Resources

At Homes of Hope, we are dedicated to supportive children and their families during times when their lives can seem overwhelming.

Therapy Resources

The pressures and demands of our busy lives can often impact on our family dynamics, and consequently the children we love and care for.

Sometimes it is the historical experience of trauma which children need healing from, to enable them to trust once more.

After thorough and extensive worldwide research, we have determined that Child Centred Play Therapy and Trust Based Relational Intervention are two practical, well researched and sound approaches we can use to effectively support both children and adults.

We warmly welcome you to this wonderful world of connecting, empowering and healing.

Child-Centred Play Therapy

Child-centred play therapy is a dynamic process of relating to children on their own terms in developmentally appropriate ways that allows children to express themselves through their natural medium of communication and play. – Landreth 2012, 3rd ed.

“Birds fly, Fish swim, Children Play.”

– Landreth

“Toys are the children’s words and play is their language” – and the way children use toys is most often a function of their personal needs. The toys made available for play are specially selected to facilitate the child’s ability to explore and express themselves and their inner world of emotions.

The Art of Relationship

Central and crucial to CCPT is the therapeutic relationship between the child and the therapist, who is deeply accepting, empathic, and sensitive toward the child.

Play Therapists come from a professional background and receive extensive training to use play therapeutically and to work in an ethically sound way.

A qualified Play Therapist is trained to assess and work with the child who might otherwise be avoidant in more directive and task-focused therapy approaches. Therapists are registered with their professional body and receive regular external clinical supervision.

The values of “do good and no harm” are pre-eminent, with a strong belief in the capacity of the child as their own agent for change and growth. This is supported within a structured environment where limits are few but clear and secure. The limits set anchor the child in the world of reality.

Within this optimum environment, the child can then experience self-expression in play to the fullest and be freed to make meaning out of their experiences — and, importantly, their world.

Why Child Centred Play Therapy?

CCPT can offer the child the means to develop resolutions to deep and profound specific issues whilst at the same time developing their emotional and social skills in more generic and transferable ways and outcomes.

CCPT empowers the child to change internally through their own process of deriving meaning from their experiences.

“CCPT is the most thoroughly researched theoretical model in the field of play therapy and the results are unequivocal.”

-Landreth, 2010, 3rd ed.

“Providing the child this opportunity is the purpose and role of CCPT.”

– Cochrane et al., 2010

Trust Based Relational Intervention (TBRI)

Homes of Hope is committed to ensuring we can meet the needs of the most vulnerable population of children in order to secure positive futures for them.

TBRI the modality

Children ‘from hard places’ who have experience of developmental trauma, have changes in their bodies, brains, behaviours and self-belief systems.  These children need caregiving and support that meets them ‘where they are’ as trauma-experienced – they have unique needs.

(In our sector, we define ‘from hard places’ as those who have experienced trauma due to sustained abuse and neglect. However traumatic experiences may also include bereavement, accidents, hospitalisation etc.)

TBRI® is designed to promote resilience in the face of trauma and consists of three principles:

    1. Connecting Principles – which include strategies to build healthy, trusting relationships.
    2. Empowering Principles – which include strategies to meet physical needs and to promote a safe, predictable environment.
    3. Correcting Principles – which provide proactive and responsive strategies to reduce the effect of stressful situations. (For both child and adult).

TBRI® offers practical tools for parents, caregivers, teachers, grandparents, and anyone who works with trauma-experienced children and seeks to help them reach their fullest potential.

Our TBRI® training is designed to move trainees from theory into practical applications. It is important to begin with the theoretical knowledge and neuroscience research to provide a strong understanding to best inform the real-life application tools taught. The aim of the training is not only to help participants understand the relationship history of ‘children from hard places’ and the effects of this on brain development, but also two critically important additional factors:

    1. one’s own attachment history, experiences and internal self-awareness; along with the
    2. practical tools to move forward, to deepen and strengthen connections with these children so as to affect the most positive, long-term outcomes for them.

TBRI® uses Connecting Principles for attachment needs, Empowering Principles to address physical needs, and Correcting Principles to disarm fear-based behaviors. While the intervention is based on years of attachment, sensory processing, and neuroscience research, the heartbeat of TBRI® is connection.

We would love to hear from you if this approach to supporting ‘children from hard places’ who are trauma experienced is something you would like to find more about.

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