Today is World Mental Health Day; it’s a day that encourages understanding and discussion of mental health in young people. It aims to get young people, and those who support them, talking about how to improve mental health. We spoke with Keys Clinical Director Chris Robinson about Keys Connect, the organisation’s trauma and attachment informed approach to therapeutic care and education which is currently being rolled out across its homes and schools.
In recent years there has been a paradigm shift in how children and young people are supported in terms of protecting and enhancing their mental health, particularly children who have experienced trauma and those who are looked after. Research over the last 15 years has shown that chronic exposure to trauma can significantly impact on a child socially and developmentally. Our understanding of what constitutes trauma has also changed significantly from a focus on single events to a realisation that a lack of necessary care and nurture can also have lasting harmful effects.
There is less focus on individual interventions, although there are still those who advocate for an individual approach. The focus has moved onto the importance of relationships and conversations between people and trauma and attachment-informed care, education and support – every interaction and experience can be potentially therapeutic.
This approach to therapeutic care and education is not accomplished through any particular technique or sticking to a checklist of specific actions. It needs the continuous awareness, caring attention, sensitivity, and engagement from colleague in their interactions with young people. Those all help give the young person a sense of safety and trust.
Children and young people affected by developmental trauma need a safe, caring, and consistent environment and that’s what we try to ensure they find with us.
Keys Connect is the model of therapeutic change and recovery we use in our homes and schools and it embraces all of these approaches. It is a model of therapeutic practice grounded in an understanding of trauma and attachment and which emphasises the value of relationships and the importance of helping people to feel safe.
Working in this way puts safety and relationship building first; all of us as humans have an in-built need to build connections and to feel cared for and nurtured and part of the Keys Connect approach is about being emotionally available for young people, being consistent, reliable and trust-worthy. Attachment, a word that is often misused as if it were synonymous with relationship. is better understood as an inbuilt drive to seek connections that provide nurture, care, and support. Attachment isn’t something that ends in early childhood, it continues throughout life.
Children and young people who have a history of an insecure attachment experience often encounter a range of emotional and behavioural challenges. They find it hard to trust other people and tend to feel anxious and insecure in relationships.
Creating that environment and relationship which gives a child a sense of safety, supports the development of positive relationships and focuses on the building and maintenance of trust provides the conditions to reduce anxiety and create positive growth and change.
We focus not on ‘why are you doing that?’ and ‘how big or bad is the problem?’ but on experience; ‘What has happened to you? What helped you to get through? What do we need to build upon? What happened to the child can be very negative. The important shift is a way from seeing children as having intrinsic problems to understanding their difficulties as a consequence of their experience.
We are currently rolling Keys Connect out across the group and the feedback has been incredibly positive. It provides a consistent framework which we can all work consistently within to ultimately benefit the children and young people we support.”
