The Secure Start® Podcast
In the same way that a secure base is the springboard for the growth of the child, knowledge of past endeavours and lessons learnt are the springboard for growth in current and future endeavours.
If we do not revisit the lessons of the past we are doomed to relearning them over and over again, with the result that we may never really achieve a greater potential.
In keeping with the idea we are encouraged to be the person we wished we knew when we were starting out, it is my vision for the podcast that it is a place where those who work in child protection and out-of-home care can access what is/was already known, spring-boarding them to even greater insights.
The Secure Start® Podcast
#24 Holding the Helpers, with Richard Cross
What if the most transformative thing we can do for children is to care for the carers first? That’s the provocative starting point for a wide-ranging conversation with psychotherapist and clinical leader Richard Cross, whose work brings attachment theory out of the textbook and into daily practice across residential homes, foster services, schools and clinical teams.
We explore how containment, supervision, and shared language turn trauma-informed care from a training buzzword into a living culture. Richard breaks down the ATIC approach—Attachment and Trauma Informed Care—built on two parallel pathways: one for staff and one for children. By mirroring the holding and reflection we want adults to offer children, organisations create teams that think clearly under pressure, tolerate uncertainty, and respond with consistency rather than reactivity. Practical structures like “amber flag” meetings and cross-service formulations help stop fragmentation and keep everyone aligned when the stakes are high.
We also tackle a contentious question: when is residential care the right first option? For some children who are phobic of family life due to traumatic histories, early, high-quality residential care provides the containment and predictable relationships required to stabilise, re-engage in education, and prepare for future family placements. Richard explains how better assessment, leadership that “walks the talk,” and credible outcome tracking help commissioners trust early interventions that reduce breakdowns and shorten the overall care journey. If you’re a practitioner, leader, foster carer, or policymaker, this conversation challenges short-term thinking and offers grounded, humane ways to match care to need.
If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a review—what’s one change you’d make tomorrow to better care for the carers?
Richard’s Bio:
Richard is a UK Registered Psychotherapist and Child Psychotherapist.
His career for over 30 years has focused on working with relational approaches in areas associated with attachment, trauma and dissociation.
Richard’s early career was focused on developing relationally based treatments within correctional environments to reduce recidivism, as well as managing democratic prison-based Therapeutic Communities for high-risk adult life-sentenced offenders (HMP Dovegate, England).
Richard collaborated with Sandra Bloom to introduce the Sanctuary Model to the UK in 2004.
Since then, Richard has developed an interest in trauma-responsive models and continued his focus on Therapeutic Communities, exploring how to bring these aspects to life in organisational cultures. One example is a multi-component approach called ATIC (Attachment and Trauma-Informed Care), which is now harnessed across multiple residential child care homes.
Richard is actively involved in research and innovation, and he also provides consultancy services to organisations, and training to qualified mental health professionals.
Richard is Director of Clinical Services at Five Rivers Child Care & Midhurst Children’s Therapeutic Services, where he leads teams of psychologists and psychotherapists. He is also a Fellow and Faculty member of the International Society for Trauma and Dissociation, and serves as a trustee of the Bowlby Centre in London and The Consortium of Therapeutic Communities (TCTC).
Disclaimer:
Information reported by guests of this podcast is assumed to be accurate as stated. Podcast owner Colby Pearce is not responsible for any error of facts presented by podcast guests. In addition, unless otherwise specified, opinions expressed by guests of this podcast may not refle
Welcome to the Secure Start Podcast.
Richard:There's something about having a really good mentor, having a good individual who can create the space for you to think, grow, and develop and wrestle with some of these tensions and unknown elements that can often come around in the world. It'd be great if you could put an old head on your own shoulders, but the reality is that that can never be the case. So we need to go through this. Through this process of learning. It's that experience that we have someone there that's going to stand by us through that process of learning, through that process of growth. It's so reassuring, and we don't want to care for the staff equally as much as we do the children. We often see the graduates of within the home having other children in mind. I speak to leadership and management, but what's that going to mean in terms of the leadership style in the organisation and the culture that's going to permit staff to be able to move to a place where we can truly use the structures and attachment to twelve and form. And we start to think, to learn, to grow, to develop. But if people think twelve and four care to be responsive is easy. It's not. To be able to deliver this and to be able to do it, so it's created as a living experience for the staff and a direct experience for the children. It takes a lot of courage and bravery because people need to go and think about hearings and would not really think of it. Foster care can be highly effective for those children who have anaphobic about family living. You know, the great thing at the moment is that five of us is changed caring for over a thousand children, and then the much of it those children are in foster care. Very happy, really good outcomes, you know, great foster parents, you know, doing great work. But there is a group of children and young people that are still the BO them to identify when residential the residential environment is the environment that's best for them.
Colby:Welcome to the Secure Start Podcast. I'm Colby Pierce, and joining me for this episode is a leader in therapeutic and social care in the UK who has a particular focus these days on supporting those whose therapeutic task is to support children in need. Before I introduce my guest, I'd just like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands that I come to you from, the Ghana people of the Adelaide Plains, and acknowledge the continuing connection the living Ghana people feel to land, waters, culture, and community. I'd also like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging. My guest this episode is Richard Cross. Richard is a UK registered psychotherapist and child psychotherapist. His career for over 30 years has focused on working with relational approaches in areas associated with attachment, trauma, and dissociation. Richard's early career was focused on developing relationally based treatments within correctional environments to reduce recidivism, as well as managing democratic prison-based therapeutic communities for high-risk adult life sentenced offenders. Richard collaborated with Sandra Bloom to introduce the Sanctuary Model in the UK in 2004. Since then, Richard has developed an interest in trauma-responsive models and continued his focus on therapeutic communities, exploring how to bring these aspects to life in organisational cultures. One example is a multi-component approach called Attic, Attachment and Trauma Informed Care, which is now harnessed across multiple residential childcare homes. Richard is actively involved in research and innovation, and he also provides consultancy services to organisations and training to qualified mental health professionals. Richard is Director of Clinical Services at Five Rivers Childcare and Midhurst Children's Therapeutic Services, where he leads teams of psychologists and psychotherapists. He is also a fellow and faculty member of the International Society for Trauma and Dissociation and serves as a trustee of the Balby Centre in London and the Consortium of Therapeutic Communities. Welcome, Richard.
