Trauma Informed Conversations
Hosted by the team behind Trauma Informed Consultancy Services, led by Jessica Parker, Director at TICS. This podcast explores how trauma-informed principles can transform the way we live, work, lead, and support others. Each episode dives into real-world conversations with experts, educators, and practitioners who are driving positive change through compassion, understanding, and awareness.
Whether you’re a leader, educator, clinician, or simply someone who wants to build safer and more supportive environments, Trauma Informed Conversations offers practical insights, reflective dialogue, and inspiring stories to help you embed trauma-informed approaches in every aspect of life and work.
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Trauma Informed Conversations
What If Behaviour Makes Perfect Sense? with Sarah Naish
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In this episode of Trauma Informed Conversations, host Jessica Parker is joined by adoptive parent, former social worker, foster carer, and author Sarah Naish. Drawing on over 40 years of lived and professional experience across social care and education, Sarah explores the transformative question: What if behaviour makes perfect sense?
Jess and Sarah discuss how shifting to a trauma lens allows us to look beyond surface-level reactions and understand that all trauma-based behaviour is an expression of an underlying, unmet need. From practical strategies like "naming the need" to addressing systemic gaps in social work, school, and inspection frameworks (like Ofsted), this conversation provides a realistic, deeply compassionate roadmap for supporting care-experienced children, families, and the professionals who care for them.
Key Takeaways
- Looking Behind the Behaviour: Understanding that challenging actions are not personal attacks ("doing this to me"), but rather a child's attempt to communicate inner distress and seek safety or nurture.
- The "Gift of Why" & Naming the Need: Why asking children "Why did you do that?" is unhelpful, and how adults can step in to gently name the underlying fear or unmet need for them.
- Decoding Hurtful Statements: Viewing painful phrases (like "I hate you") as a discharge of internal pain rather than calculated malice, allowing caregivers to respond with empathy instead of defense.
- Systemic & Training Gaps: Addressing the urgent need for trauma-informed training top-down—from universities to social work teams and Ofsted inspectors—to prevent burnout and protect placement stability.
- Reframing Professional Language: Why shifting away from clinical jargon (e.g., replacing "dysregulated" with "terrified" or "placement" with "home") helps adults stay connected to the stark reality of childhood trauma.
Guest
Sarah Naish is an international best-selling author, keynote speaker, and CEO of the Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma (CoECT). Bringing over 40 years of lived and professional experience to her work, Sarah's background spans across social work, nursery nursing, fostering over 40 children, and adopting a sibling group of five.
Recognised as a trailblazer in therapeutic parenting, she is the founder of the National Association of Therapeutic Parents (NATP) and founder/director of two trauma-informed fostering agencies in England and Wales (TRUE Fostering and SAfER Fostering). Sarah has authored numerous sector-defining books—including the No. 1 bestseller The A–Z of Therapeutic Parenting—and works continuously to reform foster care assessments, kinship support tools, and trauma training across education and social care systems globally.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Sophie Spikey Has a Very Big Problem
- The A-Z of Therapeutic Parenting Professional Companion: Tools for Proactive Practice.
- The Essential Guide to Kinship Care (Co-authored with Enza Smith MBE)
- Free Resource – Allegation Support Pack
- Level 4 Trauma-Informed Practitioner Qualification
Subscribe to Trauma Informed Conversations for more honest discussions about trauma, recovery, and building systems rooted in care and humanity.
Hello and welcome to Trauma Informed Conversations, the podcast about trauma, healing, and hope.
SPEAKER_03Well, hello, and welcome back to another episode of Trauma Informed Conversations. Today's topic is a bit of a big question. It's what if behaviour makes perfect sense? So we're really going to be exploring a question that actually has the power to change how children, families, um, even behaviour, and perhaps even ourselves can end up being sometimes, you know, misinterpreted due to, you know, actually kind of our own biases as human beings and also the kind of complexity of the work that we do. And I could think of no better person to join me um to talk about what if behaviour makes perfect sense than the wonderful Sarah Naish. Sarah, hi. Hi, hi Jessica.
SPEAKER_00Lovely to be here.
SPEAKER_03Oh, great to have you. I wonder whether you might want to just sort of share with our listeners just a little bit about yourself. I mean, I've been inspired by your work for many years, um, but there might be listeners out there who haven't had the pleasure of kind of stumbling across the wonderful work that you do.
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah, so um I started off fostering, first of all, um over 40 years ago, I think now, and then I became a social worker, and then I adopted five children who are all siblings. And um from that I realized that I didn't know anything really. I I thought I knew all about children, but my children taught me everything I know. I always think that. So um, so I then made it my mission really to bring what my children had taught me about trauma into social work, social care, and education. And that's really what I've been doing for the last couple of decades. And um, now I run two trauma-informed fostering uh in England and Wales.
SPEAKER_03Oh, awesome! I mean, I'm definitely the new kid on the block compared to you, literally just been going around like you know, maybe a decade now. So absolutely incredible to kind of be surrounded in your expertise today, Sarah. The thing that you know really strikes me about your work is that it's not just expertise, you know, it's almost that, you know, there's been you know a significant shift maybe then in terms of how you've come to understand children because I'm guessing that you didn't discover the perfect caring guide that sadly doesn't exist. So has it kind of like evolved throughout your career, would you say, in terms of how you really started to kind of unpick behaviors?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I think the steep learning curve was definitely looking at how my children communicated through their behaviour. So that's what made me realize that my thinking had had not been correct up until then. Um, you know, I was very traditional, I was kind of super nanny and reward charts and timeout and all that sort of stuff. And then when my children came to me, uh, they were aged seven months, two and three, and then their older sisters, age six and seven, joined me. Yeah. And what I've realized is that their behavior does make perfect sense when you look at it through a trauma lens. That's interesting.
