Creating a Child Centred School for Children with Significant Trauma and Attachment Difficulties

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Creating a Child Centred School for Children with Significant Trauma and Attachment Difficulties: An interview with Joanna McCreadie, CEO of Seamab
 
In the following interview, Joanna McCreadie, CEO of Seamab, speaks about how schools can support children and young people who have suffered significant relational trauma and disrupted attachments. Themes emerging from the interview may well resonate with those teaching and working with children and young people who have had an adverse start in life. 
 
1. Tell us about what you do and how you got where you are now.
 
I am the chief executive of Seamab with overall responsibility for the workings of the charity. The most important aspect of my job is overseeing the day-to-day work with the children both in education and in care and their recovery from trauma.
 
I started out at the beginning of my career as a volunteer working with children with disabilities and I found out I love working with kids. I began working in residential childcare in both secure and open settings. At the age of 22, I was working with some of the most challenging young people in Scotland. I found that residential care offers a unique opportunity to engage with children and young people and make a difference. By coming alongside, I could become part of their lives. I think it can be a powerful way to change children’s lives for the better.
 
I then became a children and family’s social worker. I also worked as an inspector of social work services and then I came back into residential care. I have been at Seamab for seven years. My previous experiences prepared me for my current role, where I need to think strategically and at the same time be focussed on what makes a difference to children and what helps them recover from some of their horrific experiences.
 
“My previous experiences prepared me for my current role in which I need to think strategically and at the same time be focussed on what makes a difference to children and helps them recover from some of their horrific experiences.”
 
“I found that residential care offers a unique opportunity to engage with children and young people and make a difference. By coming alongside, I could become part of their lives.”
 
2. What kind of school is Seamab?
 
I think it is a really happy place to be for the children. It is a place where we care about their lives and experiences. It is about being alongside them, nurturing and supporting them to make up for some of those pieces they have missed.
 
We have a school and a care service; they work together so the children get an integrated experience of care and education. We also have a few children that come on day placements. These are children who have really struggled in mainstream and specialist school settings, but are still living at home. In that way, we can support their staying at home.
 
We see ourselves as a charity that understands the impact of trauma and completely accepts what our children present to us on a day-to-day basis. The work is how to help them move forward. We understand it takes a long time to do this work and we recognise that we have to be persistent.
 
“We see ourselves as a charity that understands the impact of trauma and completely accepts what our children present to us on a day-to-day basis. The work is how to help them move forward.”
 
3. In your role at Seamab what are you most passionate about?
 
I get most joy from seeing the children playing outside, being happy and just being kids. Giving them what every child should have, the opportunity to be calm, safe and in the company of adults who care about them deeply. I am passionate about creating childhood for children who haven’t had it yet. We recognise that for children who have experienced significant trauma you can’t just do something once or twice, you are probably going to have to do it a hundred times and then you are going to have to amp it up a bit after that.
 
“I am passionate about creating childhood for children who haven’t had it yet. We recognise that for children who have experienced significant trauma you can’t just do something once or twice, you are probably going to have to do it a hundred times and then you are going to have to amp it up a bit after that.”
 
4. You are working with children who have suffered relational trauma, disrupted attachments and separations and losses. These are children who have struggled in mainstream settings. Your staff must have a lot of training. How do you ensure that knowledge transfers into practice?
 
There is research that shows that training doesn’t necessarily change practice. When I started here, the staff already had training, but it hadn’t created a child-centred and trauma-responsive way of working with children. Yes, we provide training, for example on dyadic developmental practice, DDP, but it is more about the engagement of individuals in a reflective process. Everyone who works with children here has to recognise that they are on a learning journey. The reflective work helps people think about the impact, about what has worked that day and hasn’t, and about what they might do differently tomorrow. We need to teach staff to accept that things will go wrong, that’s part of the learning process.
 
When a child comes to us we accept them unconditionally for who are and what they present. Our job is to work out how to support them effectively. It is not that child’s job to tell us, and it is not that child’s job to sort that out. It is our job to reflect on, try things out and see what works and makes a difference. This approach requires practitioners who are able to reflect and prepared to keep trying things.
 
One of the staff compares working here to solving a Rubik’s Cube. You have to turn the colours around a lot of times before you find the combination that works, and the next day you may have to do that differently again.
 
The other way we have ensured that the knowledge gained in training is transferred into practice is by creating a culture that is strongly focused on the needs of children. That means valuing what every child brings and being a bit gritty about that. Many of the children that come to us are very challenging, and they push adults to the brink of their resilience and tolerance. As a team with have to have a grittiness about seeing that through and keeping that going.
 