Richard:Thank you. Thank you so much, Colby, for that very warm welcome. And it's really good to be here.
Colby:Yeah, and look, it's lovely to have you and thank goodness for the technology. Otherwise, uh be coming from a different uh well, I'm in the future for you, um, because I'm later in the same day. Um, and and also this technology uh allows me to sound very professional in the opening, even uh if you had to sit through a couple of uh blooper worthy moments there. Now, Richard, is there anything um that you'd like to add to that um that short bio I just uh gave of you?
Richard:No, naturally, that's that was that was very kind for you to share about a little bit about my developmental work history there. Uh but naturally it can't cover off uh everybody that's been really supportive of the thinking and innovation that I've had the privilege to do because often it takes organizations and systems a leap of faith to consider doing something something new or innovative.
Colby:So yeah. Yeah, well, I I want to I do want to um talk to you as we go through about um about individuals, organizations that that that have um uh been influential, I guess, in in uh your career to this point. But I guess I'm wondering in the first instance, maybe if you can tell us a little bit about how you got into this um this space, this space. Uh you might even uh have some other words to describe the space you occupy uh in your work.
Richard:Yeah, it's fascinating when we end up at a destination. We often think about how did we get here, and I think for many people that getting gets involved in thinking about how to supporting children and young people, often there's a real benefit to think about port supports being our motivators uh to engage in the task, and I'll sometimes even help the care staff and the people that I support to really think about joining the dots around us. Uh personally uh yeah, you know, I had uh I think one of the driving forces was thinking about the key significant peoples in my early development that supported me through what wasn't uh uh a particularly easy time coming into the world and uh starting starting off in life, and those experiences really stuck with me. So when I uh left the military in uh 1991, I left the services uh the Navy. I thought, what is it I'm gonna do? And for some unconscious reason, I I ended up working in young offenders. That was my first sort of task. That started off as a prison officer. Uh but very quickly within I think it was six months, I had this really supportive governor, uh, somebody called Dan Gunn, who uh MBE who uh supported me to go on my journey to become first qualified in psychology, but then start up my route to become a psychotherapist over the over the preceding 12 years and get some, you know, and then I got involved in the programs and the like. But yeah, so yeah, there's there's uh I often reflect on how I ended up, but there was something that was driving me to think about understanding the needs of children and young people. Uh even back then, it was thinking, thinking be sort of beyond what the label was back then, back in the 91 when I first joined the young offenders. It was all about the young person who committed a certain offense, which which is important. But quite early on, I was thinking, what is it that we need to do to think about what happened to this young person? What was the drivers, what was the antecedents for them to end up in their journey to end up in the young offenders? So yeah, that was that's a little bit about my early embryonic sort of foray into the work.
Colby:Aye, aye. And um uh was is there through your um uh your career since then, you've you you hinted at before that there's been individuals and organizations, I guess, that have been willing to give give things a go or give give your ideas and innovations a go. I'm really excited to have you on because um I said the magic word when I in your bio, uh, which was bulby. And uh I think I think early on in each podcast, I I tend to ask people um about what theoretical orientations um uh influence their work. And I've been waiting for someone who who to uh who obviously um has drawn on attachment theory um probably similarly, uh if not uh more than I have done in my own career.
Richard:Yeah, John John Bowlby and the subsequent pioneers. Uh because often thinking has its origins, and hopefully then there's there's others that can come after and pick up the bat and uh and carry on these these areas of development and thinking, and just as John Bowby's uh theory is and uh and all uh and also pioneers about the social mind as well. Uh Colin Trif Island, for instance, uh there's there's been so many pioneers who who who create idea. Uh so John Balby was a very significant influence in my early war. That's in part that was why I chose to go and they support places like the Balby Centre in London, but also thinking about how that relational aspect about how it can be applied not only to the practitioners themselves, thinking about their relational aspects in the work and the therapeutic task, but also thinking about the tasks with the child or the young person. Yeah, it's very important, and I think the whole notion that John Bowlby brought, and I can remember watching his very last interview that was filmed, he uh he often said he had a regret about not incorporating as much as he wanted around the whole notion of trauma. He did move the theory away from the fan this notion of fantasy into the reality, but he had this element uh in his last interview with Peter was saying that there's so much we need to do in terms of hearing what the children are bringing to us and and understanding that context in the relation of adversity. Uh so yeah, John Bowlby is a very influential person, but so so has been the people that I've had the privilege to work with. Uh so I can remember back in uh 2003 I was presenting at a conference in Scotland, uh, and at that time it was presenting on attachment, it was called broken bonds. Uh and in the audience was somebody called Sandra Bloom. And I'm fascinated when we're passed cross, just like we'll pass across in today, Colby. Uh when I pass cross with like-minded people, it can often create an energy to think about how we can collaborate and work together. So that was a significant experience for me because I was speaking about things like essays, the importance of the therapeutic relationship within residential childcare. And some of these concepts back then, because that was before trauma informed ideas were in the UK in a big way, it seems to just have become massive like overnight. But in the audience was Sandra who had uh developed this model, and it was great to be able to collaborate with her uh and and and bring that to the UK, which was great.
Colby:And that was the sanctuary model.
