rock, Author at Innovative Resources

The importance of self-care

Even the most experienced and skilled professionals can feel overwhelmed and heartbroken when hearing people’s stories of trauma and loss. When you work in a role that involves supporting other people—like social work, teaching, healthcare, childcare or counselling—self-care is fundamentally important. If left unchecked, stress and pressure can build up and ultimately contribute to a range of serious mental and physical health issues.

People working in ‘helping’ professions can have a tendency to focus on the needs of others to the detriment of their own wellbeing. While the ability to focus on others can be a great strength, sometimes it means that people don’t take time to ‘refill their own tank’. A depleted worker is one with less flexibility, less resilience, and less capacity to think through challenges. Stress often makes problems feel bigger and more overwhelming, and can undermine a person’s ability to be positive, hopeful and solution-focussed. This impacts on the person’s capacity to provide an effective service to others.

How can we support each other at work?

The term ‘self-care’ implies caring for oneself. While it is important to have a personal self-care plan and to take responsibility for our own self-care, often it is our colleagues who are the first to recognise the warning signs of stress or burn out. Additionally, colleagues understand the stressors involved in your workplace and can validate your experience. They are often the first to provide opportunities to de-brief or offer consolation and encouragement.

Usually individual self-care plans are only shared with supervisors. One way to help ensure that everyone feels supported is to create a self-care plan for the whole team or workplace. Team self-care plans can enhance our personal self-care plan by enabling members of our team to support us during times of stress.

How do we create a shared self-care plan?

A useful place to start when creating a self-care plan for your team or workplace is to invite people to reflect on the kinds of support they would find valuable during times of stress. This process can involve reflecting on how stress manifests for you. Here are a few questions you might ask:

What do I want those in the team to understand about me? (Values, beliefs, culture, health, history, family, spirituality, significant life events)
How will others know I am experiencing stress? By looking at my environment? By noticing and experiencing my behaviour?
What do I give those around me permission to say to me?
What do I give those around me permission to do?
How will I share this information with others?

A few things to consider when developing a self-care plan with your team

Everyone in your team is different. It can be really valuable to acknowledge this right at the start of the planning process. You might notice how:

Everyone responds to workplace stress in different ways.
Everyone exhibits stress in different ways.
Everyone needs different types of support from co-workers.

What are the benefits of creating a shared self-care plan?

Doing some self-care planning as a team can be a positive way to enhance your team culture. Additionally, when you give permission for another person to assist you, you are being proactive and preventative. By sharing your concerns and challenges, you also ‘normalise’ workplace stress by acknowledging that it is something everyone experiences at times. Improved support systems for teams can also lead to better communication, reduced sick leave, increased engagement and higher levels of job satisfaction.

It really is a win-win.

Over two years in the making, Tell A Trusted Adult is now a trusted resource for having conversations with children about protective behaviours and safety. It includes 35 cards focussing on body signals—13 matched pairs and 9 activity cards—plus a 60-page booklet with loads of fun, simple activities and suggestions for how to use the cards.

Supporting children to develop protective behaviours is uppermost in the minds of teachers, social workers and parents. But how do you teach children about protective behaviours and safety?

Conversations about safety can feel tricky. We might worry that we don’t have the knowledge or resources to support us to have these conversations. We may feel anxious that children might say something concerning and we won’t know how to respond, or that we might make things worse. The Tell A Trusted Adult cards and booklet have been specifically designed to enable people to create respectful and inclusive spaces to have conversations with children about protective behaviours.

The key message in the Tell A Trusted Adult cards is, ‘When you feel unsafe, scared, sad, angry or frustrated, tell someone you trust’. But how do you know when you are unsafe? And how do you know who you can trust? The cards can be used to talk with children about how to recognise the body signals that tell them when they are safe and unsafe, how to tell the difference between fun secrets and secrets that feel bad and how to identify the adults they can turn to when things get tough, plus other strategies for staying safe.

Even very young children can be supported to recognise their body signals and understand the features of respectful relationships. In fact, the cards have no words on them so they are great for children as young as 3+. They are also fantastic for children who have low literacy levels, are visual learners or come from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds.

This beautifully-conceived card set is the work of Sharon Hynes and Katarina Meda. Sharon is an educator with 30+ years of experience as a classroom teacher and wellbeing support worker. Kat is a highly experienced illustrator, designer and teacher’s aide.

While Tell A Trusted Adult has been developed with primary teachers in mind, it is equally useful for social workers, counsellors, psychologists, parents, carers, or anyone wanting to have conversations with children about safety.

It is also available as a kit, which includes ten downloadable lesson plans (with adaptations for children aged 3+, 7+ and 10+) and six posters.

Tell A Trusted Adult

Tell A Trusted Adult kit

Some might remember the “chain of anger” cartoon where the boss yells at the worker, the worker then goes home and yells at their partner, then the child is yelled at, and later the child is seen taking it out on the family pet.

So how do we work and live appreciatively with each other? How does a manager build great working relationships with their staff? The answer may be to look at the power balance.

In social work circles, strengths-based practice is a framework that is often used when working with people. Within this framework is the concept of power-with, the opposite of power-over. Conceptually it is about treating others justly. The supervisory relationship that a manager has with a worker creates a power-over relationship, but it can be the actions and behaviour of a manager that can restore the balance and ensure successful outcomes for the business.

