Newest team members taught the importance of therapeutic working

The newest team members to join the CF Group have been fully immersed in an in-depth training plan to support their induction to our business.

We’re soon to open two new residential children’s homes, offering safe, supportive environments for children who have been assessed as needing to live outside of a family environment. We’ve opened two new children’s homes in addition to the two established, ‘Good’ homes CF Group already operates. Building on our success and knowledge of children in care, trauma-lens thinking and how to build relationships, we are really excited to welcome two new teams of professionals.

Children in the new homes will be cared for by our team of residential support workers, providing 24/7 care and support to the children, under the leadership of our home managers.

Some of the key sessions our new team recently undertook focussed on relational therapeutic working.

A therapeutic approach sits at the heart of our children’s homes, so every member of staff is trained in how to work with this approach. Each child is assessed from the start of their time in our care, with a view to providing the best possible therapeutic interventions to support positive outcomes.

Our training sessions, led by Therapeutic Lead Anji Wilks and homes manager Andy Robinson, covered a range of topics to support our new staff in understanding and applying Attachment Theory, how this relates to us, and to the children we work with who have experienced relational trauma.

By providing the team with explorative and fun exercises, using many of the play tools and toys used with children in the homes, the group were encouraged to think about how the traumatised brain works and how behaviour adapts to keep us safe.

Anji explains: “This part of our training programme is so important. We want our children’s homes to have a therapeutic approach running through everything our people do. For this to work, our team has to understand what the approach is based on, how our own feelings and behaviours are influenced, and how we can therefore better understand the behaviour of the children we work with.

“Crucially, we looked at how the adaptive behaviours caused by trauma then become our habits, but are redundant (and sometimes very unhelpful) in the new, safer, healthier environment we are creating for them.

“The team really got involved in this training and it was gratifying to see them engage with play activities and creativity to explore their own boundaries and professional needs when working with traumatised children.

“Andy and I were really pleased and proud to work with such an inquisitive and motivated team of professionals and can’t wait to start working with them in our two new homes.”

More information on the CF Group therapeutic service can be found here.