Richard:That was a sanctuary model, and I suppose at that moment, 2004, that had been after I'd my path had crossed with with uh someone called Roland Woodward who uh developed a democratic prison-based TC called HMP Dovegate, and he gave me the opportunity of being the therapy manager for a 40 40-bed therapeutic community. And I wish I could bottle experiences sometime to to give people an experience because to be able to work and manage a team in a therapeutic community for a period of time uh and embody principles like containment and management of anxiety and start to understand how these ways of working can be really effective in turning people's lives around. Uh it would be because sometimes I feel it's really hard for people to understand how cultures need to be in a live and breathing way, unless they've experienced it. You know, I used to say have faith in the process, uh but that can be difficult if you you haven't experienced what a process is. And uh I'm going to say thank you for like to roll in because he was there's something about having a really good mentor, having a good individual who can uh create the space for you to think grow and develop and wrestle with some of these uh these tensions and unknown elements that can often come around in the work. Uh yeah, there's so many people I could actually say thank you to, you know. There's I'm sure everybody is that what's in this field, you know. We've like we've often had somebody, I'm gonna say something about Bulby here. Uh we've often had somebody that's been at our shoulder that can help and support us in our work, particularly in the early, you know, the early foundational stages of our growth into either being clinicians or therapeutic residential practitioners. We've often had somebody at our shoulder that's that's embodied that confidence to then go through the professional maturation process, as I call it, to get to a point we can feel more comfortable in the task.
Colby:I've I've I've kind of referred to it when previous guests have brought it up as the importance of had people who have confidence in us until we have confidence in ourselves.
Richard:That's that's such a nice way of putting that, you know, that whole notion that uh and I think this is what children and young people need, you know, this this intentionality that we believe in someone, it's it's uh it's often the unspoken though. It's like it's that experience that we have someone there that is going to stand by us through that process of learning, through that process of growth. Uh it's so reassuring, and and it can automatically reduce anxiety because often that is that's the critical element that I feel that I'm day-to-day. It's like it's my day-to-day task almost of being the being the processor of anxiety from like for staff, creating spaces where they can sit and gain their confidence and tolerate uncertainty and uh yeah, develop that understanding. That's a nice, very nice way to put it, Colby.
Colby:Yeah, well, thank you. I I I had these moments every now and then, but um I I'd forgotten about it until you were talking just then. But um uh you I mean, you're obvious you were also talking about containment when you were talking about holding on to and and processing other people's anxiety. So I I sense that containment theory and perhaps the work of Beyond has also uh been of some um well thank you.
Richard:Yeah, I've I was I was so lucky I had a supervisor for a long time called Bob Hinchelwood. Uh he's a professor and he's a psychoanalyst, and uh often that transfer of knowledge and wisdom. I used to have like my first supervisor used to say uh it'd be great if you could put an old head on young shoulders, but the reality is that that can never be the case. So we need to go through this through this process of learning. So yeah, Wilfred Beyond, he was uh when I got involved in therapeutic community work, I used to prolifically read the texts about the origins of TCs, you know, Northfield experiments, you know, thinking about how Beyond, Tom Main, uh Maxwell Jones. I I really like his ideas of the social, the social environment as well. Uh there's all these active ingredients and knowledge that people have people have identified and brought that we can think about bringing to life, and there's often interconnections as we know, so so Beyond's work on containment is really connected as well to Donald Winnicott and that notion of emotional holding, as Winnicott called it. And Winnicott naturally worked with Barber Docker Drysdale. So sometimes when we look, you know how we're talking about people's past crossing. Often, often there is the crossing and history of uh how knowledge is then translated from one to another. So, yeah, containment, emotional holding, thinking about how we can use the day-to-day environment effectively for the therapeutic task and all that's been the foundation of my work, yeah, for many years.
Colby:And what one of the things that I often say about Balby is that he was not insular or siloed in it, you know, in the way that so many can be. Um you know, in his time and and and more recently, he was drawing on work from other areas of endeavour and integrating it into attachment theory. So attachment theory is an integration in a way of multiple areas of endeavour. Um and I just go off like I'm sorry. No, no, you say, you go ahead.
Richard:No, it's interesting because if you ever, you know, if I don't know if you've ever been to the Taverstock clinic where Bowby was based, uh in London, it's a you know, it's it's still a center of psychoanalytical thinking. But but even back when Bowlby arrived, and often often a new theory when it emerges, it's there's often a there's often a rejection, there's often a pushback. And I find this is a fascinating dynamic, particularly in work around children, because often children we can be very clear about their histories and why they're having to get the supports they're needing, but often just like theories are often struggle with. I think in general, this notion about attachment theory, thinking about how we handle that. There can be a bit of a bit of a wrestle for professional organizations and systems to you know to truly embrace it, to truly understand it and how to translate it in actual direct practice. Uh there's there's there's often a real challenge about walking the talk, as I call it, in the field. And this is natural and normal in terms of human beings, it can be hard to do what we say we'd like to do. Uh so that's why systems really need to develop approaches that they can tolerate almost the checking out. Are we sticking to where we want to be? Are we you know we're staying in staying in this position of therapeutic mindedness and relational-based practice, particularly when the stress comes on the system.
Colby:Yes.
Richard:And sometimes Bowby, I think, had a really difficult time of it. He didn't think you know, the very you know, the very early stages. Now it's like one of the widest embraced uh frameworks that's in the world. But back in the early thing, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Colby:There's a there's a lot in there. One of the things that you mentioned it was about it can be difficult to walk the walk sometimes. Yeah, I think I think theories are good if they have good explanatory power and and and they're easily understood, digested, and and I think you know, for me, from when I first got involved in child protection work, attachment theory and 30 years ago, attachment theory gave me the best way of um helping me with with um understanding the work that I was doing. Just going back to um I liked your your your idea of having a mentor that you know someone that just is there at your shoulder, guiding you in a way, and and I talked about them having having someone that has confidence in you until you have confidence in yourself. And you mentioned too that that that's essentially something that we we do for the children that we work with. Um and um and I you know I've talked about this with previous guests, but I we talk about you know, we want I think a really important aspect of the work is to ensure that the adults have it have this have an experience of being held in mind, an experience of of being looked out for and looked after in a way that we want them to in turn transmit to the child or or to be to be doing with the children it themselves.