Classic power-over behaviors

• Knowing what is best for others

• Telling people what is wrong with them

• Telling people what to do and how to do it (being the expert)

• Blaming, labelling or classifying people (assuming to know the truth-based on dominant ideas without consideration of unique circumstances and contexts)

• Deliberately or inadvertently excluding people from decision-making, or limiting their participation (blocking choice, jumping in or taking over)

• Giving advice (imposing your views)

• Telling people what their strengths are (patronising, condescending)

• Isolating and marginalising people (treating people as incapable).

Power-with behaviours can help, and include the following antidotes to the negative results of ‘doing’ power-over

• Recognising that people are their own experts on themselves

• Listening to someone’s story

• Seeking to recognise and mobilise people’s strengths and capabilities

• Valuing workers’ aspirations and goals

• Creating a context of discovery and action, improvising and trying new things

• Finding the right questions and relying on a team approach where responsibility is shared

• Enabling processes and outcomes to be determined in partnership

• Focusing on solutions, not problems

In The Strengths Approach, (Innovative Resources, 2005) Wayne McCashen identifies what makes a good worker (worker meaning social worker or counsellor). If we change the word “worker“ to ”manager”, the following suggestions emerge as hints for managers in following a power-with framework for supervision.

What makes a good manager?

• Good managers listen

They genuinely listen

They let the worker have their say

They remember things the worker has told them

They consult workers

They don’t impose their view

• Good managers don’t jump to conclusions

They try to understand the worker’s circumstances

They don’t assume the worker has done the wrong thing

They are aware of what else is happening

They don’t make false accusations

They don’t generalise

They don’t blame

• Good managers explain things

They explain what is happening and why.

They share their knowledge.

They use plain language.

• Good managers are there to help

They are not intimidating.

They encourage workers to contact them if they need help.

They want to listen and help.

• Good Managers follow up

They check to see how workers are going.

They keep appointments.

• Good managers are professional

They share their experiences.

They don’t let personal problems interfere with their work.

They remain professional, but human.

“Power-with is not possible without respect. It requires a belief in people’s potential; honouring and valuing their strengths and seeking to learn from them.” (McCashen, 2005) There is the view that even though we are all unique, “there are more similarities between people than there are differences:

• We all make mistakes.

• Blaming makes things worse.

• We can all get trapped by thinking and behaviour that prevents change.

• We can all have difficulty changing.

• All people have strengths and resources, both known and unknown to them.

• How we see ourselves and the world influences how we relate and behave.

Keeping such commonalities in mind leads us to genuine empathy. It also enables us to get in touch with our own imperfections as well as our strengths and is less likely to lead us to be judgemental.” (The Strengths Approach, McCashen, 2005. p32)

Acknowledging that at times managers do need to make unpopular decisions, and often have to take control of a situation is not lost in the ‘power-with’ approach. The concept of ‘straight talk’ gives respect to the relationship and is equally important. Employees need to be clear around the boundaries and expectations, and this cannot occur without ‘straight talk’.

In the end it is how we go about recognising the best in people, and a ‘power with’ approach may be the answer you are looking for, for yourself and your managers.

What are your experiences? How has a “power-with” approach worked for you, either as a manager or as an employee?

Innovative Resources is a publisher, and a social enterprise of Anglicare Victoria. We publish resources that spark conversations and bring strength-based thinking to the process of individual and organisational change. We also offer tailor-made training and tools workshops (both online and in person).

Article by Georgena Stuckenschmidt

We’re nearly there – at the end of another crazy covid year! Good riddance is what we’re saying, and for good reason – it’s been tough, in so many ways, on so many people. But rather than write the whole year off, let’s take a moment to reflect and ‘look for the good’ that has come from the difficulties. Note to Self can be a great tool to help us notice and celebrate the gains and the growth that has come from this year.

Drawing on the wisdom of Choice Theory, the 24 cards in Note to Self are designed to promote self-responsibility. They are reminders that can help us gain control over ourselves and our lives by focusing on what we have direct control over: our thoughts and actions.

Each card invites us to go within and discover what we didn’t know about ourselves, giving us a sense of empowerment and insight.

Note to Self is divided into six suits, each offers four statements and a set of questions to help us focus on the choices we can make.

From the Perspective suit, the card, ‘I appreciate what I have’ asks us not only to be grateful for the things we have gained, but to take it one step further and look for the positive in the so-called negative. It asks us to consider what we have learnt from difficulty, allowing access to the strengths we employed and the ways we have grown through this challenging year.

‘I learn from my experiences’ from the Practice suit can also be applied to this past year. By posing the first question as ‘Who or what have been my greatest teachers this year?’ we dive even deeper into the learnings that have occurred for us on a very personal level.

By then asking, ‘How can I keep that learning alive?’ we take the growth and make it tangible – it’s not just part of our evolutionary journey but something we can draw upon for future challenges.

Another card from the Practice suit, ‘I embrace life’ helps us to turn our attention to the importance of living in the present while also taking time to dwell favourably on the ways we were able to live life well when it felt and seemed so ‘bad’.

Naming what can be celebrated today turns our perspective around and puts us into a practice of gratitude and thankfulness – not just for what we have, but for who we have become.