“When a child comes to us we accept them unconditionally for who are and what they present. Our job is to work out how to support them effectively. It is not that child’s job to tell us, and it is not that child’s job to sort that out. It is our job to reflect, try things out and see what works and makes a difference. This approach requires practitioners who are able to reflect and prepared to keep trying things.”
 
“The other way we have ensured that the knowledge gained in training is transferred into practice is by creating a culture that is strongly focused on the needs of children. That means valuing what every child brings and being a bit gritty about that. Many of the children that come to us are very challenging, and they push adults to the brink of their resilience and tolerance. As a team with have to have a grittiness about seeing that through and keeping that going.”
 
 
5. What happens when adults use an attachment-aware and trauma-informed framework in order to understand behaviours?
 
Adults start to see past the behaviour. They don’t see the child who is being challenging or resistant as being awkward and difficult. They see the child as someone who is struggling emotionally, and so you can have a very different response to that child. They can see the behaviour as a symptom of the child’s trauma experience. It is a behaviour that is adapted to some previous trauma; it has worked for them at some point, but it is not terribly effective now. That allows adults to accept that behaviour and begin to work on it in different ways.
 
It allows the adults to be really flexible. You might have a child who says, “I’m not doing that piece of work.”
 
The adult can look differently at this and think, “Maybe it’s not that important that I control this situation. Maybe what’s more important is that I get at what’s behind that behaviour and help the child engage with me. Maybe I need to address issues of trust and help this child feel safer with me and we can come back later and look at the work. I know that if I sit you down at the desk that you are ‘allergic’ to the pencil. What about if I do the maths outside using stones?”
 
Understanding the impact of trauma gives permission to adults to work more creatively and imaginatively. This allows the adult to get over this bit we tend to get stuck in: “I am the adult and I expect you to follow my instructions.” We know that children who have suffered trauma don’t trust in adult instruction and they are naturally resistant to that. That child is much better at seeing that conflict through than you, so it is better if the adult walks around that conflict and works with it in a different way.
 
“They can see the behaviour as a symptom of the child’s trauma experience. It is a behaviour that is adapted to some previous trauma; it has worked for them at some point, but it is not terribly effective now. That allows adults to accept that behaviour and begin to work on it in different ways.”
 
“Understanding the impact of trauma gives permission to adults to work more creatively and imaginatively. This allows the adult to get over this bit we tend to get stuck in: ‘I am the adult and I expect you to follow my instructions.’”
 
6. Children may be used to adults standing back and reacting when something is wrong. How is the approach different at Seamab?
 
Our approach of coming alongside a child is quite different to that kind of reactive approach that you often see in other settings.
 
The team will try to understand the child, what they like to do and don’t like to do, and what their interests are. We focus on their strengths and think about their future. We hold hope for them in terms of what their lives might mean for them and other people. In coming alongside a child, we try offer things that will be exciting and engaging and focus on developing key support through attachment relationships in school and in the care setting. We know the child needs secure attachment relationships. Once children start to develop those secure attachments, they can have a sense of safety. But that can be quite frightening for children, if they have not had that before. So that can take a lot of working through, persistence and patience.
 
Once children settle into those more secure attachment relationships, we see them start to learn in the classroom and relax in the care setting. We would then be encouraging children to be involved in things in the community like playing American Football or in Cubs. We don’t mind what the activity is, we follow the child’s interest.
 
One of the things people see and comment on when they come to Seamab is all these activities that are going on. A couple of months ago, outside the front of the building, we had a big pile of enormous tyres and a trampette, and we made an obstacle course. The children were out playing on that every day and feeling good about mastering different techniques of going up and down the tyres. There are kids who are able physically and they were taking pride in being able to master a tumble and land on their feet. There were others who were not so confident but were proud of themselves for climbing to the top of the tyre stack and waving down to their trusted adult. It is about creating activities in which the child and adult are together, both participating and enjoying each other. It is almost back to those experiences of very small children and babies where there is joy and pleasure in just being together. We will do these kinds of things routinely here because we see it as an important part of the work.
 
“Our approach of coming alongside a child is quite different to that kind of reactive approach that you often see in other settings.”
 
“In coming alongside a child, we try offer things that will be exciting and engaging and focus on developing key support through attachment relationships in school and in the care setting. We know the child needs secure attachment relationships. Once children start to develop those secure attachments, they can have a sense of safety.”
 