Richard:Yeah, and that's that's that's that's part of the model and the thinking that I've actually embodied within attachment and trauma-informed care. Because I thought about how to distill quite complex ideas into uh a model which can be easily embraced and understood. And what I created was two parallel pathways, uh one for the staff and one for the children and young people. And basically the parallel pathway is saying we are going to care for the staff equally as much as we do the children because they are the therapeutic agents of change, and it's like what does what does an adult adult practitioner need in terms of that mentoring, that support, that guidance, supervision? So, yeah, I work through these parallel models, which fascinatingly it then starts to give the practitioners or the carers or the staff the knowledge and the experience to more directly to be able to do this with the children and young people, because not everybody arrives at the therapeutic task having the knowledge, experience, attunement, and the abilities to do the work with the children. So we we really put as much nourishment as we possibly can into the care staff because so my role really and my my clinical services teams are to care for the carers, to do that that you're describing very eloquently, Kobe, about giving that that that sense of uh togetherness, uh and it's fascinating because we even see this happening between the children and young people. We we often see group like the graduates of uh within the home having having other children in mind, starting you know, helping and supporting them. So it's I see the system as everybody, I see the system as the staff, the children, young people, and also the relationships with the two children themselves, and about how they can start to support and think about each other and help each other.
Colby:Yeah, you you're I think the point to make is that if you want to create a healing system, you need to be supporting your staff very well in a in a way that is analogous or closely aligned with, I should say, with with what how you want the staff to um care for the children. And I think you know, when I think about who comes to the work, um and previous guests referred to the the kind of wounded healer, or you know, you all you'll often you'll often get people who come to the work who um haven't had the the best of upbringings themselves. Yeah, and so they don't they're not necessarily they they probably come with an idea of what they don't want to repeat, they don't want the children to repeat. And it repeat they want to relieve suffering, they don't want other children to to experience and go through what they've gone through. What they maybe um benefit from is is is a form of um reparenting in terms of setting that re resetting the parenting model for them, yeah. And a containing mentor, supervisor, I guess is it it's an important part of that relationship.
Richard:Yeah, and that supervisor relationship needs to needs to create the environment, the you know, the weather system almost about how that uh professional development can take place. Uh because there is there is a process that often goes through for new staff coming into the field, and I used to find this uh even within the prison-based T sort of TC environment, that the first stage is people arrive believing they're going to be this omni-important saviour for the children and do this sort of change over like married days, you know. They're gonna be able in some way make uh significant changes quickly, but then often it's the repeated relational attunement. Attachment over quite a period of time, and that takes sometimes the need to be really resilient and to be aware of our own biologies and responses, and really understand ourselves and our triggers. And that supervisory relationship can hopefully create an environment where staff can have their own uh well-being and safety plans, so they really start to understand themselves, understand their own responses when the therapeutic task gets difficult. Have a space that they can go and talk about how they feel emotionally before this anything gets acted on. So that uh I really like Tom Main's notion of thinking non-action, being able to create an ability where practitioners can think but not act. Uh naturally, that's what we want to support the children with as well, to get to a place where they can think and then you know, through this thinking stuff and not have to act through behaviors. But staff need to learn that, staff need to be able to be in the presence of a child and create a space between them and the child that they can do this thinking and understanding so they can do the attachment work, like we know they can, you know, they know what how they can be in their best of selves uh and respond to children.
Colby:Yeah, and and of course, containment the idea behind containment theory and what Beyond wrote about that was essentially um we support another person and in doing in doing so we facilitate their capacity to think.
Richard:Yeah.
Colby:And I think and I think staff staff who are thought of are better equipped to think of others. If you yeah, when you encourage reflection on your own motivations, the reason why you do things, the reason why you you reacted in that way, your blind spots, when when you're encouraged and supported to do that, then I guess in turn you don't just jump to the immediate conclusion that children are bad because they're doing behavior that is not um agreeable, and uh and they should and they need to be disciplined in some way. You there's a there's a cart and a horse thing going on here, and I I myself have been across my career guilty of putting the cart before the horse. If the whole if the cart is teaching this is teaching the adults, this is how you um you need to be relate therapeutically or care therapeutically for the children. If that's your first step, your first move, then I've been as guilty of it as probably you know great many people have. But as I've gotten older, and you talked about putting an old head on young shoulders. I am hoping the podcast by interviewing very experienced people does help uh new practitioners in the area a bit, accelerate the growth, so to speak. But yeah, you know, the first step needs in in therapeutic endeavor, it's become much more clear to me over time, needs to be to um needs to be our endeavours to support the staff and contain the staff and facilitate their own reflective capacity.
Richard:Yeah. Yeah, there's there's someone that sadly passed away recently called Philip, Philip Bromberg, who's a psychoanalyst, and he's written written prolifically about working with complex trauma and dissociation. And yeah, his notion is about always being aware to hold us hold a space between you and the other. That like beyond beyond stuff was about being able to create this metabolic, this this said sort of digestion of another's person's uh transference or affect or whatever notion we want to consider. But without creating a space to think, hopefully, all structures out there trying to do the therapeutic task, uh hopefully they have a place where it can be protected to do to do that work, as a group, but also individually in supervision. Uh because without that, people can start to get a bit lost in the task.