Moving into a more optimistic groove, the Purpose card, ‘Opportunities surround me’ invokes a sense of positive potential and a more expansive mindset that heralds the dawning of a new year. Having taken stock of the gains, we put our attention on the present moment by asking, ‘What opportunities exist right now?’

The statements on the front of the cards can be treated as stand-alones, serving as powerful reminders that our life choices are in our hands. Statements like ‘Change is an opportunity’, ‘I’m in control of my wellbeing’ and ‘My life has meaning’ encourage us to stand in our own shoes and walk the next leg of the journey with agency, authenticity and purpose.

–by Gena McLean

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Find Your Way – grow through challenge and change to live a more meaningful life is Gena’s latest work – a compact book packed with warmth and wisdom.

The perfect complement to Note to Self, Find Your Way works as a companion for life’s journey. Change and challenge are what we’re all dealing with daily! And our inability to manage them effectively directly affects our wellbeing – our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health. Find Your Way is for anyone who wants to meet change and challenge with awareness so they can navigate it more peacefully, consciously and compassionately.

Visit Gena’s website, Seeker & Sage to find out more or buy a copy of Find Your Way.

A pack of Note to Self and Find Your Way is available for a limited time here.

We are becoming an increasingly outcome-driven society. For many of us, our lives are dominated by KPIs, meeting targets, ticking boxes and writing endless reports. While accountability is important, the pressures around this often mean that we feel relieved rather than proud or excited when we achieve a goal. An unfortunate side-effect of this approach is that we rarely stop to celebrate when we achieved a desired outcome. Instead, we just move on to the next thing.

Stop, notice, acknowledge

While celebrating is sometimes (consciously or unconsciously) dismissed as indulgent or time-consuming, research tells us that it is important to our mental health, self-care, happiness and motivation to stop, notice, acknowledge and do a bit of high-fiving once in a while!

As the Family and Child Centre says:

A number of studies have found that [celebrating] brings significant benefits, including improved physical health and better coping strategies. People who take time to reflect on — and celebrate — their successes are generally more optimistic, take better care of themselves and tend to be less stressed. Celebrations increase people’s sense of well-being, regardless of socioeconomic factors, education, age or gender.

In positive psychology, the process of savouring—noticing, appreciating and enhancing positive experiences— is often used to increase feelings of self-worth and overall life satisfaction by expanding ‘people’s thoughts and behaviours, promoting creativity, social connection, personal resources, and resilience’.

Celebrating the small wins

Celebrating success doesn’t have to be complicated or involved. It might be as simple as shouting a colleague a coffee and cupcake when something good has happened, sending a congratulations email with a humorous gif or having a celebrations board in the staff room.

You can also make celebration a regular part of your work practice. At team or staff meetings, you might invite everyone to talk about one thing they want to celebrate or you might have a monthly team shout-out, where team members nominate the people or things they would like to acknowledge and celebrate.

And it isn’t just the big successes that can be celebrated. In fact, celebrating often by focussing on small wins along the way is actually more beneficial and motivating than only celebrating the big stuff. You might celebrate finishing a project, or a stage of the project, or a good outcome for a client or student. You may have advocated for a positive change in the workplace. Or you might focus on small personal successes or milestones, like dropping a child at school without tears, walking after work for a week, cleaning out your shed or reconnecting with a friend.

Build connection through celebration

By celebrating our own achievements, we are also modelling this behaviour with the people we work alongside, whether they be clients, students or colleagues. If we regularly celebrate our successes, we are more likely to notice and celebrate their successes, which encourages them to notice and celebrate themselves.

It can be easy to get caught up in the demands and stresses of work but taking time out to celebrate can be an important way to build connection, remind us why we do what we do and generate hope.

How do you celebrate in your team or workplace? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Researcher, Brené Brown, calls shame the ‘master emotion’ because it is present in almost every experience of trauma, disempowerment and exclusion. Whether we have caused someone else harm, someone has caused us harm or we are experiencing mental health issues, shame is the voice in our heads that tells us we are unworthy, disgusting, terrible or irredeemable. It thrives on secrecy and will do anything it can to stop its story being shared.

Why shame is difficult to work with

As shame likes to remain hidden and unnamed, it is also a notoriously difficult emotion to work with. One of the reasons for this is that shame attaches itself to our identity. Brown says the difference between shame and guilt is that guilt is, ‘I did something bad’ and shame is ‘I am bad’ (The Gifts of Imperfection, p.57). In other words, shame ties itself into our fundamental sense of self.

Where shame can be found

We can see examples of shame everywhere:

A person with an eating disorder is likely to have deep feelings of shame about their body, as well as their complex relationship with food.
A student who is being bullied may feel ashamed that they are weak or unworthy and believe that in some way, they must deserve the treatment they are receiving.
People trying to leave an abusive relationship may feel shame that they have allowed themselves to be treated so badly. They may also feel shame that they haven’t protected their children or are unable to provide for their children once they leave. (Of course, this isn’t true or valid but shame often makes us take responsibility for the behaviour of others.)
A person who has caused harm may also feel shame for their behaviour. Sometimes this is masked behind anger, denial and blame. It can take time for people who have caused harm to move through these emotions to recognising that what they are feeling is shame (and they may never get to this point) but this is where the true change starts to happen.
A person who has experienced childhood trauma may hide their experiences as they feel ashamed or they may believe that on some level the abuse was partially their fault.
A person from a marginalised group may have been made to feel shame in relation to their identity, culture or socioeconomic circumstances. Often this shame is internalised and may be triggered long after the person has learned to celebrate who they are.