“It is about creating activities in which the child and adult are together, both participating and enjoying each other. It is almost back to those experiences of very small children and babies where there is joy and pleasure in just being together. We will do these kinds of things routinely here because we see it as an important part of the work.”
 
7. Consistency of approach must be really important. What does that look like? Can you give an example of how you use a shared language when it comes to talking about children’s needs?
 
That is really difficult. We have about 70 adults here, and we all have contact with the children. We will have different approaches as adults. We accept here that consistency doesn’t mean everyone being exactly the same and having the same reaction to a particular behaviour.
 
I think consistency in practice, across care and education, is the stance we take and the approach we have. The children here can be confident that when they are approached by an adult there will be a welcoming smile, and “I’m interested in what you have to say.”
 
Where we try to achieve consistency is in planning for progress. We use ‘Outcomes Star’ when the care and education team come together. We look at what the child has achieved so far and they look at how they plan to make progress towards outcomes for the child. If there have been particular issues or an incident, teams come together and work.
 
It is a challenge to get that agreement and consistency of approach because we have a lot of people with strong opinions that want to get it right for the child. I think that it is quite healthy for the adults to have those debates and then come to a conclusion that allows us to take a consistent approach. For example, if a child requests a mobile phone, we have to agree as a team what are approach is, because it is unhelpful for a child to get inconsistency around that.
 
If a child is telling different adults that they are having a bad day and adults are responding in different ways, that is okay to have slightly different approaches because the child is in different relationships with people. That is how you work out sometimes who the best person is to be with that child at that point. There is tolerance around a certain amount of inconsistency but we try to be consistent around the big issues.
 
“It is a challenge to get that agreement and consistency of approach, because we have a lot of people with strong opinions that want to get it right for the child. I think that it is quite healthy for the adults to have those debates and then come to a conclusion that allows us to take a consistent approach.”
 
“If a child is telling different adults that they are having a bad day and adults are responding in different ways, that is okay to have slightly different approaches because the child is in different relationships with people. There is tolerance around a certain amount of inconsistency but we try to be consistent around the big issues.”
 
 
8. It must be difficult to have consensus around how sanctions are used. As a teacher, I would probably rely on rewards and sanctions to help manage behaviour. How would it be different, if I was a teacher at Seamab?
 
For children who have grown up in their families, have secure attachments and are making good developmental progress, reward and sanctions can work for them because they understand that it is about their behaviour it has not been about them. The difficulty for children who have experienced significant trauma is that they carry with them significant shame. It is very easy to trigger children into those powerful feelings that can be very difficult for them to manage. Our children often carry a very strong sense that what has happened in their lives is their fault because they are bad kids and unlovable. The difficulty is that if we say, “We don’t approve of what happened there. You should go and stand outside for ten minutes because you did that,” they are very likely to feel that shame and self-disgust that will undermine the relationship with them that we are trying to develop.
 
We work hard not to use sanctions and not to use rewards for good behaviour. It is all about being in the relationship space with the child and building secure attachments between the child and their teacher or care worker. We want to build that secure attachment base with those key adults around the child. We do that by understanding their behaviour, being with them in the moment and being curious about what is happening for them when they are distressed and doing something we would prefer they wouldn’t.
 
We are really clear about boundaries: ‘Some of the things you want to do are not okay. But we want to work out why that happened and see if we can do it a different way next time.’ In terms in DDP, PACE is critical in our stance as practitioners. In that moment when you might be tempted to as an adult revert back to: “You have been really naughty so what’s going to happen is this,” that has to be set aside so that you can be in the moment with the child in their distress or naughtiness and work through that with them.
 
There are times when we use natural consequences. When a child has damaged something, or made a mess, we would say, ‘There is a big mess here, let’s get that tidied up together and then we can move on to the next thing’. If a child has assaulted an adult, “How are we going to make that okay? You have hurt someone and we want to get that sorted out.” It is not saying to the child, “What are you going to do about that?” Rather, we would ask, “What can we do about that? How can we work it out together?” That can be quite challenging at the end of a difficult day. It is really important to stay emotionally regulated as an adult in order to help the child be emotionally regulated.
 
“We work hard not to use sanctions and not to use rewards for good behaviour. It is all about being in the relationship space with the child and building secure attachments between the child and their teacher or care worker. We do that by understanding their behaviour, being with them in the moment and being curious about what is happening for them when they are distressed and doing something we would prefer they wouldn’t.”
 