Colby:Well, I think yeah, my view is that they become procedural and and heartless in the sense that there's you know, the heart is lost from the work because it's just a cognitive, it's not even a cognitive exercise, it's it's a reflexive approach, you know. Um, there's not not that thinking. I I am very concerned about child protection systems, like statutory child protection systems, where workers from you know supervisors down to the to to workers um at the coal face are just you know so much under the pump that they don't have that opportunity to stop and think about the work that they're doing.
Richard:It becomes a paradoxical situation around the whole things around the social care system, is that everybody like I come from the position that everybody are good entities wanting to do the good task, but often the systems be can can become unconsciously uh distracted due to the some of this parallel shift in us, but some of the anxieties, some of the trauma-related challenges, and actually these systems are working with extreme distress, extreme challenges that can often create reactivity in the systems, but like uncannily that we know what can help and sometimes it's around holding the boundary around the systems and the processes that we know that work because they're often the things that go out the window of us, sadly. Uh so it's like trying to know that people are good people, but be able to find ways that we can raise it in the consciousness about what's happening because people find it really easy to deal with the rational about uh objectives and well, we're doing great, and but when things become irrational and they become really difficult, there's a rule, there's a real challenge for people to consider that, to think about it, and to really tap into what the reality might be going on, so then solutions can be identified. Thought you know, thought like this, thought through relational-based solutions for people, but also families and children.
Colby:It's it's such an interesting area. I and I wonder about your experience of introducing um maybe new staff or or new organizations, your experience your experience of trying to introduce um this this thing that we're talking about, where what we how we want the staff to interact with the children, we've we've got to offer that as an experience for the staff in their in supervision, in mentoring, in yeah, how how does how does that how does that go down, so to speak, when when you try that?
Richard:Attachment and trauma-informed care. So it's a model now that's uh you know it's been in five five rivers childcare for a long period of time, but it's also going into all the organizations outside the five rivers now. And the first thing I've the first thing I say to organizations and the leadership, so start the leadership, even right up at the the point of the directors of the organization, because uh I'll say this is a journey, it's not uh I'm gonna arrive today and we're gonna do this intervention and it's gonna be in place tomorrow. I'm gonna hand out these leaflets, I'm gonna I'm gonna do a bit of training, and then all of a sudden, the whole organization is going to be trauma involved. Uh so I start off with a realistic base about the journey, about how that's going to be, what it's going to feel like. That's a notion I've taken from my work uh as a psychotherapist with traumatised clients. So, like clients will come into me and they're often like, What's this going to be like, Richard? And I give a sense about what the journey is going to be like. And it's like we'll give a sense about what we need to achieve first. And so, in terms of trauma-informed practice, it's safety, stabilization, all these notions. But it's the same for organizations, we go back to we go back to the sort of foundational ways, and this is where the A in attachment and trauma-informed care comes in. I speak to leadership and management about what's that going to mean in terms of the leadership style in the organization and the culture that's going to permit staff to be able to move to a place where we can truly use the structures in attachment and trauma-informed care to allow staff to think, to learn, to grow, to develop. How are you as a leadership team going to respond when things might not go quite well within our service? How like how are we going to respond? Uh, how are we going to work together to embed uh these ways of working? Uh so right from the start, it's all about collaboration, open, transparent communication, you know, it's almost setting setting the tone, setting the culture. Uh but you know, if anybody thinks trauma-informed care is an easy option, but it can be if you do a bit of training and you get a leaflet and you think you're trauma-informed. But if people think trauma-informed care and and being responsive is easy, it's not to be able to deliver this and to be able to do it so it's created as a living experience for the staff and a direct experience for the children takes a lot of courage and bravery because people need to go and think about areas they would not normally think about in terms of the work.
Colby:Yeah, so um I think you've touched on the importance of senior management um and or setting setting expectations, managing expectations from the outset. And uh, you talked about you know going into an organization, speaking to those leaders. And while you're speaking to me, it reminded me of of some previous conversations I've had on the podcast about about how we ensure that our that the very leadership of the of these organizations are um uh uh supported to have experiences of of of the model, basically. That you support you know have a have a containing supervisory relationship or relationship with the mentor. Yeah.
Richard:Yeah. Can I just say a little bit about how I came to attachment and trauma and phone care? Just a little bit.
Colby:Yeah, absolutely. Go ahead. I was working my way around, I was working my way back around to that, but you're reading it.
Richard:Well, because yeah, no, it just somebody came to mind there, and it was and it was the person called Pam Pam McConnell that created five five rivers childcare. So 36 years ago, uh actually on the 19th of September, Pam McConnell created the entity which is called Five Rivers Childcare. And it's I've been there nearly 16 years, and I've I've stayed there because it's a secure base for me. Because I believe places of work can also create this sense of security, places you can grow and develop. So I've been there for 16 years, but what Pam created, even away back 36 years ago, she noticed that those children who had sadly experienced sexual abuse, trauma, and neglect, the systems weren't designed to meet their needs. So she was she was very creative and very innovative, and she she started to create residential environments, residential homes for children and young people to come and stay in. And since then, the organization's significantly grown, we've gone into foster foster care, uh, education, we've got clinical services, but the key task is to support children at the heart, you know, at the heart of the organization, it's doing good, thinking about how we can help children and turn their lives around. But PAM allowed the creative thinking about developing a model that could be easily accessible across multiple multiple geographical locations, about thinking about how we we we package up what can be quite complex psychoanalytical, therapeutic community ideas, adapting it into a model that can be translated and easily uh applied if the live and breathing system is on board, if that leadership manager team is in place. Um so yeah, Pam, you know, Pam McConnell just naturally came to mind because without her support and uh Five Rivers is a social enterprise, it's you know, it's it's uh in the UK that means that paradoxically, people have difficulties thinking about sadly, care organizations need to charge because we need staff wages to pay and all that sort of stuff. But as a social enterprise, we reinvest, we reinvest in research, development, invest in our staff, and a bit of the investment that Pam gave was to allow me to invest in creating a model for the organization, which was great. So, yeah, yeah, I wanted to say my appreciation to Pam McConnell for that.