The upside to talking about shame

The upside to talking about shame is that once we understand that the people or students we are working alongside are experiencing shame, and we support them to recognise, name and explore it, it can be one of the most powerful ways to help people shift their behaviour and thinking.

Learning to recognise and work with shame can be an incredibly useful skill in the toolkit of any social worker, teacher, counsellor or psychologist. In the coming months, the author of our upcoming Exploring Shame cards, Michael Derby, will share some tips and strategies for recognising and working with shame with clients and students. Watch this space!

Nain Philp is a social worker and art therapist working in private practice in Victoria, Australia. She shares with us her experiences using cards and other visual tools in AOV settings and with young people with autism, plus her top 3 tips for using cards effectively.

Prior to setting up her private practice, Nain worked in the community services sector for 25 years, primarily in the alcohol and other drug (AOD) sector. She has worked in various settings and contexts, including community health environments, prisons and residential AOD, and has also done outreach work with both youth and adults.

We started by asking Nain to tell us a bit about herself.

You mentioned you were an art therapist. What drew you to art therapy?

I have worked as an art therapist since 2008 and found this transformed the way I work with people therapeutically. I had been slowly transitioning to private practice over the past few years, mostly so that I can have the freedom and autonomy to work in ways that truly align with my values and practice approach.

I’ve always had a love of art, having studied art throughout my schooling, and I guess I’m a naturally creative person. I think I’ve probably always worked with people creatively too, especially in my role with men in prison. I found they would instinctively draw me diagrams and pictures and speak in metaphor as they tried to communicate their needs and experiences to me. I also found myself drawing pictures and diagrams as an effective way to engage and communicate with them.

Moreover, I learnt they were a population of people who tended to be very talented in music and art and found it especially difficult to express themselves verbally or to articulate their emotions and needs through talking. As I continued my work in drug and alcohol I increasingly found that talking had its limitations and that it was important to access all the ways in which we communicate, feel and express ourselves.

Art therapy has a way of allowing us to feel, express and make sense of things on a ‘whole of body’ level; connecting mind and body together. And we know that so much of our emotional experiencing, especially trauma and memories, are held in the body so it made sense to use art and creativity to better access the emotional work and to find other multi-modal and embodied ways to work through the experiences and struggles my clients were facing. In 2008, I undertook my studies in art therapy at the Melbourne Institute of Experiential and Creative Arts Therapy (MIECAT).

What is the value of introducing visual or tactile resources into a therapeutic conversation?

I think it’s about offering clients other ways of making sense of their experiences by providing tools that tap into different ways of knowing, in addition to cognitive understanding and processing. We learn, understand and make sense of things using all our senses; visual, auditory, olfactory and kinaesthetic.

By drawing on all senses and being present to our embodied sensing and responding, tactile resources allow clients to better access their emotional content. There is also something very powerful about visual resources and cues. Our memories, experiences and capacity for making meaning seem to be particularly activated and triggered by visual imagery as well as by smell. Laying out cards or symbols and objects has an amazing way of inviting curiosity and allowing people to attribute meaning and stories to these images. There is also more understanding emerging of the benefits of tactile resources (sand tray therapy and other 3D representation and clay work, for example) being effective in creating new neural pathways.

You mentioned you had quite a few Innovative Resources’ card sets. Can you talk a bit about how you use different sets in different contexts?

I’ve used the cards in both 1:1 work and in groups. I find the Signposts cards are really well received by all ages and demographics—perhaps this is because they offer both a visual image and a key word.

I often lay the cards out at the very outset of a group or 1:1 session as a way of supporting a person to connect straight away to what is most alive for them in the present moment. This works to shift a person’s focus from the immediate urge to talk which will naturally take them into the place of thinking. When we think, we tend to stay in what is consciously known (which is usually past events) and we can get stuck in over-thinking. Connecting to a visual cue or resource automatically draws people into the here-and-now which in turn, allows them to better access feelings, emotions and other more sub-conscious material that is not so readily accessible to awareness.

I have used the Stones…have feelings too! cards to support clients in connecting to emotions and finding a language and way of articulating their feelings. I did a bit of a fun session where I collected a whole lot of stones in various shapes and sizes and laid them out with the Stones cards then invited the group to choose either a real stone or a card or both that represented how they were feeling as a way of opening up groupwork on emotions.

The physical stones acted as a great grounding and emotion regulation tool for those who found the group process challenging and also proved to be a beautiful way of encouraging story telling. Some of the clients in the group spoke of childhood memories of collecting stones or skimming stones on the water as children.

I’ve used the Shadows cards 1:1 in the context where clients are ready to work more deeply on themselves or when working with trauma, grief and loss. I use these cards to open up conversations or I’ll use them as a tool to support them in creating their own representation of their experience.

I have also used the journal cards, Inside Out, in a residential rehab to support groups in finding pathways for reflection.

Could you give an example of a situation where you used a card set to support someone to make a change?

