Treating Traumatic Stress in Children and Adolescents: How to Foster Resilience Through Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competency

About the Course:

Grounded in theory and research on complex childhood traumas, this course examines “ARC,” a comprehensive framework for intervention with children and adolescents and their caregivers. With an emphasis on attachment, self-regulation, and competency (ARC), this course focuses on how to plan and organize individualized interventions that promote resilience, strengthen child-caregiver relationships, and restore developmental competencies undermined and weakened by chronic, multiple stressors and traumas. The course provides practical clinical tools that are applicable within a range of contexts; from an outpatient mental health setting to residential homes to schools. The text for this course provides 45 reproducible handouts, worksheets, and forms for working with children and caregivers.

This course is based on the book, Treating Traumatic Stress in Children and Adolescents: How to Foster Resilience Through Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competency created by Margaret E. Blaustein, Ph.D. and Kristine M. Kinniburgh, LICSW in 2010.

Publication Date:

2010 Edition

Course Material Authors

Course Creator

Recommended For:

This course is recommended for health care professionals, especially psychologists, counselors, and social workers who seek knowledge about the impact of trauma on children and adolescents, children’s behavior problems, and a range of intervention strategies. It is appropriate for all levels of participants’ knowledge.

Course Objectives:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of the ARC framework and how it can be utilized to work with children who have experienced trauma.

2. Define the main concepts of the ARC framework: Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competency.

3. Explain the importance of attunement, caregiver management of affect, and consistent caregiver responses in the attachment process.

4. Cite examples of the building blocks of self-regulation, including affect identification, modulation, and expression.

5. Be able to show how strengthening executive functions and promoting self-development and identity help to restore basic competencies in children who have experienced trauma.

6. Identify and understand the key developmental considerations involved in trauma work for early and middle childhood as well as adolescence.

7. Identify various interventions used to help traumatized children and their caregivers.

8. Differentiate between the authors’ use of “trauma experience integration” and the “trauma processing model.”