Introduction to ACEs, Trauma & Resilience
“All excellent - opened up a whole new world of thought to me.- Steve fantastic trainer.” - Health Care practitioner.
“It gave the information that was needed to start conversations at my place of work. We were also given examples, so it helped me imagine how I would frame this in my job.” - Senior Leader, Voluntary Sector.
“I think the simplicity of the delivery, the resources - slides and videos were fabulous and clear enough for anyone to understand. Steve’s enthusiasm was infectious and he definitely knows his stuff - not box ticking there.” - Social Care Practitioner.
“Really enjoyed this. I work within a ‘trauma specific’ service and we could certainly learn from this. Thank you!.” - Mental Health Practitioner.
“It was great to be given time to reflect on how understanding ACEs and trauma can enhance the work we do with families. I have done lots of ACEs training but in a much more didactic manner - this was more reflective and personalised.” - Senior Leader, Education.
“The session leader provided new ways to look at and think about a person's lived experiences and resulting behaviours. Examining how one is physically affected by traumatic events opened up an even clearer pathway to mapping someone's flight or fight response and what our responsibility is to ensure they feel safe, understood and listened to.” - Social Care Practitioner.
“Very happy with content and delivery style, this was lovely, emotionally intelligent and person centred training.” - Senior Leader, Health Care.
“Finding out the different statistics in ACE's and the likelihood of risk factors later in life. It was important to know to show what a big impact ACE's can have.” - Youth Worker.
"I know what trauma is but this course put it into better perspective such as examples and scenarios which even though they seemed un-relatable made complete sense, it made me reevaluate myself.” - Peer Mentor.
"Relevant and highly valuable in terms of my role supporting providers to empower young people in their care and to think & be mindful of how their own reactions may impact upon a young person in crisis. I can now discuss with them the concepts such as latent vulnerability and direct providers to focus on and really think about what that young person in crisis is communicating to us in the moment and the call for a different approach.” - Supervising Social Worker.
"Toxic stress & impacts on the brain & body. How this relates to & impacts on looked after children we work with (and ourselves) behaviour responses/emotions etc. Video clips, exercises were very helpful. Serve & Return description was good. Great course.” - Specialist Therapeutic Social Worker.
"To stop and think before working with families about what their experiences have been. I will build on my relationship skills as I am very passionate about being respectful to families but I also need to be mindful of the need to balance that with addressing the concerns and supporting Families to identify their own safety and support plans. The course gave me a good understand of the types of issues faced in childhood and how they can affect a person in later life, in turn creating a family cycle of generation to generation. Early Help will play a huge part in tackling this and as professionals we need to identify how we promote early help positively and support families to engage with the services around them..” - Early Help practitioner.
Trauma Informed Skills Training
“Although some of my work is already trauma informed, I can now apply this much further in a practical sense.” -
“Tools which can be used to gain information from patients and help them to identify support systems.”
“To engage, make the engagement client purposeful, and use tools that can support the engagement of client, utilising tools available to assist..” -
“To ensure I have a self-care plan in place that I can fall back on when my own 'trauma pot' is full, and how to approach someone regarding past traumatic experience. Both messages will impact my practice by making me more resilient”
“All of it was valuable.”
“The data shows that overall, participants found the training to be beneficial. After completing the training, 73% of respondents scored themselves as having ‘A lot’ of knowledge and awareness of Trauma and ACEs (compared to 25% pre-training). In addition to this, 57% of people indicated an improvement in their knowledge and awareness of the subject matter after completing training. Respondents also found that the training built upon previous knowledge and experience gained from other training sessions and allowed them to think more about the practical implications of working with people who experience Trauma and ACEs.”
Impact Chronology Training
“The training was undertaken using mentimeter and as such everyone had the opportunity to contribute their thoughts to the training live by adding in comments and undertaking relevant activities. It was really well planned for a virtual forum. Excellent training - all social care practitioners should attend.” - Social Work Practitioner.
“Online training is not always the same as face to face but Stephen did a fantastic job at making the training interactive and providing opportunities for people to contribute who might not feel as confident speaking up on a teams call with many people. Thanks to Stephen for delivering some of the best online training I've done.” - Social Work Practitioner.