I’ve been working with a young 15 year old who is on the autism spectrum who really struggles with emotional regulation and emotional connection. I introduced him to the Stones cards and invited him to choose cards that represented his feelings and emotions, then I asked him to identify those feelings on a body map that he had drawn.

This was very effective in helping him find language for his feelings. He identified and drew them in shape and colour form on a body map so he could communicate his experience to me. This was, however, a very moving and somewhat triggering exercise and he did cry in the session for the first time which in turn led him to feel very vulnerable, uncomfortable and even angry towards me that he had felt so exposed.

The following session he was withdrawn and I worried that I could lose the connection we had made. However, by holding the space safely and compassionately with him, he was able to move through these feelings as he continued to use the cards to communicate new emotions and feelings.

The outcome of this process is that he continues to engage in art therapy, has often expressed emotions freely in the sessions and feels less exposed and vulnerable. He has become more trusting and engaged and is able to maintain eye contact with me more readily. But most of all, he has made significant shifts with his family in terms of communicating his need for more emotional connection, touch and affection.

If you could give social workers, teachers and counsellors your three top tips for how to use the cards effectively in their work, what would they be?

Lay the cards out prior to a session so they can be a means of curiosity for clients. You’ll be surprised how often a client can’t help but approach the cards and look at them. Often they will naturally be drawn to a card that resonate for them.
Rather than asking ‘why’ they chose the card, stay with the what, when and how – you might ask, ‘I’m curious as to what drew you to that card?’, ‘What are you noticing in your body as you look at the image?’, ‘How does this card relate to your own experience?, When you look at that image, how do you feel?’ Staying curious with the client will feel less threatening or intrusive.
When inviting clients to select a card or cards, try to limit it to no more than 3 cards. Choosing too many cards can open up too much content and risks taking the client to a place of overwhelm and amplification (which can be hard to close up safely if it does trigger an emotional response). In many cases, especially in a group, 1 or 2 cards is enough and helps keep material contained.

Our thanks to Nain for sharing her experience, wisdom and expertise.

If you would like to share your experiences of using the cards or other Innovative Resource’s products, we would love to hear from you!

Given that both trauma and learning difficulties can have significant impacts on a child’s outcomes in later life, it is important to know how to recognise them in order to provide appropriate support. What we often don’t talk about is that trauma and learning disabilities may present in similar ways in young children.

Many teachers, early learning facilitators and social workers say they are seeing higher and higher rates of trauma, behavioural challenges, developmental delays and learning difficulties/disabilities in young children. They know that the earlier we can identify and support children appropriately, the better the long term outcomes are for the child.

But sometimes being able to identify the difference between trauma-related behaviours, developmental delays and learning difficulties can be challenging.

One of the reasons for this is that childhood trauma may initially present as a developmental delay, learning difficulty or a behavioural issue. Children who have experienced trauma can be in a constant state of vigilance or arousal (fight/flight/flee) which can make it difficult for them to concentrate, focus, pay attention or retain information. Not surprisingly, the Australia Institute of Health and Welfare has found that child abuse and neglect can have a wide range of significant adverse impacts on a child’s development and capacity to learn, including:

reduced social skills
poor school performance
impaired language ability.

Adding to the complexity, children who are experiencing learning difficulties or disabilities may exhibit behaviours that are similar to those exhibited by children who are experiencing trauma. The US National Institute of Child Health and Development states that a child with a learning disability may have one or more of the following behaviours:

Acting without really thinking about possible outcomes (impulsiveness)
‘Acting out’ in school or social situations
Difficulty staying focused; being easily distracted
Difficulty saying a word correctly out loud or expressing thoughts
Problems with school performance from week to week or day to day
Speaking like a younger child; using short, simple phrases; or leaving out words in sentences
Having a hard time listening
Problems dealing with changes in schedule or situations
Problems understanding words or concepts

Many of these behaviours can also be found in children who have experienced or are experiencing trauma.

When children are experiencing trauma, it is not uncommon for them to be misdiagnosed as having a learning disability or developmental delay. While a child who is experiencing trauma may need supports around their learning, if the underlying trauma isn’t acknowledged and addressed, any educational or developmental interventions are likely to be less successful.

How do I recognise the difference between trauma-related learning difficulties and behaviours, and learning disabilities?

This is not always straight-forward or easy. The most important thing you can do is not make assumptions or jump to conclusions about what a child is experiencing or what is motivating their behaviour.

The Raising Children Network suggest that if children dislike or avoid activities that involve reading, writing, maths or find these things hard, or if they have trouble spelling simple words, this may be a sign they are struggling with aspects of learning. In consultation with parents, seek the advice of experts as soon as possible if you suspect a child has a learning difficulty or disability. The earlier a child receives support, the less it will impact on their long term educational outcomes.

Experts who work as part of a multidisciplinary team (which may include psychologists, social workers, speech pathologists, GPs, disability support workers and other health professionals) or who have expertise in both trauma and learning disabilities are best placed to make an informed assessment of the child’s support needs.

If you suspect that a child’s learning difficulties may stem from trauma, the Australia Institute of Family Studies suggests the following:

provide safe environments;
support children and caregivers to understand links between traumatic experiences and cognitive difficulties;
develop and support positive relationships in children’s lives;
offer all children targeted trauma-specific interventions;
maintain these interventions throughout childhood and adolescence; and
ensure separate cognitive difficulties are addressed directly.

