Virtual Crisis Training

When a family is in crisis, it’s often all they can think about, as they move into survival mode. They are focused on the child’s behaviours and frustrations rather than on growth and healing. But the key to successfully handling crisis in our homes, begins long before we are in a crisis. In this workshop, Erin Bouchard, owner of Trauma Based Parenting and author of Trauma Based Parenting, will walk your foster and adoptive parents through understanding their children’s spiral. She will equip you with the skills needed for your families to manage all aspects of the spiral. You’ll learn how foster and adoptive kids, due to their early trauma and attachment, often function in a dsyregulated state. She’ll give strategies that parents can use to manage the spiral, learn the cues of the spiral and how to navigate when a child is at the top of the spiral.

Three Key Objectives for this two hour virtual or in person training are:

1. Understand how early trauma causes crisis 
Your parents will leave this training with a better understanding of why removal from family of origin is traumatic for our kids in care. Your parents will learn how connection and felt safety has to become their number one goal.

2. Identify the stages of the spiral and what a child/youth need at each stage
If parents can learn where their child is in the spiral and learn strategies for regulating a dysregulated child they can often avoid the top of the spiral. Erin will equip parents to focus on those stages before a crisis hits.

3. Help parents learn to manage a crisis and repair after a crisis 
When a child is in crisis, we must shift our gears from educating to bringing the child back to regulation. We will discuss strategies on managing the crisis and what to do after the crisis has passed to bring the focus back to connection and felt safety while keeping everyone in the home safe.

“I think my biggest take away from this crisis training is the clear vision of what the spiral is in terms of trauma for my kiddo. I fought the idea for so long that "trauma" was the reason behind my boy's behavioral outbursts. I truly believed that because he was in a safe home, had food l, a bed, love, and security he would automatically feel better and the behaviors would seize. Boy, was I wrong. In the 6 years that he's been in my care, I finally understand. His trauma is so deep and unknowingly so many things would set him into spiral and most of them I still don't understand. We have been working on feelings identity, building better coping skills, communicating, and staging more recognizable strategies to bring the spiral back down. This training gave me the practice and reminders of how to keep gaining stability.”

Foster Parent

“Thanks for explaining this in a truly helpful way. I've taken other trainings to help my trauma kiddos, but this was by far the best and MOST helpful!!”

Foster and Adoptive Parent