Workshops
Day 1: Thursday 15th August
- Why can’t we see the details of face-to-face nonverbal communication?
Video examples of how slowed-down or sec by sec viewing reveals so much more than real-time video - What is the infant’s and the mother’s nonverbal language?
How we code video via second-by-second microanalysis
- Research on the 4-month Origins of Disorganized Attachment at One Year
Difficulties in “joining/going with/entering” the infant’s distress
Dr Jackie Amos and Dr Liz Coventry
WORKSHOP 9am-12pm: The Role of Radical Compassion in Building Relational Trust
Attachment theory reminds us that long before we make cognitive maps of relationships, we make embodied maps, including maps of relational threats, relational wounds, and the associated creative adaptations. We all have our own embodied maps that either foster relational trust or lead us into relational responses for managing relational threat and distrust. In this workshop we will use an evolutionary framework to explore the adaptive purpose of two different social systems or modes of being. The first, agonic mode, is more common in resource poor environments and involves systems of power and control. The second, referred to as hedonic mode, refers to relational systems based in safety, togetherness, and love. Developing compassion for agonic and hedonic adaptations is essential if relational systems are to move towards increased trust.
In this workshop Jackie and Liz will present an integrated theoretical and practical guide to navigating this relational territory, supporting participants to gain confidence in recognising and working with these adaptations. The guide takes the form of a hand drawn map that can be used as an interactive tool for those working with caregivers and their infants and very young children.
In exploring the use of this tool, we will highlight how the importance of relational trust flowing through all parts of therapeutic systems – from the individual practitioner through to the organisations themselves.
Structure:
Part 1: Linking theory and practice by drawing the map together.
Part 2: Understanding how we, in our roles as practitioners, respond to parents who inhabit the more difficult parts of the map. This part of the workshop involves experiential components where participants will be invited to practice using the map in small groups.
Part 3: Discussion of the experiential process and how the map can inform clinical practice, reflective supervision, and organisational leadership.
Professor Jenn McIntosh AM & Dr Zoe Cloud
WORKSHOP 2pm – 5pm: The Baby and the Family Therapist: Laying New Foundations for Trust
Led by Professor Jenn McIntosh with co-presenter, Dr Zoe Cloud, this workshop will focus on the intersection of infant mental health and family therapy.
Utilising the Bouverie Centre’s long work with the power of Single Session family work, we will workshop what effective brief family engagement in the perinatal period might look like in each participant’s service context.
This includes reflecting on how the infant ‘invites’ their parents and family system to review their hopes for their baby, creating a shared agreement to build foundations for trust and security, even against intergenerational backgrounds where trust was not a given.
2.00 – 3:15pm Infant mental health and family therapy – a merging of methods.
Beyond the contribution of the family to the infant’s relational security, this session focuses on the contributions of the infant to their family’s development, including recovery from intergenerational trauma.
Learning objectives Participants will consider the purpose and possibilities of infant led family work, with a focus on understanding the infant’s communications about relational security, and safely utilising their voice to call the family forward from histories of parenting trauma.
3:15-3:30 Tea Break
3:30 – 4:45 The baby’s place in a family session: building a single session response to intergenerational trauma.
This practice session will focus on generating principles for infant-led brief family work, in the face of intergenerational trauma.
Learning objectives Participants will apply their practice wisdom to the creation of single session framework for trauma informed, infant-led family work. Participants will leave the workshop with a set of principles and practice guidelines, co-designed by the group, with considerations for implementation in their own service context.
4:45pm Conclusion
Dr Kim Jones
WORKSHOP 2pm – 5pm: Healing the Past by Nurturing the Future – Trauma informed approaches to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families
Physiology and neurobiology of trauma
Understand the types of trauma, provide a basic overview of the physiology and neurobiology of trauma, and how this connects to the perinatal period.
- Understand the different types of trauma and how they may be experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
- Understand how trauma impacts development.
- Understand how trauma can influence behaviours in health service settings.
Creating safe, trauma aware and healing informed spaces
Consider what trauma-aware healing-informed care looks like, and reflect on how to create physically, emotionally, and culturally safe spaces.
- Understand physical, emotional and cultural elements of the environment that contribute to a trauma-aware, healing-informed practice
How can we build trusting, respectful relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents?
Develop strategies for building trusting relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
- Understand and apply thoughtful communication
- Understand strategies to empower through choice
- Understand and apply strengths-based approaches
Associate Professor Loyola McLean
WORKSHOP 2pm – 5pm: A Psychodynamic Interpersonal Therapy (PIT) Workshop for perinatal clinicians and services– a skills-based Conversational Model approach, integrating attachment, psychodynamics and trauma-informed care.
We know human beings grow and recover in relationships. As clinicians and services, we set out to support expectant and new parents and growing families to move into the next phase of life with hope and stable mental health. However, we are increasingly aware that complex trauma and early attachment difficulties and/ or difficult experiences of later loss and trauma get in the way of enjoying and thriving in pregnancy, the perinatal period and the first 2000 days of an infant’s life.
Common factors approaches to psychotherapy build on our collaborative partnerships with patients and families to help us help our patients, to which we now add our knowledge of trauma-informed care and therapies. Psychodynamic Interpersonal Therapy is a Conversational Model approach that centres on the Common Factors approach, adding an awareness of the neurobiology of trauma and attachment disruption to build a therapeutic relationship and foster healing conversations. It is tested as a therapy for adult individuals across the continuum of care and has been used as a team model for an acute mental health team, including PIT being a way of approaching supervision so needed in trauma-saturated acute care.
