2-Day Certificate Course: ARC Trauma Treatment For Children and Adolescents

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Faculty

Margaret Blaustein, PhD Related seminars and products

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Margaret E. Blaustein, PhD, is a practicing clinical psychologist whose career has focused on the understanding and treatment of complex childhood trauma and its sequelae. Dr. Blaustein is co-developer of the Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competency (ARC) treatment framework (Kinniburgh & Blaustein, 2005), and co-author of the text, Treating Complex Trauma in Children and Adolescents: Fostering Resilience through Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competency(Blaustein & Kinniburgh, 2010). 
 

Dr. Blaustein’s work has been hailed as “a landmark for understanding and treating traumatized children” by world renowned trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, and has been embraced by over 300 agencies and/or child-serving systems in the U.S. and abroad who use the ARC framework. 

She has provided extensive training and consultation to providers worldwide. Dr. Blaustein is the director of the Center for Trauma Training in Needham, MA, and is actively involved in local, regional, and national collaborative groups dedicated to the empathic, respectful, and effective provision of services to this population.

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Margaret Blaustein is the founder and director of the Center for Trauma Training, Inc and receives compensation as a consultant. She receives royalties as a published author. Margaret Blaustein receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Margaret Blaustein is a member of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, and the American Psychological Association. She is an ad hoc reviewer for several peer review journals, for a complete list contact PESI, Inc.

Objectives

1. Establish the meaning of complex trauma and communicate three consequences of early complex trauma exposure.
2. Explore the role of routines in the caregiving system to enhance a child’s felt safety and stability, and specify why this is important in treatment.
3. Characterize how the core attachment targets of ARC apply to the participant and/or providers within the participant’s system.
4. Articulate at least one aspect of self and identity that may be impacted in trauma-exposed youth.
5. Determine how caregiver ability to identify their own responses to trauma reactions is critical to the recovery process in children who have experienced trauma.
6. Employ techniques that enable caregivers to depersonalize trauma-driven behaviors and reframe responses to trauma reactions.
7. Characterize at least two patterns of youth dysregulation, including function of the adaptation.
8. Establish how strategies for teaching children to identify physiological responses to stress can help them understand and regulate the arousal response.
9. Employ exercises to help traumatized children identify safe resources and develop effective communication styles.
10. Support how consistent emotional responses from caregivers can help establish secure attachment.
11. Determine how self-identity can be developed through exercises that establish positive self-recognition and a future orientation.
12. Specify how activities that target executive function can be incorporated into trauma treatment to improve impulse control and build problem solving and negotiating skills.

Outline

• Tune into engagement
  • Factors that affect engagement in trauma treatment
  • Strategies to support child, caregiver, and provider engagement
• The role of education
  • Tune in to the role of education in thoughtful trauma intervention
• Use of routines and rhythms to build safety and support goals
  • Strategies to increase felt safety through predictability
  • Build self-regulation with daily routines
  • Use of structures to support treatment goals

• Manage caregiver responses to trauma reactions
  • The cycle of dysregulation between child and caregiver
  • Tools to help caregivers to recognize their own emotions
  • Address feelings of helplessness, inadequacy and rejection
  • Approaches and techniques to teach caregivers to:
    • Identify their triggers
    • Depersonalize trauma driven behaviors
    • Cognitively reframe responses to trauma reactions
    • Use self-talk to counter self-blame
    • Handle “button-pushing” behavior
• Attunement strategies for positive attachment
  • Learn the emotional language of kids who have experienced trauma
  • Become a “Feeling Detective” to read emotional cues
  • Identify child’s trauma triggers and responses
  • 5 steps to master reflective listening – help kids feel heard
• The power of building effective responses in establishing secure attachment
  • Use attunement skills to understand behaviors
  • Identify the “go-to’s” of behavior response
  • Experiment purposefully with other strategies

• Identify triggers and emotional responses
• Use labeling to raise awareness of feelings
• How feelings show up in thoughts, behaviors and the body
• Where feelings and body states come from
• Modulate emotion and the body’s alarm system
• ”Feelings Toolkit” for emotional experience tolerance
• Teach kids to understand degrees of feeling
• Connect children to their bodies
• Understand and regulate the arousal response

• Explore relationships and build connections
  • Help children understand the role of relationships
  • Identify safe resources and healthy relationships
  • Approaches to develop effective communication skills
• Strengthening executive functions
  • Ways to build problem solving and negotiation skills
  • Impulse control exercises
• Self-identity developments
  • How to explore individuality
  • Techniques to establish positive self-recognition
  • Contextual aspects of self and identity
  • Approaches to develop future orientation
• Trauma Experience Integration
  • Understand state-based treatment
  • The role of the core ARC targets in integrating traumatic experiences

Target Audience

• Counselors
• Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Therapists
• Case Managers
• Addiction Counselors
• Nurses
• Marriage & Family
• Therapists
• General Educators
• Special Educators
• School Administrators
• School Psychologists
• School Social Workers
• Guidance Counselors
• School Nurses
• Directors of Special Education
• Speech-Language Pathologists
• Occupational Therapists
• Paraprofessionals