“The trainer was really passionate and that was really inspiring. There were different learning resources - videos, quiz, graphs, - I feel this was very helpful for different learning styles I enjoyed the interactive elements using the online programme to be able to answer questions.” - Social Work Practitioner.
“Ensuring that it is a tool which is co-produced with children, young people and their families. Capturing the child's voice as significant incidents take place, as opposed to trying to summarise at a later date when the impact may not be as well remembered. Using the chronology as a tool for critical thinking and writing analysis.” - Social Work Practitioner.
“The biggest learning for me was considering the child's perspective when writing a chronology, what is significant to them and ensuring that positives are added to a chronology.” - Social Work Practitioner.
“The trainer was particularly skilled in delivering training. He was clearly experienced. He engaged the participants, which is difficult on teams.” - Social Work Practitioner.
“The biggest thing I will take forward is to remember that the children of these families will one day be able to read the information written about them and will have an impact on them. Also, the way a chronology is written and the information we put in the chronology can be adapted which can show a clearer picture of what is going on for the family.” - Social Work Practitioner.
“The biggest thing I will take forward is to remember that the children of these families will one day be able to read the information written about them and will have an impact on them. Also, the way a chronology is written and the information we put in the chronology can be adapted which can show a clearer picture of what is going on for the family.” - Social Work Practitioner.
Safeguarding - Neglect & Early Help for GPs
“One of the best safeguarding courses I’ve attended.” - General Practitioner.
“Recognising that children are often not heard, that our brief interaction only affords a tiny, incomplete window to what is happening at home, sometimes not at all. So we need to be more vigilant and more curious. That we are part of Early Help! It was very informative and enjoyable.” - General Practitioner.
“Very interactive sessions, very easy to comment on the mentimeter and ask questions, found it very helpful. Strength based assessment approach can help early identification and intervention.”
“Very interesting and well presented. I was impressed how well this worked online and was truly interactive. The extra knowledge will help me in my role for the CCG and GP peer support.” - General Practitioner, Practice Educator.
“Excellent presentation, very informative and well-structured.” - General Practitioner.
Voice of A Child Training
“I felt that some dormant areas of my brain were turned on, especially because of the links with research that provided evidence and reasoning for why we do x in this or that way.” - Early Help Practitioner.
“This was fantastic training. Very powerful. It enabled me to re-think about how to get the child's voice and was able to put this into practice straight after the training. Steve delivered this excellently. I came out and called my manager and said I would recommend this training to anyone. Thank you Steve, this was so useful!” - Social Worker.
Strengths Based Practice Skills
“Being able to 'score' myself at the beginning of the session to understand and take ownership of progress (and to be able to use this technique in future training).”
“The practical skills discussed and practiced were good, and definitely something to think about using in practice.”
“The practical tools and activities to use with clients/service users. I also enjoyed the reflection and hearing other people’s views.”
“That we had the opportunity to try the practical tools for ourselves, it gave us the opportunity just as humans, rather than professionals in services to understand how they feel, land and how someone may respond to them. This goes a long way to disrupting the unhealthy power in-balances which get in the way of transformational change.”
“Learning new ways to approach a situation - particular in coaching.”
“How an extremely good use of examples can be impactful at altering your mindset. The facilitator used several throughout. The use of video was also great at making you feel rather than just think. Making it more of a sensation-based experience than a cognitive one.”
“I like the idea to look for one strength in everyone and will definitely use that in my consultations. using 'what do you think is working for you today or previously to try to allow people to think about their resilience. I will also think about 'enquiry creates change’”
“I thought that Steve’s delivery style and content were great. I really liked that he was authentic and was able to draw on his personal experiences as a social worker.”
“I found the mix of practical elements, videos, discussion and slides really helped keep the group engaged and kept the day interesting. I thought it was really well facilitated.”
“It was an informative and engaging session. Days like that are beneficial to stay updated and connected with the project and other professionals.”
“Thank you for creating the space for us to be honest, open and not know what we did not know, but to also come to knowing what we always did know.”
“Well-structured workshop and facilitator expert in his subject.”
“That he has a beautiful way of explaining the topic without presenting it as an ‘overly soft handed’ approach rather the very logical one that it is.”
“I am sorry that I missed the am session but I think getting people to step away and really think about how they engage and respond to the people they work with is really important. The self-reflection using the diagrams drawn up in pairs and the personalisation scoring was really interesting and not something we do well or often.”
