CPD session: contact with birth families (alternative)

Notes for the session facilitator

This is one of a series of CPD sessions, helping you and your team to use Community Care Inform resources to keep your knowledge of a particular area up to date or improve practice.You can use these activities either as a small group or, with a larger team, dividing up to have discussions. This session uses video and audio clips from our June 2015 webinar on using a trauma model to assess contact with birth families.

The speaker is Norma Howes, a social worker, psychologist and psychotherapist who trains police, social workers, health and education staff on all aspects of childhood trauma and abuse. The chair is Camilla Pemberton, Community Care’s head of children’s social work content.

Click the button to the right of the HD symbol on each video clip to play them full screen. The clips from the webinar add up to around 20 minutes in total – depending on the number of people and if you want to share ideas from different groups, you could allow one to one and a half hours for the session.

Links to references and further reading, including guides Norma has written for Community Care Inform are provided at the end. You can use the email link to share this page with attendees.

We very much welcome feedback on these sessions and if there are future topics you would like to see, so do let us know.

If you want to view the whole webinar (one hour) you can play it back here. Click the green bar at the top to close this box.

1. Introduction

This session explores ways that using an understanding of trauma and its impact on behaviour can inform how you manage contact between children and their birth parents and siblings.
Discussion
How would you define ‘trauma’? How would you say this relates to contact between a looked after child and their family, and achieving the best outcomes for them?