Colby:Yeah, it is a remarkable organization because as you mentioned, it has residential care, it has foster care, it has education as a school, has clinical services. Yes, it has multiple schools, multiple services, and crisis intervention. Yeah, and and crisis support services as well.
Richard:So, yeah, it's got these multiple uh so in terms of children, in terms of their care journeys, they can come in at any part. Sadly, children, you know, it'd be a you know, the world would be a great place if children didn't have to access our services. But the reality is children do, and sadly, in an increasing way across societies, there's an increase. So, like in the UK at the moment, there's about a 10% increase in the use of residential childcare. Yeah, uh often sadly, residential childcare isn't seen as an early intervention, and that's partly why I developed ATIC because it's for under 12s initially. That was when I sort of developed the idea that children who are going through repeated placement breakdowns and disruptions in foster care given a given an idea to commissioners and uh uh people who are not sadly not often practitioners in the field. Look, if you see this pattern, there is something else, there's something else that can be really helpful and harmless for good, and that's residential childcare. So the notion that we have is we've got multiple ways that children can come in and uh have a home with us, uh, and that's either in residential care or foster care, uh and also access education and the therapeutic services is the need. Yeah.
Colby:Oh, yeah. Look, um you've drawn you've drawn on a number of themes from some fairly recent podcasts. But as I've as I've been doing these podcasts, one of the things that um has been more and more clear to me is that the this option of last resort is just I mean, that's what there's a look, there's a bit of a story to it. I won't go into it all, but that that was one that was almost what spurred me on to do the podcast, and in particular a stream of the spot podcast that looks at at residential childcare. I just think that there's so many problems with this idea of residential care being an option of last resort. I think as I think you did you just touched on in there, there are times when it can be an option of first resort. There are it, and that and and I I've been writing and thinking about that and talking to people about that. Um you it it it does, it is something that a number of guests have talked about uh that can be utilized, and this has got to be good quality, good quality, therapeutic focused residential childcare. It can be it can arrest one of the most harmful aspects of out-of-home care, which is repeated placement breakdown. And the other thing is, and Bruce Henderson talked about, he's my most recent past guest uh on the podcast. He's he's probably done the the largest review of the literature, including the uh empirical literature around uh social care, including residential childcare. And um he talked really clearly about um placement matching, and he was in he's involved with the Black Mountain um care organization, he's in America over there, and and similarly they have residential and foster um options, and um and it it it it's allowed what I think you know it sounds like you're able to do there at Five Res Rivers as well, is is to uh mobilize the care that the children need um where where they are in their journey, and sometimes that's residential care, often enough that's residential care.
Richard:Yeah, this is very embryonic work in the UK. Um so embryonic uh attachment and trauma-informed care came out of 36 years, you know, the past period of time that we've been working, so we've harnessed all that knowledge, but that's only been really since 2016. So I know that's it might sound a long time, but in terms of changing systems and changing knowledge, uh we're still on that journey to collaborate and work uh with commissioners with with local authorities because I I feel we've got a responsibility to explain really accurately about what can be supportive and helpful for children in terms of their needs. Often we need to translate that for the local authorities and commissioners in terms of the plans that we do. So we've got uh you know, when we get the privilege to have a referral for a child, a young person, we spend a lot of time about right, even at that initial phase about really understanding the child's needs and taking the responsibility for being truly able to say that we are able to support this child, and this is what we would suggest would be helpful in terms of that part of their care journey. Often it comes down to trust, though, with with local authorities and commissioners around is this going to be something that's gonna be helpful for the child? And and naturally, this is where research and evidence comes in. Being able to deliver really focused uh supports and how to explain outcomes and how to translate that as we go through the journey as well, is support the commissioners to understand that this is being effective, then it then it generates uh more more trust, trustworthy reactions again in the future. So it's like, yeah, we'll go back to Five Rivers and we'll consider this approach again, like residential. It should can be the first option because of the experience. So there is a big responsibility on providers, isn't that, to be able to make sure that we deliver what we say on the outside of the tin, you know? Yeah, uh, that we walk the talk, going back to that walk the talk bit again.
Colby:And I've whilst you've been talking, I've I've been thinking about how five rivers with all of with all of those divisions, it's probably not I mean divisions is the wrong word in if you because it it implies divide, but you've got those streams is a better word, and and and you are able, I think I'm hearing, to be to provide an aligned service so that staff might move between the streams, kids might move between the streams, but they have a consistent experience of care across those streams.
Richard:And that's where the model almost provides a tapestry for that. So one of the great things that Sandra Bloom told me when and I learned from what going back to the mentorship thing again, was language becomes the glue in terms of the model, in terms of how we speak about the work, uh how we see the task. And if that is shared consistently, if that language is shared across the different uh almost threads like the education, residential fostering. Children experience this as well. Children experience staffs using the same language, the experienced staff having the same response if situations are occurring. You see the adults sitting down and thinking together, you know. Uh yeah, it creates that uh that harness in the tap. Well, often people call it integration. Uh so one of the things that we do seek to make sure we don't experience is this fragmentation in the system. In actual fact, people do become that sort of separate siloed uh thinking and the breakdown and communication. So part of the model was as well about the shared language is also making sure we keep these strands interconnected and almost be really aware if they start to drift apart, which can be natural and normal and anxiety. I'm not saying that there's there's anything abnormal about that that tension that that can happen, but we are really aware so we can bring things back together.
