1st Edition
A Professional's Guide to Working with Vulnerable and Traumatised Children The Healing Circle
This book presents “The Circle of Safety and Reconnection”, a compassionate reflection model for working with vulnerable and traumatised children and young people in a nurturing way, providing hope for post-traumatic healing and growth.
The circle is a holistic and comprehensive framework for professionals working to create safety for children against violence and abuse. It takes into consideration a child’s individual, intergenerational, and collective trauma also assessing their risk and protection factors and using different tools to regulate the nervous system and promote healing. A step-by-step guide, populated with practice examples and exercises to walk the reader through using and adapting the model in practice, the book discusses the nature, signs, and ways of trauma, the reasons for it, and the different ways of healing these wounds outside the therapeutic context. Additionally, as this field is high risk for secondary traumatisation, stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue, the author has dedicated a chapter focusing solely on the building of resilience in professionals.
This text is written for all professionals working in the field, including therapists and psychologists, social workers, educators, foster parents, nurses, day-care workers, and students.
1 Introduction to trauma-informed work and the Circle of Safety and Reconnection; 2 Preventing stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue; 3 The Circle of Safety and Reconnection, Step 1: Assessing the current risk to the child’s safety, health, development, and well-being; 4 The Circle of Safety and Reconnection, Step 2: An overview of the child’s trauma history, diagnoses, and current state of mind; 5 The Circle of Safety and Reconnection, Step 3: Parents’ trauma, diagnosis, intergenerational trauma, and their impact on parenting skills; 6 The Circle of Safety and Reconnection, Step 4: Assessing the ACEs and other important risk factors in the child’s life; 7 The Circle of Safety and Reconnection, Step 5: Assessing positive childhood experiences and other important protective factors in the child’s life; 8 The Circle of Safety and Reconnection, Step 6: Assessing the adequate care and protection of the child by parents and other significant adults and the positive impact on the child’s health, well-being, and development; 9 The Circle of Safety and Reconnection, Step 7: Setting the right goals to create safety, health, development, and well-being for the child; 10 The Circle of Safety and Reconnection, Step 8: Create an action, treatment, or safety plan with clear agreements on following up; 11 Closing the trauma circle and opening a healing circle instead
Biography
Rikke Ludvigsen is a social worker, trainer, supervisor, family consultant, and therapist trained in safety planning, EMDR, SFBT, and stabilisation of chronically traumatised children. She has worked for over 20 years with children at risk, their parents, and their networks, and has trained over 1,000 professionals over the last decade.
‘Through A Professional's Guide to Working with Vulnerable and Traumatised Children, Rikke Ludvigsen manages to skillfully combine research and theories around safety planning and trauma healing. The book covers topics from how you as a therapist can take care of yourself and how to understand WHY the child acts like it does, to theories about brain development and nervous system. I recommend this book to all people dealing with traumatised children and their network. This book is going to make a huge impact worldwide on trauma treatment.’
Mette Vangsøe Olsen, family therapist, Copenhagen, Denmark
