allison Cox, Director, Take Two & Dr Lyn Radford, Clinical Manager, Take Two.

When a child or young person presents with complex and multiple issues, it’s hard to know where to start. The Take Two assessment process starts with the child’s developmental history which informs the conceptualisation of their current difficulties. In this session we looked at a case study of a child who has been flagged as having a range of diagnosable disorders - but their symptoms could also be viewed as being a result of their trauma experiences. This discussion will cover how a Take Two assessment is conducted, how we come to an understanding of the child's presenting behaviours, and how we work collaboratively with others in the system to support that child or young person to recover.

Session 4: Intervening to address both mental health and trauma

Presenters: Dr Allison Cox, Director, Take Two & Shaune Barry, Clinical Manager, Take Two.

Interventions for children and young people with complex behavioural, functional and mental health presentations require practitioners to engage in sequenced approaches that attend to ‘therapy from the outside in’. The approach requires practitioners to deal with multiple problems requiring multiple perspectives, service streams, and solutions. This session explored how this sequenced approach was adopted in response to a child in residential care, beginning with a focus on calming the ‘system’ around them.

Berry Street’s Take Two program is a Victoria-wide therapeutic service helping to address the mental health impacts on children of the trauma they have experienced from abuse, neglect or adverse experiences. At Take Two we see who the child is, not just the behaviour. We use clinical frameworks, neurobiological research and evidence-informed approaches to repair family relationships and develop networks of caring adults that focus on what the child needs.

Take Two can provide specialist clinical consultancy services to other organisations. Contact us for more information.