For details of available training visit: Education Services Continuing Professional Development.

TIAAS (Trauma Informed Attachment Aware Settings) in Worcestershire

The Virtual School is dedicated to ensuring that all education settings within Worcestershire are Trauma Informed and Attachment Aware Settings (TIAAS). TIAAS improves academic outcomes, attendance, and wellbeing.

We recognise that the TIAAS path takes time, is rightly tailored to each setting and that different settings are at different stages in their journey. In recognition of this, Worcestershire Virtual School have expanded our TIAAS training menu to offer something suitable for everyone.

This menu consists not only of TIAAS training but also support with implementation and support for accreditation through the Attachment Research Community. You will also be supported as part of a growing TIAAS network in Worcestershire and beyond.

Trauma Informed Schools across Worcestershire

Worcestershire Virtual School has teamed up with Trauma Informed Schools UK (TISUK) to deliver TISUK Diploma (Level 5) in Trauma and Mental Health training across our schools, supporting them to become trauma informed and mentally healthy for all.

TISUK is a registered community interest company (social work) working in association with the Centre for Child Mental Health: President Sir Richard Bowlby. TISUK have delivered training to over 3500 schools, colleges, early years settings and community settings.

TISUK’s training is highlighted in the DfE Advice to Schools: Mental Health and Behaviour in Schools DfE-00327-2018 as supporting and promoting positive mental health.

We are extremely proud to announce that 23 Worcestershire schools have successfully completed their TIS journey and achieved Trauma Informed practitioner status and are already embedding trauma informed approaches through practice and procedure within their schools.

Upon completion all the delegates and their respective school will form the Worcestershire Attachment Aware Project, this will be the driving force behind our mission statement, to get every school attachment aware by 2025, and together we will:

• develop a supportive network of Worcestershire schools that have innovative and excellent practice around vulnerable learners,
• raise awareness of the issues and needs around attachment and trauma and advocate for our young people.
• improve the teaching and learning conditions for children in care and all vulnerable learners in schools and settings
• help to reduce the need for exclusions in school through trauma informed practice.

The training includes

• providing vulnerable children with daily access to at least one named, emotionally-available adult, who believes in them, relates to them with compassion, empathy and unconditional positive regard (Carl Rogers), provides appropriate limit setting, understands their attachment and mental health needs, knows their life story, and offers repeated enriched relational, regulatory and reflective opportunities
• catching children as they are ‘falling’ not after they have fallen
  • when the child is experiencing a painful life event, the emotionally-available adult/s will help them process, work through and make sense of what has happened, rather than waiting until the pain of the trauma has transformed into challenging behaviour and/or physical and mental health problems
• the implementation of a Relationship Policy (Paul Dix) for all staff to ensure they interact with children at all times with kindness and compassion
  • this includes no shouting, put-downs, criticisms, and shaming
  • the Policy extends to training staff in the art of good listening, understanding and finding the words to convey accurate empathy
• a commitment to relating to children in a school or other setting in ways that help them feel calm, soothed and safe, instead of over- stimulated, bombarded and anxious
  • this means protecting them from toxic stress inducing situations
• staff and adults interacting with all children in such a way that they feel valued as individuals throughout their day
• staff and adults adjusting their expectations of vulnerable children to correspond with their developmental capabilities and experience of traumatic stress
• training staff and adults in key conversational skills to enable children to address negative self-referencing and to help them move from ‘behaving’ their trauma or painful life experiences, to reflecting and developing coherent life narratives

Trauma Informed Schools