SPEAKER_03And maybe for those who aren't sure what we mean by trauma lens, yeah, how do we do that? What does that actually mean?
SPEAKER_00Well, it means is that we have to look behind the behaviour. So I always think about it like you know, a child comes up to you or they're they're behaving in a certain way. We can either take that at face value and say they're doing this, and quite often we misinterpret that to they're doing this to me. And actually, that that isn't what's happening. Um, the child is simply expressing uh an unmet need normally. Um so uh so so what what I tend to think about with therapeutic parenting or trauma-informed parenting is I look at what the child is doing. I kind of take a bit of a step back, take a bit of a pause, and I look at that and I go, what is that behaviour saying? What what is what is that actually trying to communicate? I don't really take much as what the child's saying, because often they're unaware of what they're saying. I'm looking at what the behaviour is doing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think that do you know that's really really important, and I guess as well, is that what has then sort of informed some of the books that you've written as well, like actually aimed at the children, would you say? Almost like a way of kind of also helping them to understand themselves, or did that kind of come from a different point, do you think?
SPEAKER_00Um I think that all trauma-based behaviors are all about the child communicating their inner distress, and I think that a mistake that people often make is that they think the child thinks it all through, that they're kind of going off and thinking, Oh, I know what I'll do, I'll do this. This will really annoy mum, or this this will show them. Yeah, uh, but actually that that isn't what's happening at all. So I'll give you an example. Um our children's internal working model, where there's been trauma, says, I'm not good enough, I don't deserve nice things. So one of my books I did quite early on, 10 years ago, Sophie's Sophie's spiking, the very big problem, they're all real stories. It was about the time when I bought my daughter new shoes because her old shoes literally she, you know, the sole came off, like you know, obviously they picked them off. Yeah, of course, yeah. And and I gave her the new shoes and they fitted and everything. And then when we went out, I realized she'd got her old shoes out of the bin and put them on. Now, if you're looking at that in a non-trauma-informed way, you might think, why did they do that to me? They did that to make me look bad. Yeah, um, you know, what what is wrong with them? Uh, I'm I'm I'm gonna be embarrassed about this, especially if the child's gone to school in that. But when you look at it in a trauma-informed way, you say, Oh, okay, there's something not fitting here, it's not literally the shoes. Child doesn't feel they're good enough and they deserve these the nice shoes. I know they fit. So, what I'm gonna do, instead of saying to her, why did you put those old shoes on when you know we never ask the children why, they don't know why. Uh, I'm gonna say, Oh, I've noticed that you have put your old shoe on and there's no sole on the bottom of that. Your foot must be a bit wet. Let's go and have a you know, little hot chocolate reverie around. And then I'm gonna explain to her that the reason this happened is because she feels like she doesn't deserve nice things. But I've decided yeah, she does deserve nice things. Now she might say, no, no, it's not that because she doesn't know that, but actually what she behaviour that changes, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it really is, and I think that's such a common belief, isn't it, held by so many care experienced children? I mean, I think you know, if we were to maybe give some guidance for maybe perhaps those who might be foster or kinship carers who are listening, or indeed those that might be supporting them, I think we'd definitely be really thinking there about that relational moment of maybe going to get the hot chocolate, helping the things soap, exploring together. I mean, would there be any other practical tips like that? Maybe where as the adult we're thinking, oh goodness, they're doing this to spite me or to make my life difficult, how we can get that together?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, so for example, you know, it's common for our children to uh say things that are very hurtful. They might say, um, I hate you, you're not my real mum, you don't love me, that kind of thing. But really, that's just a discharge of their own pain. And we make the mistake of saying, Oh, how can you say that to me? You know, and take it personally. And it's really useful to remember they're not doing it to you, they're just doing it. They would do this wherever they are. So we respond to the hurt in the child. So I would say, Wow, it must be really difficult to feel that way about someone who loves you so much. There's not a lot that can be said about that, and often our children then become quite upset or sad rather than angry, because what we're really doing is we're recognising that this anger comes from pain and we're recognising the pain.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think that's super powerful. Without identifying anybody, and again, it might be that we want to refer back to, you know, your your lovely example of the child with the shoe, and you know, that that beautiful situation that you've so kindly gifted us. You know, has there been another child who absolutely completely changed the way that you kind of viewed behaviour, would you say? You know, what what kind of happened in that moment?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, yeah. I've got a few examples of that. Oh, good. Um, but I'll start with the one that was the most powerful, that made the most impact on me and really changed my whole mindset about it. So this was and and and I can uh say who it is because it's it's in my books and and I have permissions. All my children are over 21. So it's with my son when he was 15, and we know 15 is a very difficult age because of all the brain changes. And you know, we well, I've been around the block a few times, but there were behaviors coming that I just could not work out. So he started stealing things, burglaring, burglaring neighbors, breaking into the usually the mum's bedroom, taking stuff there. And I did all the usual standard stuff. I tried talking to him about his behaviour, which is pointless. I tried getting him to go around and apologise, which again is just putting him in the shame pit. Exactly. And I was I was really struggling, you know. So this went on for six months, and I was really trying everything, and then one day, and he used to cause a lot of damage when he uh stole things, you know. So I I had this like steel reinforced bedroom door. So he one day he climbed up the balcony, Jimmy'd open the patio doors and balcony doors, so he caused £700 worth of damage and stole. Oh no. So so this day I remember I was sitting there and I was waiting for him to come home because he'd always be like, you know, go missing for a little while afterwards. And I knew there was no point saying, Why did you take it or how dare you? Or I I knew we we'd gone