Responsive Feeding through the ages and stages workshop for healthcare professionals January 2025

Workshop description

Responsive feeding and strengths-based approaches are fundamental to supporting individuals to develop positive relationships with food, with others and with their bodies. This workshop has been designed to normalise eating differences by assisting healthcare professionals to deeply understand responsive feeding foundations and how to support children and families using a responsive feeding lens.

The workshop will cover the following topics:

• Understanding feeding differences including sensitive/cautious eaters in the early years, paediatric feeding disorders and ARFID 
• Unpacking the responsive feeding approach
• The ‘tilt’ concept to assist you to assess feeding dynamics and relationships between feeding partners and those who are eating or feeding
• Assessment techniques throughout the different ages and stages to support you to understand some of the unique situations that arise and how you can support using a responsive approach 
• Understanding eating and feeding cues and how to work with families and supporters around pressure, including those who receive nutrition via feeding tube 
• Shaping responsive feeding therapy interventions, including caregiver coaching models and direct feeding therapy 
• Case studies using a responsive feeding approach 
• Q&A

Workshop objectives

• Participants will increase their understanding of what responsive feeding is (and isn’t) and how to apply a responsive lens to all the work that they do with individuals and families
• Participants will increase their confidence in assessing responsive feeding practices from birth through to adulthood
• Participants will increase their understanding of how to assess eating and feeding differences using a responsive and strengths-based lens
• Participants will utilise their reflective practice skills in relation to how they are supporting families using a responsive feeding framework
• Participants will increase their confidence and competence to deliver responsive feeding interventions