This online workshop will outline the origin and evidence for PIT and discuss the basic concepts and skills of PIT-LITE to introduce practitioners to the model. We will provide a simple manual to support learning. We will do some online role plays, discuss this approach and finish with a film of a psychotherapy assessment session for a presentation around perinatal loss that will allow us to imagine our way into the conversation. This will offer a beginning for practitioners seeking to add these concepts and skills to their own practice and to consider weaving it into current models of care.
Keynotes
Day 2: Friday 16th August
Professor Catherine Chamberlain
KEYNOTE: Building relational trust in the Early Years
Family and extended kinship systems have always been central to the functioning of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies as the social fabric and cultural attachment systems for nurturing healthy, happy children. These systems have been underpinned by cultural knowledge, governance structures and lore, supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to adapt and thrive for at least 2000 generations. Since colonization a mere 200 years ago, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have been impacted by colonial violence, genocidal policies, and discrimination, including the forced removal of children from their families – resulting in intergenerational trauma and concurrent oppression, suppression and destruction of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges that would enable recovery.
In this keynote, Professor Chamberlain will briefly contextualise the important life course opportunity for healing the past by nurturing the future and share some insights into cultural practices that foster connectedness and building early relational trust, and belonging from four years of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led community-based participatory action research and co-design. She will also discuss effective Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander strategies to safely hold discussions about trauma with parents, including deep listening (Dadirri), storytelling, and yarning to help transform cycles of intergenerational trauma and harm to intergenerational cycles of nurturing and recovery so that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families can, once again, live health happy lives in our abundant land we now share.
Dr Jackie Amos and Dr Coventry
KEYNOTE: Finding a ‘generative narrative’ in mother-infant psychotherapy.
The ‘generative narrative’ is phrase used by Krista Tippett, an influential writer and host of the podcast ‘On Being’. She uses the phrase to direct our attention to the innumerable stories of hope, courage and wisdom that can be found amidst the present day stories of global catastrophe and conflict.
This phrase can equally be applied to the narrative style of therapeutic storytelling in Parallel Parent and Child Narrative (PPCN). PPCN is a therapeutic form of history taking designed to foster relational repair where mothers and children are struggling to overcome hurt sustained in their relationships with each other. In PPCN stories of distress, shame and blame that characterise the lives of many mothers wrestling with the tyranny of unhealed intergenerational trauma are revised by focusing on the good intentions behind difficult actions. The PPCN therapist uncovers untold stories of love, courage, generosity, and hope that are often overlooked, without minimising stories of difficulty and distress.
In this presentation we will explore key elements of the PPCN approach that support the emergence of the generative narrative. We will also consider what stepping into this process requires of those who wish to help mothers who are mothering without strong foundations of trust.
Prof. Jennifer McIntosh AM and Dr. Zoe Cloud
KEYNOTE: From trauma to trust: MERTIL for Parents (My Early Relational Trust-Informed Learning)
Early relational health is a key determinant of childhood development, while relational trauma in the parent-infant dyad can instigate a cascading pattern of infant risk. In Victoria, to assist Maternal Child health nurses (MCHNs) supporting families, the professional development program My Early Relational Trauma-Informed Learning, was provided: MERTIL for short (McIntosh & Newman, 2018). This is an 18-hour online and in-person program, designed to assist early childhood practitioners to identify and prevent relational trauma. Evaluation showed clear improvement in practitioner confidence (Clancy et al, 2020). Concerns remained however about limited referral options, particularly in rural and remote settings.
To address these limitations, MERTIL for Parents (My Early Relational Trust-Informed Learning) was developed. MERTIL for Parents is a brief online self-paced parenting program, co-designed with parents, infant mental health clinicians, and informed by the feedback of over 1300 MCHNs. The animated content and narration focuses compassionately on the building and repair of relational trust, especially in the face of current stress and intergenerational trauma. As an evidence based, low cost, accessible prevention resource, the program targets emerging relational concerns, enhancing parent confidence and reducing need for extended service system engagement.
In this presentation, the MERTIL team will describe and feature extracts from MERTIL for Parents, together with findings to date from a pilot implementation study with Tresillian staff and parent client.
Associate Professor Alka Kothari PhD
Fathers play a crucial health role in all phases of obstetric medical care, including preconception, pregnancy, and postpartum periods. However, maternity services in Australia and worldwide are still primarily focused on the mother and baby. There is limited information on the health role of fathers, their views, intentions, and needs leading up to childbirth, and the impact of exposure to adverse circumstances. Fathers play a critical role in the event of significant pregnancy and birth complications when women have complex health needs, such as difficult decision-making or when supporting mothers with mental health conditions. Fathers also have a substantial role in shaping the family unit’s future through fostering breastfeeding and supporting women in their transition to motherhood.
In this keynote, Professor Kothari will highlight the critical need for engaging fathers and partners early, ideally in the preconception period, to identify and modify biochemical, behavioural, and social risk factors. She will exemplify the need for better preparedness of fathers through mental health screening and specifically targeted father-inclusive programs. She will discuss the impact of exposure to traumatic circumstances on fathers, including the risk of significant mental health consequences, with potentially harmful implications for the entire family unit, as well as intergenerational consequences.
Professor Kothari will underline the pivotal role of relational trust in her research, co-designed with consumers who have lived experiences of trauma. This trust is mirrored in the co-design of principles, practices, resources, and implementation strategies, fostering an environment that encourages the active participation of consumers in shaping future obstetric care. This keynote address will highlight the urgent need for father-inclusive maternity services by identifying and addressing men’s needs and gaps in their care. It will strongly advocate for an evidence-based change in obstetric services, a change that, with active consumer involvement, can prevent significant consequences for the entire family unit.