all around that. So when he came in, sort of shuffling in and not making eye contact, yeah, I asked a different question. This was only luck, really. And I said to him, What were you looking for? Because it felt to me like he had to get into that room, he had to get in there, and you know, it's always around my bedroom and my friends, like mother's bedrooms. And he looked at me, like made eye contact, which was rare, and I just suddenly all just clicked into place. And I just thought, he's looking for me, he's looking for nurture. It's when I'm not here, I go out, and I and I suddenly thought, yeah, that is what's going on. And so I thought, well, I need to tell him because he doesn't know that. You know, we often assume our children know, but they don't know. I call it naming the need. So I said to him, obviously, he he knew all his history. I said to him, Look, you know, when you were a little boy, you lived in a place where, as you know, where you mum wasn't there, like nobody came, you were alone a lot of the time. And I think what's happening here is when I go out, little uh William inside is really scared and telling Big William, Well, we've got a fine mum, you know, we've got a and I think that then your kind your arms are breaking into the room because it's not his head doing it, and that's how we used to describe it. Uh your arms breaking in, and yeah, and I said, So I'm really sorry, I haven't got, I've only just understood that. Now he was absolutely on a route to youth offending, uh, court convictions pending, you know. I he was gonna, I think he was gonna end up young offenders. So what I said to him was, um, okay, I know you're looking for me. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna leave my bedroom unlocked. If I'm not here and you don't know where I am, I'm always gonna tell you where I am. If you're worried, you can go in my bedroom, you just lie on my bed, just wait for me to come home. I'm also gonna put an app on your phone that shows you where I am.
SPEAKER_04Oh, clever.
SPEAKER_00Also, like I could see where he was, so that was well that's comfortable, yeah. And the stealing and burglary stopped immediately. I mean, immediately. There was never another incident because what we did there was he met his unmet need. His unmet need was for mummy nurture. Where's my mum? You know, the frightened little boy that had been abandoned and spent hours or days alone, desperately worried for mum to come back and feed him. That need was met. He could see where I was, his anxiety didn't come up, he didn't need to break in anywhere any anymore. So that made me realise the power of Sarah Dylan calls it the gift, my friend calls it, the gift of why, naming the need, telling the child why they are behaving the way they do. It changes everything.
SPEAKER_03Oh gosh, and I think you know, stories like that are so powerful because it really reminds us, doesn't it, that behavior it rarely exists in isolation. You know, it wasn't that he wanted to steal, or you know, those things weren't choices, were they? You know, as you've said, they were coming from that kind of deep need. And ultimately, you know, as human beings, we've evolved to know what we need. But the problem is sometimes, you know, we will grab those things in any way that we can, and so they might not always be the safest behaviours or the behaviors that we necessarily want for our young people, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's right, exactly. So, and that was the pattern of behavior I was seeing there. And, you know, when our children are indulging in risk-taking behaviours, that's about you know touching the chaos, touching the edges of what's safe, and just like two-year-olds do, you know, they'll they'll test the edges and then we bring them back in. Well, if you've never gone through that developmental stage where your whole life has been unsafe, you've got to go through it at some stage. But then when their children are doing it when they're 12, 13, we say we label them, we say, oh, they're you know, they're they're risky, oh, they're this, oh that, you know, uh they're sexually aggressive. You know, and often you you would think, well, he's actually doing what a two-year-old would do, but he hasn't done it yet.
SPEAKER_03Exactly, because he hasn't been given the learning opportunities yet. You know, we're not born knowing that stuff, are we? You know, we don't come out of the womb like, oh, actually, I'm all sorted for life, you know. And so, due to a range of different circumstances, we know, don't we, that not every child at that age will have had, you know, perhaps those learning opportunities, you know, they may not have met those horrible phrases and it developmental milestones, not due to who they are, but due to what the circumstances have kind of determined, perhaps.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Well, and actually, you know, one of my biggest learning curves was that when my children came to me, I thought, as a former foster parent and social worker, that there would be gaps I'd have to fill. That's what we all think. Well, that's right, but what I hadn't realized is actually it's much, much more than not meeting developed milestones because there's unhelpful interactions that have gone in, you know, where children have been abused and neglected and terrified, which most of our children coming in the care system have been. Yes, yes, we've got uh not just a lack of stuff, but positive, sorry, negative enforcement of dangerous stuff, and that is what is so difficult to that's what takes the time to undo. We're not just building on nothing, we're undoing and repairing and then trying to build.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we really are. I you know, it's an anal an analogy that I often use in you know, a lot of my training where I talk almost about trust being a bit like a bank balance, and actually we're in debt, you know. So, actually, how are we gonna kind of get back to zero? You know, how do we kind of create those, you know, sort of opportunities to kind of feel like you said, you know, with with your son, that love, that nurture, to kind of meet those needs first and then start to kind of think about how are we reshaping this child's brain and letting them know that actually there are safe interactions that are possible with adults. You know, there is going to be a point in their life where hopefully, you know, they will feel that there's hope, they will feel um actually that they're able to achieve all the brilliant things that they've dreamt of. It just takes time and patience, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00Well, and and it's 10 years of patience. I think I think sometimes people think there's gonna be, you know, I mean, you know, I I've got some great social workers I work with and and know, but there are also social workers and teachers who don't get this stuff at all, and expect there to be quicker results, you know. Oh, the child, I mean it was definitely said to me, and I'm sure it's been said to a lot of you, this is oh, well, the children have been with you six months now, you'd think that they would be over it. Um but he looked so normal. I mean, all of this expectation that um everything should be okay, and if it's not okay, it's probably your fault.