Given that many children who have experienced trauma will need support around their education and learning, it is always useful to provide this help. In fact, supporting children who have experienced trauma in relation to their learning can be a powerful way to minimise the impact of the trauma in the long term, as long as it is done in conjunction with other trauma-informed strategies and supports. (Children who have experienced trauma in the early years have a higher risk of long term socio-economic disadvantage, which can be mitigated if they are able to stay on track with their education.)

Another important way to support children who have experienced trauma or learning difficulties stay engaged with education is to create opportunities for them to build their social and emotional literacy. By building their knowledge about their feelings, body signals and thoughts, they will increase their capacity to understand, reflect on and share their experiences with trusted people.

By helping children to strengthen their social and emotional literacy skills, you also enable them to express hidden feelings, connect with others and build a greater awareness of what it feels like to be safe and unsafe. This increased self-awareness is the first step to seeking help and managing emotions in constructive and empowering ways.

Useful resources

Tell A Trusted Adult

Body Signals

The Bears stickers

Stones…have feelings too!

The Koala Therapy Ball

Many of us who have worked with children have grappled with how we can effectively include the perspective and voice of children in our planning and program development. We know it is important and valuable but how do we do it well? And how do we check back that we have understood the feedback or input that children are providing without distorting it through our ‘adult’ lens.

Including the voice of children has become even more difficult during the pandemic, when many schools and programs are being run remotely, or not at all. But as happens during times of challenge, new ways of working (often born of necessity) come into being.

Before we delve into some ideas, old and new, about how we can engage with children to hear their voices, it can be valuable to revisit the reasons why it is important to include the perspective and ideas of children when we are creating or evaluating programs or curricula.

Why include the voices of children?

When creating programs or new spaces aimed at children, or if we are wanting feedback on existing initiatives, it can be incredibly useful to hear from the end users themselves. Programs are much more likely to be effective if they meet the needs of the participants.

It can be easy to make assumptions about what children need or want but unless we have mechanisms to check in and see if what we are doing is helpful, we may find ourselves way off track and completely missing the mark, leaving us wondering, ‘why didn’t this work?’ By consulting with children throughout the development and evaluation process, we are much more likely to adjust to meet the actual needs of children.

If we are working in a strengths-based way, we are always looking for ways to create the conditions for people to feel empowered. By inviting feedback and asking for input from children on the planning and development of programs, we are modelling respectful and inclusive approaches. This also teaches children the value of asking questions and builds their ability to contribute to decision-making, problem-solve and reflect on what is important to them.

It is one thing to understand the importance of including children’s voices. But the reality is, it isn’t always easy to do in practical and meaningful ways. So how do we do this well?

Setting up respectful spaces for consulting with children

For consultation with children to be effective, children need to feel safe, valued and relaxed, preferably surrounded by adults they know and trust. It can help if they are having fun or playing. Try and set up spaces that support children to feel comfortable and empowered. These might be places they are familiar with, are child-friendly or the consultation itself might be done in collaboration with people they know and trust.

It is also important to find the right time to talk with children—after lunch on a Friday afternoon, when they are feeling tired or antsy, might not be a great time to ask children to share their ideas. Instead choose times when they are relaxed, focussed and able to reflect.

Model respectful behaviour by asking children for their permission to record their ideas. As you would with adults, explain to children why you are asking questions or collecting feedback and tell them how their ideas will be used. Also, tell them how you will report back to them about how their ideas were incorporated into the planning, review or development process.

There are so many innovative and creative ways to do this. Here are a few.

Creative ways to capture the voice of the child

Use scaling tools

A simple yet effective strategy for asking children to give feedback is to use scaling tools to rate their experience or level of interest and engagement. (They will need to be able to understand the concept of scaling, whether it be 1-10, ‘happy, neutral and sad faces’, feelings stickers or emojis, so you may need to do some preparation with young children.) There are many great free scaling templates and digital tools online.

Feelings stickers or emojis are great with young children or when you are looking for feedback from a lot of children in a short space of time. To gather feedback, set up a range of activities or run a series of events and invite children to use smiley faces to rate their experience.

Scaling tools are great in one-on-one settings or with older children. Ask questions like: On a scale of 1-10 with 1 being ‘I hated it’ and 10 being ‘I loved it’, how do you feel about that activity/idea? What could we do to move the scale up 1 point? What would make it a 10? Or if you are assessing which elements of a program or activity the child valued, you might ask something like ‘On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is not important at all and 10 is very important, how would you rate each of these things’?

Listening labs

Increasingly young children are confident and capable users of technology. We can embrace this to gather ideas and feedback from children. One way to do this is to set up a listening lab. Using the available technology—a desktop, laptop or tablet (phone can be used but are a bit trickier)— ask children a specific question or ask them to comment on a particular image or photo. You can set this up as a video booth if privacy isn’t an issue, or simply record the audio to de-identify the child. If you are online, use the various video or audio recording apps available.

Bring all the video or audio together to identify key themes and topics and use this information to inform your planning.

Give children a camera and ask them to capture their experience in images

I remember hearing about a great initiative several years ago where a large group of children were given disposable cameras and asked them to photograph everything they found interesting for a week. They then printed all the photos and created a large display.

