The arrival of a baby sparks both challenge and promise in family systems. It heralds a potential therapeutic turning point, for families approaching the caregiving role with histories of interpersonal trauma.

Infant Led Family Healing Conversations will provide new systemic conversational prompts for family conversations, to support new, safe reflection on building or re-establishing foundations of trust in care for a young child – born or unborn. Led by Prof Jenn McIntosh - Director of the Bouverie Centre, and a family therapist and infant mental health specialist.

Jenn will offer developmental and single session principles for infant-led brief family work, to create trauma transformative spaces for caregiving members of a family. The work rests on the MERTIL for Parents program and extensive allied research, which applies equally to intact, separated and diverse family structures. Video material features young children speaking to their caregiving system about being trust teachers, in the face of trauma.

For the detailed workshop description please visit the Bouverie Centre’s website here.

Cost

Online via Zoom: $310 (incl. GST)

Workshop Content

Workshop participants will:

consider the possibilities of infant-led family work, through understanding the infant’s communications about relational security.
look at ways of safely utilising their ‘voice’ to invite the family into the task of building the four pillars of trust: safety, security, repair and joy.
discuss applications of this work to group and individual contexts, across many services, from primary care, maternal and child health, through to inpatient therapeutic services.
apply your practice wisdom to the application of these ideas to a single session framework for trauma informed, infant-led family work, in your own service context.

Workshop Structure

NB: Please take careful note of the structure of the workshop:

9:00am	Live workshop Introduction
9:30am -10:30am	MERTIL for Parents (online self-completion) To set the scene for the day, prior to the workshop all participants will be given free access to the online program, MERTIL for Parents. This is a pre-requisite for the workshop. We allow one full hour to complete this program at the beginning of the workshop (9-10am).
10:30am	Break
10:45am	Live workshop commences – Part 1. A framework for Infant Led Family Work
12:30pm	Break
1:00pm -2:30pm	Live workshop continues Part 2. Conversational Tools for Infant Led Family Work

Unable to attend our available dates? Submit your expression of interest for future professional learning and development opportunities.

Who should attend

Practitioners who work in infant mental health and building relational trust in dyads 0-5 years.

Including:

Infant Mental Health Practitioners
Maternal and Child Nurses & Midwives
Psychologists/Psychiatrists
Social Workers
Family Support Workers
Child Protection Workers
And more!

Training at your workplace

Contact us to learn more about our organisational learning and development packages. See here for more information.

Contact the host of Infant Led Family Healing Conversations (online)