SPEAKER_03No, and going back to the title of today, doesn't that not make perfect sense when you know imagine being a child who you know has been living in some horrendous circumstances for a couple of years? How would it ever take six months to unravel that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's I always say it's 10 years. I mean, it's not to say you won't make progress, but you get the big stuff like the empathy, the remorse, uh, the big stuff starts happening. You know, you've got to put those building blocks in in order to start changing the landscape, and you you do it every day, you do it every day through therapeutic parenting. And I think one of our biggest challenges is when we know we're doing the right thing. You've probably read my books and books both and they and you know it spells it out really clearly, and and this stuff works, it's not just my children, it's the hundreds of children I've worked with over the years, and we know that this works. So, one of the problems we have is where you've got a foster parent who's really trauma-informed, and this has happened, you know, in my fostering teams, we see it. Now, our social workers are really trauma-informed, they get it. So, if they've got a foster parent that puts the child in their lovely, shiny new jumper to go to school, but then the child takes that jumper off on the way to school sometimes and puts that old holy one on from their bag, they get to school. And if you've got a teacher who's not trauma informed or a TA and a social who's not trauma-informed, these conversations go, oh well, you know, little Johnny he came to school today and he looked very neglected. And it's triggering because the adults care about the child and that, oh, this is very concerning. Before you know it, the foster parent or a doctor is in a situation where they're defending themselves and saying, no, no, we we've got the shiny jumper. Here it is, they chose not to wear it. If you're not trauma-informed, you don't really believe that because the only mindset you've got is children like new clothes. You don't have another narrative. So when I say when you've got teachers, social workers, offset inspectors who aren't trauma-informed, you can be doing the best trauma-informed work of your life and know that you are having breakthrough after breakthrough with this child, and somebody can come along and pour cold water on it and not only make you feel very dispirited, but actually cause damage to your child's progress. And we see that it's the most, I mean, we have got a lot of change. We do do a lot of work with schools, we do do a lot of work with social workers, but I think that until we get offstead trauma-informed, it's got to come top down, really.
SPEAKER_03You and I both, and you know, can I just say the amount of schools, and don't get me wrong, there's incredible work going on in schools. We both know that. We know it's a really, really, really hard job. Same with being a social worker, but honestly, the amount of schools that I go in, and you know, we start talking about restorative practice, we start talking about how every single behavior, you know, whether a child's trauma experienced or not, there's always a need that they're trying to meet. And it's kind of like I'm speaking in another language sometimes. So, I mean, I wonder what what you think it's going to take in order for the rest of kind of society to sort of almost really listen to, you know, what our little bubble kind of teaches us, you know, in terms of you know, that actually children and young people I don't believe are inherently bad for a second. But you know, how do we almost get to that way of inquiring about what need is maybe being missed here?
SPEAKER_00The we're always going to have people who won't change, we're always gonna have people who hang on to outdated practice methods for grim death. You know, they hold on to it and they defend themselves. We found the best way, uh, I mean, there that there has been breakthroughs. Since I did the AT therapeutic parenting, I have been pushing an open door. Before that, I was knocking at the door, and I every speech I was doing, every keynote I did, I was having to kind of justify everything. That doesn't happen anymore. I go and I talk, and people kind of take it as red that the HZ is true and this works, and and you often have a Lot of people in the room who are actively practicing therapeutic parenting and trauma-informed practice. So there's been a big shift which is helpful. But when we come up against, say we've got uh yeah, I'll give you a real example with no identifying uh a foster parent has a child, comes into us. We've got absolutely brilliant trauma-informed therapeutic foster parents, and the local authority social worker who's not trauma-informed says this child's got to stay, it's their own school. We say, and the foster parent says, this is a very bad idea because that school is very triggering for the child because that's where birth mum lives, like two doors along. That's where a lot of the abuse has happened nearby. So we think, no, no, no, uh, it's a safe place for the child. Well, it's not a safe place because dangerous, frightening birth mum lives two doors along. So, anyway, this social worker wouldn't move. And of course, what we saw is a deterioration in behaviour. So, what we do is we use it as an education point. So, our attachment therapist, Sarah Dylan, will you know call a therapeutic meeting and explain really clearly, and we stop using words like dysregulated. So, you know, the if the foster parent is writing or the school's writing and saying, or the child's dysregulated, so say what you mean. We don't talk about that. The child is terrified, the child is angry, the child is fearful. So once we did that, and people start seeing that actually, do you know what? It's just child, he's not dysregulated and naughty, he's terrified. Oh, why is he terrified? Well, let's try him out at a farm school in the holidays, for example. All the behaviours have gone away. Now, to their credit, this very stuck social worker who's not trauma-informed, saw that, took it on board, realized, and changed her practice. That's the best way to change someone's practice, to show them how it works and how much better it is for the child. Unfortunately, you will still get people who think it's more important that they are right than it is for the child to be okay. And we come up against those people too frequently, more frequently than I would like. But yeah, I think that it's important you've got someone in your corner who's a social worker, a therapist, an advocate who is trauma-informed. So it's not just you in the meeting saying, No, honestly, I promise this is what's going on. It really helps to have people with you.