Colby:It's like and how reassuring for children who leave chaos and uncertainty to come into a place where they uh where the adults interact with them similarly. Because I think I think a task, a therapeutic task or a primary task and a model, it doesn't make everyone clones of each other, it just ensures that there are there are aspects of uh the way they go about things that are consistent across home and school. And I think that that even just in and of itself, as long as there's that consistency, that alignment between home and school, and it's safe and and nurturing, but as long as there's that, that it that's gonna have such a massive impact on heightened nervous systems, yeah.
Richard:So that magnification is a you know, when I was developing attachment to trauma and informed care, I thought, how can I magnify these helpful relational experiences? Going back to attachment again. How can I magnify these experiences?
Colby:Can I say it all comes back to attachment? Sorry, I didn't want to talk over you, but I I just needed to chime in there. It all comes back to attachment. Sorry, yeah, go ahead.
Richard:No, it's it's great, yeah, because naturally it's great, you know. All like research shows like if we've got one person, you know, it can have like quite a significant impact on us. But imagine if we can magnify that having 12, 15 people. So like I was looking at okay, if I can create this this approach in the residential care environment and have it in the schools, and when children are prepared and ready to go to their home in foster care, and the carers are embodying this stuff as well. It's you know how enriching, how nourishing is that for the children, but also it creates this really helpful relational way of working and way of managing stuff between the staff and the adults as well. They've got this sense of understanding about okay, when this stuff happens, we get together. Uh, we've got different approaches for crisis management. There's one called an amber flag meeting, which is anybody can call it, it's like when things start to become difficult, staff can raise the flag, call a space, everybody gets together. We're all involved in thinking, all involved in supporting. Uh and it, you know, it takes away the anxiety and fear that it becomes an everybody approach rather than somebody feeling their left on their own with a situation. Again, going back to attachment theory, uh, you know, often yeah, we've got our own resources and we want to develop that and our staff increase their resiliency. But when it gets to a point they feel overwhelmed, they feel like people either grow or they go sadly in the work. You know, people either grow in the work or uh it feels it gets too much, they leave. So we have like we're all about growing people, so create and make sure people know they've got an outlet if they feel they've got to the end of their solutions or the end of the resources. We create this space where they can come and talk through and uh get the helping support they need.
Colby:And of course, um um the first of my guests to um talk something uh a little about this was John Whitwell and uh of Cotswold Community and ISP uh integrated services. I'm not sure I got that last bit right, but anyway, John John was talking about uh going to because he went to the it went from residential care to foster care, and uh on the first day the staff, you know, there was something was going on in Stafford came to him and said, What do we do? What do we do? And he says, I don't know. But but let's talk, what do you mean you don't know? Um but let's talk about it, and I think, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like there's and that has come back a number of times. Um, in fact, Peter Wilson, who we were talking to about a little bit beforehand, uh uh wanted to name his forthcoming book or title his first coming book forthcoming book, I don't know. The because the I think the the the the um the the power or the influence or the strength in that is that it invites collaboration. And one of the things that that I've noticed, just as a bit of an aside, when I when I do training with um carers, uh if we if a carer brings up an issue to do with um a child in their care and they just don't and they don't know where to go with that, the other carers are actually really good at offering solutions, yeah. Yes, but then those same carers feel stuck in coming up coming up with solutions about their own the the children in their in their care. So it's it's quite fascinating that if you take if you take almost like a metacognitive stance, yeah, you're yeah, you're one step removed from it. The the yeah, that's such a resource to be around people who are one step removed from being in the in that particular challenge.
Richard:I think it's I think it's one of the key areas that can impede for. Trauma informed practice in my mind is the inability to tolerate what I call the unknowing. And that's a direct translation from my work with clients because we can be sitting thinking we've got the answer. But the sad bit is if we think we've got the answer, we're missing the opportunity to find out what it is actually like or what the meaning is from the other person. And equally with staff, the temptation is to think about that we've got the answer and to do the quick solution. And uh thinking really like back in my early work 30 years ago, I used to be so keen about just getting a solution. Let's just let's just do something. Because I used to come to the thing about doing something was better than doing nothing, right? But in actual fact, being able to tolerate uncertainty that uncertainty, that unknown for a period of time creates opportunities that uh can make people feel the part people need to feel part of the solution because otherwise, what what we find out in the terms of the attachment uh people go into that ambivalent state, they feel that they've not got a voice, there's no point in saying, they become silent, and those toxic things within care environments are unawanted because we need we need people to feel they're part of, they've got a voice, they can be heard. Uh and it may be a difficult process this about working through this, but the outcome of it is as golden as I see it. It's it is to me, it's the work to be able to because equally the staff are going to have to do this for the children, they're gonna have to try and understand what the children are communicating through their behavior, trying to make sense of it, uh, and coming to that from a certain lens as well, as we know it's about uh trying to illuminate about what that communication is that the you know the child is doing between them and the staff.
Colby:Yeah. While we're while we're talking, Richard, um a question without notice has been formulated in in my mind a little bit. Um but hopefully you don't you don't mind. Um the question is what it was starting out as what sort of child need needs residential care and it and and but it's now it's also kind of in my mind it's it's blending a bit with what what does residential care offer uh to children to children in need of care that that perhap of that is per hot perhaps superior that time of need for the child than than other forms of out-of-home care.
