Finding what works for children and young people in care with Kim Golding

‘Finding what works for children and young people in care with Kim Golding’ blog article was written by Lauren Thomas, Director of International Childhood Trauma Conference and Youth Participation and Engagement Senior Project Lead at Australian Childhood Foundation.

Kim Golding is a familiar face to those who have attended our International Childhood Trauma Conferences in the past. In fact, her presentations, focussed on helping practitioners working with children in care, have consistently received overwhelmingly positive feedback due to them being packed full of case examples and practical strategies and fused with her British humour and easy-to-listen-to style. 

So, I am excited to announce that she will be joining us again at the 2025 Conference in Melbourne. In planning the program, we sat down to speak about the keynote sessions, workshops and masterclasses she has planned, and more broadly, her work with children and young people in foster care – as well as those who foster or adopt, educate and support them. 

Whether you are a parent, a foster carer, a social worker, a therapist or another kind of professional working with children in care, it is common to have periods where you can feel stuck or as though your training isn’t working.  

In fact, during our conversation, Kim shared that although she has always been interested in collaborating with parents or carers to develop skills tailored to the particular needs of the children and young people that they are caring for, it was this very experience – one of “floundering, to be honest” – that first drove her to look for training in additional ways of working.

“My background was very much based in cognitive behavioural therapy and I was very  quickly realising that this was not going to be so helpful for this cohort of children and their families, and I was floundering, to be honest…” 

I was working with really, really experienced foster carers who knew a lot more about how to help these children than I did – which felt a bit humbling – and that is when I heard about Dan Hughes. I went to an introductory day and I thought, ok! This is the way forward!.”  

That one-day training was the introduction to Dan’s newly developed model of Dyadic Developmental Practice (DDP). Kim shared that her own search also mirrored Dan’s journey because he found that his ways of working with children weren’t working and weren’t helpful, and this was what led him to develop his model, and jokes that her subsequent decision to ‘jump on the back of it’ (the DDP model) has now created a long-term collegial friendship that has informed the remainder of her career.  

Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy Practice and Parenting (Practice and Parenting added later) began as a therapy model. But together, with the work Kim and others in the UK were doing, the model has been extended out from the therapy setting into the broader environment around the child. Settings like the parenting and the school environment were able to be supported with the DDP model to help these children have an environment that fits them – rather than children failing to fit the environment they were in.  

This lens change is a significant one for systems, and it may be some time before systems as a whole can come on board. But for the moment, Kim is happy to be working in teams around the child to create safe environments that better meet their needs. 

As with several therapeutic models, finding, creating or re-establishing safety and security in relationships with the parent or primary carer is the primary goal of DDP in therapy. But children spend a lot of time outside of the therapy room. 

“If children aren’t living in environments that are conducive to their health and wellbeing, then therapy is probably not going to be helpful to them. If they are in environments that are conducive to their health and wellbeing, then therapy can be useful, but isn’t always necessary.” 

It was the UK DDP team who took the lead in developing the DDP principles into a practice model, with Dan’s support, to help ensure the environments these children spend their time in are more conducive to their health and well-being. Because the parenting and teaching approaches needed support to be DDP-informed. Teams around the child can be better informed and equipped when they work together.  

There will be four opportunities to hear Kim present or co-present across the week of the 2025 International Trauma Conference. In addition, Kim will also be a panel member on our symposium on therapeutic out-of-home care.  

• Monday, 18th August: in the first of Kim’s presentations, a Keynote titled “Living with a constant feeling of dread. Providing DDP interventions with parents who have experienced trauma”, she will be sharing (with permission) examples of the work completed with an adoptive father to illustrate the importance and significance of this trauma work. 

The Conference also has two Masterclass opportunities with Kim;  

• Wednesday, 20th August: for those who are already familiar with DDP, Kim will be co-presenting an Advanced Masterclass with Dan Hughes and Jon Baylin. 
• Thursday, 21st August: for those newer to DDP but looking to understand its application in residential care when working with teams, “A cascade of PACE. Building dyadic developmental practice (DDP) into the fabric of residential care for children.” will be an excellent choice. On Thursday, Kim will present a second keynote, this time alongside Dan Hughes, based on content from their co-authored book and workbook, ‘Healing Relational Trauma‘. In this keynote, Kim and Dan will share how self-understanding can help therapists develop their practice, understanding their own unique strengths and challenges so that they can ‘sit with the uncomfortable’ and able to offer co-regulation and co-creation of affective-reflective narratives with the children and families they are working with.

I was delighted to discover that just as Dan, Jon and Kim have been able to inform each of our practices through sharing their knowledge and wisdom at our conference over the years, their time at our conference has also shaped parts of Dan and Kim’s book ‘Healing Relational Trauma’ too.  In particular, Kim mentioned how snippets of Judy Atkinson’s work are present there and how those are influencing how they work with oppressed and marginalised populations that have intersectional areas of trauma. The book will be available for purchase at the conference bookstore if you don’t already have it, and both Dan and Kim will be available to sign your copy at one of our programed book signing times too. 

Conferences are incredible learning and connecting experiences. I know our event always has an incredible atmosphere about it.

As practitioners, we might be tempted to think this is because of the volume of international speakers we don’t often get to hear locally or the synergy that comes when shared focus and passions of like-minded professionals come together to grow and learn together. But it was nice to hear, as we finished our conversation, that for Kim, even as a returning keynote speaker, this was also true.

 “One of the things I am most looking forward to is (not just) bringing what we are doing, but (also) hearing and learning in return. Conferences are exciting places and opportunities for shared learning.”

If you work with children or young people in care or the parents and carers who support them, then I encourage you to consider getting along with one or more of Kim’s sessions during the week of the Conference. You won’t be disappointed! 

Register for the 2025 International Childhood Trauma Conference

We are looking forward to welcoming you to our fifth Conference, in which we will gather to share practice, knowledge, and wisdom about how to transform the lives of those who have experienced childhood trauma. Our focus on connection and healing in this conference recognises the profound impact of connection and relationship to self, others, place, community, and Country in healing process.