SPEAKER_03It does. It really, really does. I imagine, because I'm certainly having uh these thoughts myself, that our listeners might almost be imagining maybe children that they've worked with in any way. So we might have carers listening, as I said, social workers, teachers, you know, whoever you are. And you know, they might be thinking about maybe some children that they've worked with whose behaviour feels maybe confusing, frustrating, exhausting, and then almost kind of imagining how they were then treated as the adult. I mean, do you have any advice or guidance as to, you know, how to sort of approach that when you've then got other professionals telling you, you know, that they almost know what's right for the child that they don't know as well as you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's do you know what? You can use trauma-informed practice and therapeutic parenting everywhere with everybody. Um, so I've recently been saying to my staff team and my foster parents, look, our model uses curiosity, empathy, yeah, and accountability. It doesn't use blame and judgment. So when you've got, say, an allegation, we know that over half allegations are false or unsubstantiated, you don't go in with a, I can't believe you did this to the child attitude, which we know some people do. We say, tell me what happened. Tell me what happened. This must be really difficult for you. The thing is, if someone has abused a child or overset the market down, they're much more likely to tell you and be honest about it if you're alongside them and curious and empathic than if you go in going, I can't believe that you did this. And then accountability, you know, it's like so, okay, we we need to see what we're going to do about this because obviously this is not okay. If nothing's happened, it's about making sure that people are aware that nothing happened. And we explain to people about you know how children from trauma their memories get mixed up, they can experience uh what's happening now as you know, what happened a long time ago as if it's happening now. Uh, many, many allegations are actually disclosures, we know that. So it's about like taking all that on board and then just saying, well, you know, what's really going on here? And you can do that with everybody. So what in my staff team or people I work with, if I've got a member of staff who starts behaving in a way that's not great, and I've got people saying, Oh, you know, she's really black. I can't believe that you know, she did this and she said that. And I think I just apply therapeutic parent principles and I say things like, Oh, that's interesting. Um, was there a time when this person was okay? Well, yes, she was absolutely fine. Well, what changed around that time? Oh, her mother died. Oh, right, okay. So, you know, let's let's look at this. There's always a reason. I always think behavior makes perfect sense, actually. I think it does. The only time it might not is if you've got a pretty serious mental health condition, like schizophrenia, uh, psychopathy, you know, that that even then psychopathy, you you can't well, it's because they're a psychopath because they have no empathy. Yeah, but I think that our children's traumatic behaviour makes perfect sense.
SPEAKER_03It does. It absolutely does. You know, how can it, you know, be possible that somebody could have experienced something of such great magnitude at potentially such a young age and just not survived? Yeah, exactly. You know, I think in a way we'd almost be more concerned, you know, about maybe denial, repression, you know, those sorts of things than actually if they are trying to process that in the only way that they know how.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, when people say to me things like, Oh, this child's fine, or you know, the worst thing we get, isn't it? Well, you know, she's fine at school. Oh no. So when they said that to me, they said, Oh, my son was fine at school, I said, Oh dear, what a shame for you. And they're like, What do you mean? And I said, Well, it means he's masking and he doesn't feel safe enough to show you his true self. So I'm glad that I get the true child at home because I can manage that and change things. I said, But he's terrible when he's shut down. This is not a good thing, you know.
SPEAKER_03So it's not, it's really not. Yeah, well, it's true. And you know, like actually, if if you're getting the real child at home, well, fantastic on you because clearly they feel safe enough because of the environment that you're creating at home. Yes, exactly. It's an interesting one. I mean, kind of going back to sort of what we were saying about, you know, maybe adults around the child, and maybe as she was saying, maybe um an you know, social worker, let's just say, or any professional at all who isn't really trauma-informed. Again, they are human beings like us, and our brain is incredible, isn't it? Because as soon as we're given a situation that we don't really have a solution for yet, our brains already start explaining it, don't they? So it's almost like we have to consciously think to ourselves, gather the facts first, don't freak out, you know, gather your facts, gather information. I mean, I wonder why it is that you think that we are so quick to kind of jump in and you know, to be like solution focused and maybe then end up kind of barking up the wrong tree and just missing the point with a child, maybe.
