Using Reflection and Training to Manage the Emotional Impact of Working with Severely Traumatised Primary Aged Children

Dave Roberts 2 John Diamond 1
1CEO, The Mulberry Bush
2Head of Mulberry Bush Outreach, Reading University

The Mulberry Bush is a residential special school, with children’s home, working with emotionally traumatised and abused primary aged boys and girls in England. The school has always placed reflective practice and high-quality learning at the heart of staff development. This workshop will outline the development of an award-winning Degree Programme in Therapeutic Work, exploring the complex relationship between a learning cohort and a working cohort, the focus of which was to develop a learning programme which enabled staff to understand the often intolerable projections they experience when working alongside severely traumatised children.

Through examining the emotional investment in staff we will highlight the cultures of belonging and identity that have grown through using our specialised reflective learning programme. We will highlight how practice has developed, how staff have a deeper understanding of the needs of children and families and how this has increased their sense of self-reflection through work-based learning.

The workshop will be underpinned by extracts from an independent research project into reflective practice, undertaken by the University of East of London, as well as chapters taken from the “​70 Years of The Mulberry Bush School: showing the way in therapeutic child care book.