Richard:I'd be interested in your thoughts about that well foster care in its is a in its own right can be highly effective. So in terms of my comments that I'm gonna say about is foster care can be highly effective for those children who are anaphobic about family living. Some of the responses I see children displaying, and it's not about the family they go and stay in, but they carry inside themselves experiences about being in families that mean it's going to be highly unlikely that they're going to be able to stay and create security within that family. Uh it becomes unbearable for them. It's uh and it becomes unbearable for the uh foster carers as well. And it's the foster parents can sadly they can they can almost be placed in a situation where the material that they're getting given to process and uh the behaviours and stuff gets to a point, and often foster carers can get to a point they they feel this task is task is too much for me. It's too much. They get to yeah, too much. And sadly for children, then if they they start to expand, well, naturally they've had one, but their uh the original scene was in the family or origin, uh this is often replicated and reenacted within the foster replacements, and I'll see the attempts to use foster care well into double figures sometimes. You know, children children will be in that repeated cycle. So if we can identify children as early on that that are gonna often I'll I'll see social workers and stuff understanding the children's history through an attachment and trauma and form lens, understand about their experiences and knowing that that containment is going to be needed in terms of the children's distress, it's gonna need much more than foster care. Yeah, foster carers can't typically manage situations where children act out excessively in terms of acting out against other people or uh the environment of the home, the foster foster parents' home. So, quite early on, you can almost you can see what I call gateways. I've got this notion of gateways to particularly uh care options uh to help be able to identify through assessment, and this is where the psychological lens can come in within care organizations commissioning. I don't know how it is in Australia. I don't know if you know, I worked in New Zealand for a little period of time myself, but yeah. And I'm like I'm always fascinated about where care the care system is sort of held within the UK, it is social care. There is a greater involvement with health. To me, there needs to be even more. The more that we can help commissioning teams understand the psychological and emotional aspects of the child's needs, then that can more effectively inform what part of the care journey does that child need. Does the child need residential care and all that that it offers, increased containment, and less risky staff burnout, foster carers, fostering families, massive risk of that? Uh we can provide this more integrated educational magnification of these principles that often child needs. And that often cuts down the time. Some of my some of my research at the moment has shown that if you do this early enough, it can be an early intervention that over the care journey period actually reduces not only the the child's need for in terms of staying in these higher higher recruiting environments, so the child can go to foster care, uh but it also cuts down the time. Uh because naturally I saw the other end like working in that prison-based therapeutic community for adult male life offenders uh who had committed it was sad to see how many of those uh human beings had been in the care system. So this notion of early intervention and about stopping patterns and doing the you know, doing the work as early as possible, not as late as possible. To me, it's a cost saver. To me, it's uh to me it's a no-brainer. It's like just it's just uh uh but it's a challenge I know for systems to think past a year. You know, most uh business plans only cover one year, most governments I think only covers the their term in office. Some of this stuff is moving the systems to longer term thinking, longer term perspectives. Uh but I but I truly believe the more people that have these these ideas, the more we can send the messages out in the box to social care and social work and the political system. About let's turn this thinking, you know, the mindset from short termism, like to sort of longer term.
Colby:And and I mean, I think part of the whole option of last resort is for residential care is is it's the most expensive form of care. So we don't want we don't want to be uh what we don't want to be uh focusing initially on on the most expensive form of out-of-home care.
Richard:Is it not?
Colby:We'd rather we try foster care. And and and there is a a deeply held belief in society that the that family is the best place to raise children. But it's not it's not for those children, as you said, who are phobic of family, who have a phobia. And I've written, I first wrote about this um in a published paper 13 odd years ago. That um, and and so to me, residential care provides a psychologically so people think, oh, you know, with all the scandals and and so on, this is you're mad for saying this. But in actual fact, residential care provides a psychologically safe, relationally safe care environment that is better for certain young child certain children and young people than than putting them into a into a family-based environment. And we we need all those options. We in my state here, they they embarked on a bit of a uh um uh an endeavor to to get rid of residential care because it was seen as being because it was of low quality, seen as being of low quality, option of last resort, expensive, all of these things. But but in a what I'm hearing you say is in a um in a functional, adaptive, um, effective uh social care system that that meets that is able to tailor care to the needs of the children and use fitness and match it placement matching um to its best ability, then residential care has an equal place alongside uh family-based uh care options. And I really like what you said that you think that it that it can enhance the young person's preparedness to go into or ability to go into a family-based placement such that that's uh more successful for them.
Richard:Yeah, uh the evidence illustrates that uh so early on in the delivery of the attachment trauma-informed care model, it was children and young people who had largely been through that repeated placement disruption and ending and leaving one one relationship and going to another relationship, and often being out of education that would come into the service, and naturally we we we were we were still able to attain the trajectory that we wanted, the aspirational trajectory for the children in terms of them being able to go into foster care and becoming more secure. Uh but while even the children used to say to me about the trust thing, about almost their mindset was that they were gonna even have to leave that home, you know. It's like the you know, the attachment systems have become so uh hyper-vigilant that they believed that nobody could care for them, nobody could uh tolerate what they were going to give us. And it's like, wow, I'm not like I used to say, I'm not surprised that you're giving me this stuff to have to handle for you. You know, this is what I used, you know, in terms of my understanding with the children, is that uh it's quite understandable if they're exposed to situations that are repeated and chronic and things don't work. Uh yeah, it is still possible, but it's much better for the for the child and the whole system to be able to identify those children, it's not all children. No, uh you know, the great thing at the moment is that Five Rivers has changed caring for over a thousand children, and uh the majority of those children are in foster care, very happy, really good outcomes, you know, great foster parents, you know, doing great work, but there is a group of children and young people that I feel that we owe them to identify when residential uh the residential environment is as the environment that's best for them. Yeah, yeah.
Colby:I think that's a wonderful spot to finish up, uh Richard, because um time is time is marching on. I've put I've kept you for over an hour. Um it's been fantastic to chat with you and um and talk more about attachment uh on the podcast. Everything comes back to the catch. Um I'm being a bit time-cheapy. I'm kind of sort of being time cheap about that. Yeah, it's been thank you for taking the time and uh invariably I I say it before I'd like to have you back on again at some stage because there's so much more that we could talk about. So thank you.
Richard:Thank you so much, Colby, for the time today. I've really enjoyed speaking to you.
Speaker 00:As have I. Thank you.