Having all the images in front of them made the researchers aware of how inaccessible many environments were to smaller people. They also gained a deeper understanding of how children thought and what they found inspiring, threatening or attention-grabbing. It also helped them understanding how children used and moved through spaces. They were able to use this process to inform their planning for creating child-friendly spaces in their community.

Many children have access to phones or other devices for taking photos. Understanding how, when and why children interact in and with a space can help inform the best way to develop engaging and effective activities and programs. This strategy can be used in many different ways to gain insight that can inform planning or help with evaluation.

Ask the ‘miracle’ question

‘If something magical happened overnight and you woke up in the morning and everything in your world was fantastic, what changed?’ Drawn from solution-focused brief therapy, the miracle question invites people to imagine the world as they would like it to be. However, it is rare that we ask children this question.

While children may respond in very imaginative ways, their answers can still give us very concrete and valuable clues about what they value and what makes them feel safe.

Children can respond in words or you could ask them to draw, paint or create something that shows you what this ‘magical’ world looks or feels like. Ask them to tell you about their reasons for including the different elements and why they are important.

How to check you have understood

As is the case with any feedback or consultation, it is important to check that you haven’t misinterpreted what children have said or what they meant. It is really important to use active listening skills—listen carefully, paraphrase and summarise, check with the child or children that what you have heard is what they meant, ask questions if you aren’t sure, come from a place of genuine curiosity and interest in what the child has to say (they will know if you aren’t really listening or you are asking just to serve a purpose/tick a box).

Once you have used their input, report back to them to let them know how their ideas have been incorporated into your project or initiative. We often forget this last part. However, it is a really important part of the process as it empowers children to know they are able to contribute to their world in concrete and meaningful ways.

There are lots of innovative and creative ways to include the voices of children in planning and program development. What do you do? Feel free to share your ideas in the comments.

We have all experienced anxiety at some time or another. For many of us, it feels unpleasant, uneasy, uncomfortable and sometimes scary. It comes in many different forms and no two people will experience it in the same way. It can even look different at different times, and in different situations, for the same person!

And it’s unpredictable.

Right now, as a result of the pandemic, anxiety levels are high, even in people who may not have experienced anxiety before. So what can you do you support yourself, and those around you, to manage their anxiety? First, it can be valuable to learn more about how anxiety works.

A positive reframe for anxiety

Anxiety is a form of energy that needs an outlet. While we tend to see anxiety as a largely negative emotion, it can also be helpful and informative. By giving our experience of anxiety a new ‘story’ or positive reframe, we can actually learn to work with it in more constructive ways. In fact, the more comfortable we become with anxious thoughts and feelings, the better we feel.

For example, anxiety can be seen as a sign of strength—of wanting to feel good, of gearing up to do something. It can also be a message from our body that we are overstretched or need to attend to self-care.

Conversely, the more time you spend avoiding anxiety, the greater chance there is of setting up dysfunctional habits in order to avoid feeling it. For example, many people fall into the habit of trying to manage the discomfort of long-term stress and anxiety with alcohol.

How the brain and body respond

There is always a physiological aspect to anxiety. Certain parts of the brain (such as the amygdala) spring into action, releasing a chain of chemicals commonly known as the ‘fight, flight, freeze’ response. More recently, ‘flop’ and ‘(be)friend’ have been added to this list. All of these are felt as some kind of stress.

Like a faulty alarm system on a car, sometimes these fear signals trigger in humans for no reason at all. When the car alarm goes off randomly, we know it’s important to remain calm, knowing that there is no actual threat, so we can do what we need to do to stop the alarm.

If you feel your brain hitting the panic button for no good reason, try and distract yourself. Remind yourself that there is no actual threat; it’s just a feeling or thought or both. It’s ok. It passes. Talk to yourself calmly, breathe slowly through your nose, and find a pleasant, distracting activity as soon as you can. Focus on the outside world—for example, observe the environment around you using your five sense, or count, or list as many colours as you can—rather than on your internal state. Wait until the wave passes. It will.

With strategies like these, you activate other parts of the brain, such as the hippocampus, that moderate the effects of the stress response by providing a soothing or reassuring antidote.

The purpose of our card sets

The aim of the Anxiety Solutions and Anxiety Solutions for Kids card sets is to provide people with a range of ‘antidotes’ to the stress response. The cards include a wide range of creative, cognitive and physical strategies. Some of these will appeal to some brains more than others, and that is fine. Anxiety or stress patterns are personal, and so are the solutions.

The most effective techniques retrain the brain away from its habitual pattern by using changes in both physiology and focus. That’s what these cards are all about. Giving the mind a new task that will either alter physiology or focus so that a person can access a different state, even if it’s just a slight change or improvement.

From Anxiety Solutions

Booklet author: Selina Byrne M.A.P.S.

As early literacy can be a predictor of educational attainment, earnings, health and social outcomes later in life, it is really important that we support parents and carers to build their child’s literacy. But what do we mean when we talk about ‘literacy’?

Literacy is often broken into different types. There’s the literacy related to language development and then there’s social and emotional literacy. While we tend to see them as distinct, the reality is that they overlap in significant ways.

For instance, literacy and language development is about communication. A big part of communication is being able to read body language and social cues. So language-based literacy, like learning to talk, is intimately tied to social and emotional literacy.