SPEAKER_00Well, here's the thing. Yeah, social workers aren't trained. They're not trained in trauma. They're not. You know, I I go and speak at university, I speak for free in universities with social workers about to qualify. And sometimes I'm invited to universities and they'll proudly show me their projects on trauma. And I look at it and I'm like, yeah, no, you you you don't get it, you don't get it. And I say to them, look, you don't you don't get it. This is what you need to do. We we run a level four qualification for social workers and therapists, which is a level it's a level four trauma-informed practitioner qualification, and we do that to fill the gap. But obviously, what would be better is if that stuff was embedded within the social work training. So when I do training with social workers, what I say to them is, look, I'm very sorry to break this news to you. You're not equipped to deal with the stuff that the phosphorus and doctors are dealing with. Yeah, um, however, you have two really good bits of equipment uh at your disposal, and that's your ears. And what you can do is listen, because guess what? The person sitting opposite you saying, I don't know what to do about little Johnny because he's done this, this, this, and this. If you can sit there and say, This sounds really difficult, I'm gonna give this some thought. I'm not sure rather than leaping in with strategies like, well, my 15-year-old does that, there's nothing's gonna shut anyone up faster than saying that kind of thing. If you just button it and say, This sounds really different, I'm here for you, you know, let's think this through together. And actually, what happens is a magic thing. You go away, the therapeutic parent feels better, their brain calms down and they access the answer. So, you know, a lot of social workers, what they need to become is more enablers rather than strategic thinkers, because it's not all about having the answer. But I understand it's frightening for social workers because often we wait too long. We'll we'll we'll phone them out and go, Well, you know, I can't cope with this child anymore because this is happening. And you're going in with a strategy. Well, have you tried doing this? Have you tried doing that? Um, for this reason, by the way, uh, one of the books I've done, which accompanies the A to Z, is the A to Z for of David for professionals, and that's got a toolkit in it for exactly that situation. So if you're a social worker and a phosphoryl and a doctor is saying, Charles doing this, and it's a behavior that you really aren't sure about, you can use that book, you can use the template, you will suddenly become the most skilled practitioner in the universe and you will resolve that behaviour.
SPEAKER_03Oh, it's for sure, absolutely. And it's interesting you mentioned about social work training, because I've really come to realise recently as well that even for teacher training, um, and I've done some work recently with, you know, Skits, um, and you know, we're just not starting early on enough. You know, it's almost a bit like you've kind of got to qualify first, then you meet children at school and in the classroom, then you're almost presented with like this on the spot, you know, real life kind of learning that maybe you don't actually know what you're doing with it. So are we almost expecting too much in professionals to just inherently automatically know this stuff?
SPEAKER_00Well, absolutely. And the problem is that people aren't training social workers and uh schools, well, teachers at teach training at the right level because those people don't exist. There's that they're not there because you need people like you and I that have been there, done that got the t-shirt, going into the universities and doing the training with the teaching social workers, and the universities often have their fingers in their ears. So the poor teacher or social workers, when they come out the other end thinking, oh great, we should have a social worker now. When I qualified, I knew all about Bowlby and Freud and the Children Act. Nothing helped me to give the correct advice and strategies, but they can use the A to Z, they can look up the behavior, they can at least understand why it's happening, and there's strategies in it, and I know a lot of social workers use it. Well, great, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so they really, really do, and I think it's difficult, isn't it? Because then lack of knowledge and understanding, which is no one's fault, we know that that's this is a systemic thing, isn't it? Really, that we're kind of talking about as much as anything today, isn't it? But yeah, you know, I guess one of the challenges is that assumptions that we make often feel so true, don't they? You know, people don't usually think, oh, I'm going to make an assumption here. Like, yeah, you know, they think I know what this is, you know, this is like Johnny I met last year, or Mary, who I worked with five years ago. But I mean, you know, what what's kind of occurring there, do you think? You know, is that just almost us then feeling like, well, I'm now qualified, I should know how to deal with this.
SPEAKER_00Well, and feeling like the expert, you know, social workers have a lot of power, teachers have a lot of power, offset inspectors have a lot of power, they do, you know, and they'll go in holding on to their outdated model and go, Yeah, I'm the expert, I've got these qualifications, got these letters after my name now. So when then somebody hits with something you're not quite sure about, you you might feel so uncomfortable. If you're really uh a confident person, you'll say, Do you know what? I haven't come across this before. I'm gonna go and research to look into it. But a lot of people aren't because you feel like the foster parent is looking to you to solve it. And actually, that's not really what's going on here. Often the parent is offloading. That they're saying this is when they say, Oh, he drives him up the wall, they're not saying this child is unsafe, I'm gonna kill him. What they're saying is I'm on my last nerve here. Yeah, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do, and and but often that will tip over into safeguarding and the social people could go, oh, well, they said so and so, so and so. And I'm like, oh, for goodness sake, you know, it it's it's not that is not what's going on. Because sometimes I think as parents, we get so desperate to be heard that we elevate our language. So we like our children do, they elevate their language, they say, I'm going to kill myself. And actually, they don't really know what that means, but they know it gets a lot of people running round, and so because people take it seriously. So, you know, I think that when we see that happening, it's difficult for everyone, and it's the one thing that needs to change because and I actually I'll tell you a little story it where the difference it makes. My two fostering agencies, one's in Wales and one's in England, right? Yes. So we're inspected by Care Inspectorate Wales. Care Inspectorate Wales is trauma informed, right? They know what they're talking about, they've had training, yeah. Uh they get it. They come into our agency and they go, This is really amazing work. You've got such high stability rates. It's wow, this is just great. Can you train other fostering agencies? Yes, we can. We'll go and do it for free. We train local authorities for free. No, no, you know, that's how you do it. You spread the word. Ofsted, not trauma informed, I'm not saying every single ostentate inspector, but no, no, but as an organization. Yeah, quite a few are. They'll come in, same senior management team, same policies and procedures, same trauma informed model, and go, oh, this is very worrying. Really high civility rates, not interested in that. You need to do a bit more blame, you need to, you need to do more blaming of foster parents. Exactly. I just think that's where it goes wrong. Because if you've got inspectors coming in saying, Oh, where's your trauma-informed practice? If you do that, this will work better. That means that schools and fostering agencies and adoption agencies will get in the trauma-informed training they need, they will educate their staff and that, and then they'll tick that box for Osted and CRW. So I am working on that at the moment. I am uh doing something about that because I think that's where it's got to change.
