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Our Be My Co-Therapist™ (BMCT™) approach to child and play therapy is based in our understanding that children develop and heal in the context of their attachment relationships, and the most effective change occurs for children when their important adults are involved in the change process. 

As child therapists, we inevitably engage with children’s parents/caregivers. 

The degree of engagement may vary between therapists – from minor involvement (e.g. initial assessment and parent feedback sessions) to more intensive parent/caregiver support work as an adjunct to the child’s therapeutic process, and through to participation in a dyadic or filial therapy approach with their child.

This 2-day workshop builds on Module 1 of our BMCT™ series (“Parent mental health vulnerabilities in child and play therapy”), expanding your knowledge base of family and systems theory, attachment neuroscience and patterns of relating, and parental reflective functioning.

This workshop will equip you with core adult counselling skills that supports parent/caregiver engagement. Specific focus will be on deepening assessment conversations, developing shared therapeutic goals and navigating differing views, providing effective feedback about children’s needs and therapy progress, offering therapeutic responses/approaches to be implemented at home, and having hard conversations.

Specific focus will also be given to ways of promoting parental reflective functioning – the underlying skill of parenting and a critical component of the change process in dyadic and filial therapies.

This workshop will include a range of reflective and experiential activities to support your confidence in applying the skills.

 LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

•  Apply principles of family and systems theory and attachment neuroscience into your case conceptualisation and clinical work with children, and the adults/systems around them
•  Increased confidence using core adult counselling skills when engaging parents/caregivers as part of your clinical work with children
•  Develop shared therapeutic goals with parents/caregivers based in the needs of the child
•  Apply principles of attachment neuroscience to gain insights into the patterns of relating that emerge between parent/caregiver and therapist, and between child and therapist, and ways of leveraging these in the therapeutic process
•  Appraise parental reflective functioning capacity of the parent/caregivers you are engaging with to guide you in how best to work with them
•  Increased confidence providing feedback and having hard conversations with parents/caregivers
•  Consolidate your clinical skills through participation in reflective and/or experiential activities

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

This workshop is essential for all mental health clinicians working with children – e.g. psychologists, play therapists, counsellors, social workers, OTs.  It is also relevant for those working in the NDIS system, and more broadly with children/parents/families across family and community services, Child Safety Services, OoHC and education sectors.