Parenting and Early Years Services
Training for early childhood professionals
Australian Childhood Foundation provides training sessions set in the Australian context and relevant to all those who work with young children.
Each training session aims to educate adults in the lives of children as they build nurturing and safe relationships that support children to heal and thrive.
Whether you are working as an early childhood educator in an early years space, as a clinician/counsellor with young children, or working with families, these training sessions will affirm your work now and provide some new thinking and reflective opportunities for your work in the future.
All training sessions run for 3.5 hours in an online environment and include a pre-training information pack containing videos, handouts, articles, and an interactive live, facilitated presentation.
There are five training sessions in the series, which you can explore below.
Healing relational trauma through play
This workshop is for early childhood educators and other professionals working with children 0-5 years. The focus is on the importance of play with all children, but in particular children affected by relational trauma.
This training session explores:
- The importance of relationships to support healing
- Neuroscience and play and how to apply this in the work you do
- What neuroception of safety is
- Healing environments
Healing Relational Trauma through Music
This workshop is for early childhood educators and other professionals working with children 0-5 years. No musical experience needed to attend this training. The focus is on the importance of music and musical experiences with all children, but in particular children affected by relational trauma.
This session explores:
The science and research which suggests music experiences are essential to support early childhood development, including brain development.
How music experiences can be a non-threatening medium for expressing emotions and support healing from trauma.
How music can stimulate the brain’s reward pathways, providing a sense of pleasure and relief from traumatic stress.
Trauma Informative Practice
This training session provides an opportunity for early childhood educators and other professionals working with children 0-5 years to think about how they can support children who are affected by trauma. The session provides frameworks of practice that will increase knowledge, skills and confidence to support early childhood educators and other professionals to implement trauma-informed practice in a variety of settings.
Trauma Informative Mentoring
This workshop will explore leadership and mentoring through a trauma-informed lens. The session takes participants through the story of leadership and the different role mentoring has in the early childhood space. This session supports the sustainability of trauma-informed practice in the service by providing support for leaders and mentors.
It will also provide an opportunity to reflect on both the mentor and mentee roles when working with families and children where there is/has been relational trauma.
Resources to support partnership with parents affected by trauma
This workshop supports early childhood educators and other professionals working with children 0-5 years in their communication and engagement with parents who have experienced trauma. The session aims to support respectful, non-judgmental communication with traumatised parents, and enables professionals to provide parents with trauma-informed knowledge in their relationship with their traumatised children.
Parenting and Early Years Resources
Parenting and Early Years have a set of Bringing Up Great Kids (BUGK) resources that complement the program and are aimed at making the content accessible for all parents/carers. The range includes affordable products which can be purchased online.
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