Also, evidence shows that children learn to talk, read and write best when they are supported by nurturing and emotionally engaged adults. It is their attachment and sense of psychological security that enables children to build their language skills most effectively.

Four simple ways to support children to simultaneously build their language skills and social and emotional literacy

Reading and sharing stories with children

Seems obvious, right? But reading with children has benefits beyond just teaching them to read.

While the goal of reading with children is usually to build their language literacy, what we often don’t acknowledge is that reading with children actually builds their social and emotional literacy too. It does this by increasing their attachment to their caregivers (sitting and reading together can be a very nurturing and connecting activity) and enabling them to learn about the social and emotional life of other people through stories. Reading stories also teaches children key social skills like problem-solving and decision-making.

Encourage parents to read with their child as often as possible. It doesn’t actually matter too much what is being read, as long as it is age-appropriate and is done in a positive, non-stressful way. If parents have low literacy levels or English is a second language, they may choose to use books with few words or make up new stories using the pictures as prompts. As long as children experience books and reading in a positive way, they are more likely to embrace other learning opportunities.

Talk to children, a lot!

Research also shows that there is a direct relationship between how much time a parent or caregiver spends talking to a child and the size of their vocabulary when they go to school.

Talking to young children, even before they can talk themselves (perhaps especially before they can talk) not only exposes them to new words, it also helps them to understand the world through the eyes of their caregiver. This helps them build social and emotional awareness, read different situations and people, build empathy and connect words to emotions and body signals.

By simply explaining what they are doing as they go about their daily tasks—I’m washing the carrots, walking the dog, buying milk—parents and caregivers are potentially exposing their child to hundreds of new words a day. They are also giving the child a context for these words which helps them understand the nuanced meanings of different words. It may feel a bit silly at first but this is a simple, tried and true strategy to build vocabulary, and overall literacy.

Encourage unstructured play

One of the unique things about humans is that we have an imagination. Imagination can be a tool for creativity and it can also be used to process experiences and understand the world. By encouraging children to ‘make up’ and act out stories, they learn to use language to ‘name’ their world, process change, try on different identities and put words to their feelings and emotions.

Unstructured play is particularly powerful for contemporary children as their lives are often very structured and regulated. Somehow, we have come to see being bored as a bad thing, when in fact, boredom is often the mother of growth, insight and creativity. When we are bored, we find new and interesting ways to engage with the world. This is often when learning happens.

Play can include things like building a cubby, drawing, acting out stories with stuffed animals or other toys, playing in a sand pit, making things from random materials, taking things apart or creating collections.

Use tools like cards or other resources that name feelings and body signals

Cards, games and other resources that include words and images, particularly those related to feelings and body signals, can help children build their general vocabulary while also giving them a language to describe what they are feeling.

Using tools like these can also help them build respectful relationships as they are more able to recognise emotions and body signals of others. Having a language for emotions and feelings also increases empathy, awareness of safety and social skills. Resources can also be used to ‘act out’ emotions, which helps embed the language and meaning of words.

These are just a few ideas for supporting parents and carers to build their child’s literacy. We would love to hear from you if you have other suggestions and ideas.

Useful resources:

The Bears

Body Signals

Stones…have feelings too!

Tell a Trusted Adult

Koala Company Therapy Ball

We are surrounded by many different cultures, not only cultures from other countries, but also the different mini-cultures found in families, schools, communities and workplaces. Each of these cultures may emphasise different strengths—for example, ‘standing out’ may be admired in one setting, while in another, ‘blending in’ may be highly prized.

Learning to recognise the strengths that are emphasised in our own cultures and those of others is part of developing ‘strengths literacy’. And sometimes a person’s strengths may run counter to a culture they are part of. That can be very tough; it’s easy to feel like an outsider. But recognising strengths that are invisible to a dominant culture is a very important part of developing healthy self-esteem … and an equitable society!

When talking with children about strengths, it’s good to find simple and fun ways to express what a ‘strength’ is! For example, you might talk about a strength as

a good thing
a special thing
a thing that makes your heart feel good
something that makes you feel safe and strong
something you are really good at
something that someone else is really good at
something you are learning and getting better at
something that helped you learn to do something you couldn’t do before—but now you can!

Children thrive when their strengths are valued. Often, the weight of a ‘problem’ can lift considerably when we think of it as a strength yet to be developed. For these reasons many family counsellors, welfare coordinators and support workers encourage parents and carers to reflect on the importance of noticing children’s strengths. Questions to explore include:

What are the child’s strengths?
What difference might it make if I name them?
Do I celebrating the strengths of the children around me?
Do I celebrate my own strengths?
How do the child’s strengths help them navigate the world?

Looking for strengths and fostering ‘strengths cultures’ in our friendships, families, communities and classrooms means actively creating environments and opportunities where strengths are noticed and encouraged. A very important part of this is building the vocabulary needed to speak about strengths—building a ‘strengths literacy’, so to speak.

What activities do you use to support the children in your world to develop their ‘strengths literacy’?

Useful resources:

Strength Cards for Kids

Strength Cards®

Choosing Strengths

Can Do Dinosaurs

How to create a team self-care plan

The importance of self-care

How can we support each other at work?

<img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-27944" src="/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Self_Care_Cards_201977-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="252" height="252" />How do we create a shared self-care plan?