SPEAKER_03It really does. And I almost wonder whether some of those kind of training gaps, you know, that we've identified, does that almost then give rise to some of the labels that we do end up using? So, for example, before you used that, and I think sometimes it can be useful, but I think it's becoming a catch-all now, dysregulation, you know. But also words like manipulative, attention seeking, difficult. Is that kind of you know, more about, you know, almost we we don't really actually have the language ourselves as adults in order to appropriately discuss those things? And does that almost sometimes get in the way of you know being curious?
SPEAKER_00It it absolutely gets in the way, and actually that language is designed to protect adults because if we say the child is dysregulated and has had 22 placements, that's quite a nice clinical way to describe something. If we say this child is terrified the whole time, and because he's terrified, people have really struggled to manage that terror, and because of that, he's had 22 foster homes, 22 beds, 22 sets of boundaries, 22 schools. Oh, he continues to be terrified. So we use this nice clinical language, I think. Um, that's why in my in my teams, we don't ever use the word placement, we say child and home. You know, we don't say dysregulation anymore and regulated because who says that? I mean, you wouldn't go home and say, Oh, I'm dysregulated today. That's language we've specifically devised to protect us from the reality, the starkness of childhood trauma.
SPEAKER_03It is, yeah, it absolutely is. One thing that I find runs through your work, Sarah, and feel free to correct me if if I'm wrong in my belief here, but is almost that question that we can ask of what else could be true in that given situation, or what else could be true when we think that we've correctly interpreted a behavior. I mean, how important would you say that is?
SPEAKER_00It's absolutely vital because every time you do that, and I always talk about the pause, you know, where we when we're looking at our children, don't we? We go, Oh, what's going on here? That's what I do now in my head. Instead of going, why did you do that? I do a pause, it might be a second, and I like and I literally do a reboot and I'll take a deep breath and I think, what's happening? You ask it in your head, what's happening? And you can do that with everybody. What's happening? What else might have happened? So I'll make my best guess with the child, or I'll make my best guess with a practitioner I'm working with, but I'll be prepared to give it an alternative. I had a social work come up the other day and say, Oh, there's been an allegation. Uh this child has said XYZ, and you know, it's very serious. We're going out there. And I said, Okay, I said, just bear in mind that might not have happened. Well, exactly. Let's just take a breath. And she looked at me, she looked at me like like I was a safeguarding denier. Uh, you know, and I said, I said, no, my first priority is safeguarding. However, then Ofsted's own data says 52% of allegations are unfounded or or unsubstantiated or not actually not because we know that children say things in the moment to keep that nurture coming, and often they're unaware of what they're saying and to preserve that relationship.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely, and that's tricky, isn't it? Because that kind of comes back to connection seeking, you know, what we were saying earlier on about that basic needers, you know, particularly when maybe you know, there have been relationships that are broken down, or there have, let's say, been adults for whatever which way, um, have unfortunately, you know, maybe left that child's life. You know, you're going to cling on, aren't you, with all you have? Um to kind of keep that going and to sort of feel, hey, these adults still hear me, they still know that I'm here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. It's really important because what we often see, the usual pattern in a team where there's not any trauma-informed practice, taking the example of the child with the holy jumper, right? That escalates. Yeah. They go to school, they've got a non-trauma-informed TA who goes, Oh dear, you got a holy jumper. The child, because they need to keep that nurture coming, because that's what would have saved them when they were young, is not aware of what's coming out of their mouth. And oh, yeah, I've mum sold my jumper, I've only got this one, and I all my clothes are too small. You know, anything that's gonna get me a jelly baby or a hot chocolate or a you know, it's gonna get me out of pee, whatever it is. So when that comes back to the parent, if you're not trauma informed, well, A, you're gonna be annoyed because they haven't seen behind the behavior, but B, it comes to you as blame. And if you're not trauma-informed, you're gonna go, I can't believe he said that about me. He lied about me. So, what we do is all our foster parents go, oh, okay, I see what's going on here. Um, we've got a mismatch with the internal working model. Um, and actually, what's happened is the child's done X, Y, Z. And they say to the child, Look, you know, I know you said this, this, this. You might be unaware, you said this, this, this. But actually, what's going on here is this. Because the most important thing for them is to preserve the relationship. But when you're not traumated, the relationship breaks down, the child moves, the foster parent gets angry, won't have the child back or whatever, and everyone goes into this little circle of blame. Everyone's blaming everyone, and in the middle of it, the child is blaming the whole world, no growth, no healing, um, just another disruption and and and hurt.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's so true. And what about, you know, maybe for those listening who may have had an allegation made against them? Like any kind of advice or guidance as to kind of how to to cope with that afterwards, you know, when you know it has been completely unfounded. You know, how do we move forward with our relationship with that child?
