This course will take place over four days in June on

Thursday 6th & Friday 7th and

Thursday 20th & Friday 21st.

The course has been funded by the HSCP Office, HSE. As such, places are available to social workers in the publicly funded healthcare service only. 

Tusla staff are not eligible to take part in this course. 

Trauma Informed Care

Facilitated by Aoife Bairead, this workshop is designed to support social workers to consider family relationships and the needs of children using an attachment lens, and to work with parents to improve the quality and sensitivity of their relationships with their children. It will develop the social work skills brought to this work, and how these contribute to the efficacy and strength of collaborative, integrated support planning when dealing with the complexities of intergenerational trauma and insecure attachment.

The workshop will provide a learning space where the group will be facilitated to review and evaluate this approach together using collaborative and where appropriate inter-disciplinary lenses to integrate this learning for their organisation.

Learning Outcomes Days 1 & 2:

• Understanding perspectives in trauma and trauma informed care
• Understanding attachment theory
• Child development, maltreatment and adaptation
• Understanding perspectives in trauma theory
• Attachment and trauma perspectives in child and family services
• Understanding child development and the developmental trajectory of trauma
• Intergenerational and transgenerational trauma- taking a systemic family approach
• Taking a Trauma Informed Care approach in your organisation
• Communicating your understanding with other professionals to support interdisciplinary/holistic approaches with families
• Using an attachment and trauma informed lens in self-care and team support

Learning Outcomes Days 3 & 4:

• Present anonymised case study using an attachment and trauma informed perspective
• Review of case study over the five days and considerations for working with that family
• Using play and movement to respond to children’s needs in family interventions
• Using attachment informed perspectives with adults
• Planning and reviewing interventions with families
• Integrating Trauma informed Care approaches in your practice (support and supervision)

Aoife Bairéad has been working with children and families for over twenty years. Aoife’s focus is on building, repairing and supporting family relationships so that every family member has a sense of meaning and belonging. Aoife offers families support through parent consultations and mentoring,  therapeutic work with children and their families including foster and adoptive families, supporting schools and other professionals. Her primary degree is in social work and her post graduate training is in attachment and trauma informed assessments and interventions for children and adults. Aoife is trained in therapeutic approaches including Theraplay, EMDR, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy and Mentalisation Based Treatment.  

Since she began her career Aoife has been working with families who have experienced stressors, loss and trauma. Aoife has worked with children experiencing mental health difficulties including infant mental health, and those who have experienced separation, loss, community and gang violence, bereavement and trauma. In 2018 Aoife set up Minds in Mind, a service dedicated to supporting children and their families. Aoife uses evidence informed assessment and interventions to empower families to find ways to improve children and their family's day to day lives. This is done holistically with those caring for the children providing an individualised and family focused plan that caters to their needs and focuses on agreed goals and outcomes.

Aoife is a guest lecturer on the Masters in Social Work in University College Dublin and provides training to organisations such as the Irish Association of Social Workers, the HSE and Tusla Child and Family Agency as well as bespoke training for specialist groups, fostering agencies, youth and community programmes and services working with children with mental health, disability and complex needs.

Aoife is the Chair the Special Interest Group for Children and Families with the Irish Association of Social Workers.  She is also the Chair of the Canal Communities Drug and Alcohol Task Force. Aoife is an Ad-Hoc Board Member of the International Association for the Study of Attachment.