Lorraine Lynch Consulting- Working with Children who have Experienced Trauma.
Hello everyone,
Three weeks ago when our schools closed, I began researching CPD courses to do to give me a bit of focus and structure during these long days at home. I discovered Lorraine Lynch and her website and she told me that she had a promo code – INSTA50BEKIND. The courses were quite reasonablty priced anyway but this suddenly made them very accessible. I had lots of very helpful teachers contact me on Instagram informing me that they did the course Working with Children who Have Experienced Trauma and said they couldn’t recommend it highly enough, so I decided to start it last weekend. The course is ten hours long excluding extra reading, so I did a few hours over the weekend and then the same Monday and Tuesday. In total I probably spent longer than ten hours on it but that was my own choice because I just found it particularly interesting.
I will include the course objectives here so people will know what the course involves.
- Understand the key psychological components of trauma
- Be able to identify the different types of trauma
- Be aware of the symptoms of trauma in a typical child
- Know the neurobiology of trauma
- Have a good understanding of how the brain responds to trauma
- Have an awareness of how to body responds to trauma
- Appreciate the immediate and long-term effects of PTSD on a child
- Understand the importance of appropriate therapy for the traumatised child
- Know how to support children who have experienced trauma in the classroom
- Be introduced to effective exercises that can safely and easily be implemented
This course was presented orally, which I really enjoyed. Lorraine provided real life examples, and made the content really accessible. There was also excellent TED Talks video content dispersed throughout the course, which I found really insighful. I particularly enjoyed the forum comments from other people studying the course. You could tell from the level of the responses that everyone was really and truly interested in and engaging with the course, and I learned a lot from those comments too. I am going to critique myself now and admit that a lot if not all of this was new knowledge to me, and while I was working my way through the course I was thinking just how useful this information would have been a few years ago when I started teaching first and was working with children who had experienced trauma. Looking forward, I can take comfort in the amount of children this knowledge will help as I progress through my teaching career. I now feel that I will be equipped with the knowledge of how to work with and appreciate the complexities of children who have experienced trauma.
Trauma is such a broad term and can cover so many areas, but one thing is for sure, we will all encounter a child or many children in our teaching careers who have experienced trauma, be it abuse, a death, neglect, etc. I feel very fortunate to have studied this course, and the fact that it is still half price is just fantastic, it is a real steal. I have done so many subject or curriculum based CPD courses over the years, I feel now it is time to dig a bit deeper and this course certainly does that. Lorraine is a real expert in her field, and is truly passionate about helping children who have experienced trauma which I think is what shines through in her course content.
I am sure we all have experience with the CAMHS never ending waiting list, with parents and the school trying to manage behaviours without appropriate interventions, within classrooms where children act out their emotions and interfere with the learning of others, leaving teachers feeling ill-equipped to manage the situation, the list is endless. Studying this course however, I think would really help staff members in working through this difficult area.
This course is recommended for those working in education, health and social care professions so not only primary school teachers but secondary School Teachers, Early Years Practitioners, Social Workers, Youth Workers, GPs, Nurses, SNAs/CAs, Counselors, NQTs, Home School Community Liaison Officers, Principals, Boards of Management and Administration Staff.
The benefits of completing CPD courses cannot be oversetimated in my opinion. They are good for your mental health as you are learning and engaged, they are great for your children in your class as they will benefit from the new knowledge you have learned, it is great for aspiring teachers to have on application forms for post graduate courses, it looks great on the standard application form and most importantly of all it’s important to never stop learning! An investment in knowledge pays the best interest!