SPEAKER_00One of the things that you can have is we wrote the allegation support pack. You can get that free of charge from the Centre of Excellence and Child Traum, you get it online. Um, that will really help you. To understand where why there's a false allegation, where it comes from, it'll help you to preserve your relationship. And it'll also give you really nice quotes and hangouts you can give to people signed by me or other trauma-informed professionals to say this it takes the heat off you a little bit. Because if you can handle the allegation right, and if you can look at it like the child didn't do it to me, this was an expression of their trauma, you know. And and Sarah Dylan says, uh, the child's not lying, but they're not telling the truth. When my son made an allegation and said, I've got no electricity in my room, he wasn't lying because there was a time in his life when he didn't have electricity in his room, but he wasn't telling the truth because he had electricity in his room now. Um, and and it's about that. What at what time did that happen? And then go back to the child and say, Oh, I think you were talking about this time in your life, and it's really easy to get that mixed up when you've had a tricky start in life. It helps us to keep that connection to the child.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it really, really does. And again, to kind of think about you know, maybe that was the first time that an adult probably took him to the special office with the comfortable seats, with the um, I'm gonna say hot chocolate. You've got me thinking about hot chocolate now, and so finally that was a little time to explore what it was like to not have electricity at home. That's right. But actually the time point is wrong. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's right, that's right. Exactly that.
SPEAKER_03So, what changes when adults can recognize that?
SPEAKER_00It changes the entire world for the child. Yeah, because when we are seeing the pain that the child is showing us, the narrative for the child changes from you are bad, you do bad things, into bad things happen to you, which were absolutely not your fault. And because they happen to you, sometimes you behave in this way, and we're gonna help you with that. So that changes my son from being a youth offending person, going into prison and doing drugs, to now running his own business in a long-term relationship, kinship carer, actually. Um, you know, drives, all the rest of it. Oh, wow. Changes their whole life doing that, changing that narrative and sharing it with them. People forget to tell the child, they work it out, but they forget to tell them. We've got to help the child to make sense of it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we absolutely do. We absolutely do. So, sorry, he's now a kinship carer himself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, two of my adopted children have become kinship carers. Yeah, they they've come back from the side, and they and that, and that's what made me get quite involved in kinship care because I realized how how um unsupported the system is.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Oh, it really is, it really is. You know, I often say that you know, we we do spend so long talking about foster care, don't we? But almost not always thinking about that nuance of you know, the kinship element. So, but gosh, it's almost like they're sort of paying forward in a way, you know, not that you'd ever want any thanks for you know the sacrifices that you made for them. But it's kind of like that ripple continuous into the future.
SPEAKER_00What might help actually if you've got any kinship carers listening, is I did a book last year called The Essential Guide to Kinship Care with Enzo Smith MBE, who's head of the Kinship Carers UK. Um, and that's literally if you're just starting out or you're getting people telling you lots of things you don't know where to go, that's literally a map through for you. It tells you all the things you really need to know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Oh, they do incredible work. Thanks so much for doing this out there. And I will make sure as well, you know, for everybody listening that all the bits that we've mentioned today will be including the links and all that. So if you are a kinship carer, um, yeah, definitely worth checking out that for sure. Yeah. Wow. Sarah, were there any questions today? And I always ask this question every episode, you know, that you were really hoping that I was going to ask you.
SPEAKER_00No, I I think you've asked them actually. I really do, because you know, that's what I wanted to get um through about that whole looking behind the behavior. I would just add never ask a child why they did something. Oh, waste of time. Because unless you're confident that they're gonna say, well, what it was was my thinking brain was flying and my amygdala was in charge, they're not gonna say that. You just gotta do that narrative yourself.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you really do. I mean, unless they are like, you know, baby Einstein or something though.
SPEAKER_00But then they wouldn't have behaved, then they wouldn't have behaved when they did because they would have been able to logic it out.
SPEAKER_03Exactly, logic it out. I love that. I'm gonna steal that one, logic it out. That's really powerful. So, what do we hope, Sarah, that the kind of golden message will be um to our listeners to kind of almost sum up um our beautiful conversation that we've had together today?
SPEAKER_00Don't take it personally. If you're looking after a child, I I know it's hard, I know it can feel relentless and it feels like it's it's one step forward and two steps back, but believe me, you are making a difference. It's just that all those changes happen at once and they come later on. And if you're a trauma, if you're a practitioner who's supporting a foster parent, a doctor kinship carer, get trauma-informed, read the book, go to the training, don't just play lip service to it. You you your people you're looking after deserve that. The children deserve that.
SPEAKER_03They absolutely do, they absolutely do. Sarah, can I just say on behalf of myself, ticks, and all of our listeners, thank you so much for today. For listeners, we're currently in the middle of a heat wave, aren't we, Sarah? So it's been a tricky one today. Um, but yeah, so the fact that Sarah's brain has worked so beautifully is testament to all those decades that you've really kind of dedicated of your life to supporting children, young people, and adults. So thank you so much, Sarah. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much for joining us. To learn more, visit the Trauma Informed Consultancy Services website. We'll see you next time.