“For children who have grown up in their families, have secure attachments and are making good developmental progress, reward and sanctions can work for them because they understand that it is about their behaviour and not about them. The difficulty for children who have experienced trauma is that they carry with them significant shame. Our children often carry a very strong sense that what has happened in their lives is their fault because they are bad kids and unlovable.  It is very easy to trigger children into those very powerful feelings that can be very difficult for them to manage.”
 
“We are really clear about boundaries: ‘Some of the things you want to do are not okay, but we want to work out why that happened and see if we can do it a different way next time.’”
 
“There are times when we use natural consequences. When a child has damaged something, or made a mess, we would say, ‘There is a big mess here, let’s get that tidied up together and then we can move on to the next thing’. If a child has assaulted an adult, ‘How are we going to make that okay? You have hurt someone and we want to get that sorted out.’ It is not saying to the child, ‘What are you going to do about that?’ Rather, we would ask, ‘What can we do about that? How can we work it out together?’ That can be quite challenging at the end of a difficult day. It is really important to stay emotionally regulated as an adult in order to help the child be emotionally regulated.“
 
9. When children are able to build those secure attachments, what differences do you see in the way they engage in learning?
 
Often when children are referred to Seamab, they are described as uneducable. Sometimes they have not been in education for years. That makes me sad. Once you focus on engaging the child in a trusted and secure relationship, learning can happen. As the adult, you have to be conscious that although you think the trust is there, the child might still be finding that quite difficult.
 
We have seen children going from refusing to do any school work to sitting down and producing lovely pieces of work. We have seen children make rapid progress in literacy and numeracy. We had a child here who had no literacy skills but by the time they left they were fluent readers.
 
We see children enjoying their learning and that is key. Children start to shift their thinking: ‘I can maybe do this and this might be quite fun. It makes my teacher happy when I do this and I like that because I like my teacher a lot.’
 
When we see children get it in terms of learning, we can calibrate that learning and teaching so that it fits that child’s needs, and we can be focused and flexible around what they are interested in.
 
I have seen children go from spending the whole day being dysregulated, being abusive and violent to six months later they are sitting quite happily in a classroom working away.
 
We sometimes see progress in children’s movement. Children who come here often have difficulty because of trauma with their fine and gross motor skills. We often see progress in the way they move more fluently. They play football confidently. They take on more physical challenges.
 
“I have seen children go from spending the whole day being dysregulated, being abusive and violent to six months later they are sitting quite happily in a classroom working away.”
 
“Once you focus on engaging the child in a trusted and secure relationship, learning can happen. As the adult, you have to be conscious that although you think the trust is there, the child might still be finding that quite difficult.”
 
“We see children enjoy their learning and that is key. Children start to shift their thinking: ‘I can maybe do this and this might be quite fun. It makes my teacher happy when I do this and I like that because I like my teacher a lot.”
 
10. What does that process of change look like in a school that moves away from relying on rewards and sanctions? What does change look like when a school moves away from control and containment towards a trauma-informed and attachment-sensitive way of working? What were the obstacles in making that change at Seamab?
 
It is really tough because I was asking the team to shift from control and containment to opportunities, relationship and activity. That was an enormous ask, because the team had been trained and managed to work in the control and containment way and they felt they were keeping the children safe. They had built their skills and approaches around that. I came along as the new CEO and said ‘If we are serious about helping children recover from significant trauma we need to do that in a very different way.’ That is challenging for people because they felt they were doing a good job and someone comes along and says something different.
 
There were obstacles in our way: people not seeing that you can do this in any other way, just not getting it and people not having the skill set to work in an attachment-focussed way. A lot of people decided this wasn’t for them and we had a lot of staff leave. That created its own difficulties because we are running a 24/7 service. When we lost significant numbers of staff we went through operational problems. Some of that gave us real opportunity to make that change process happen because we brought in people who were new, people who were willing to work in a relational and attachment-focussed way.  That helped shift some of the change in culture.
 
Another obstacle was that the people who were here thought they had it all sorted. think you want a team that is confident but also reflective. And when you go down the road where you think you have it all sorted, you have probably not, because you have lost the bit about your reflection on this particular child who is having a difficult day or you have lost the bit where you have not seen this before or this child needs something totally different or you need to work together differently. When you have lost that reflection piece, it is difficult to work with children in a meaningful way. That was a key challenge: developing reflective ability across the team.
 
A lot of the team had already been trained in DDP but there was not a lot of evidence to support that in practice. We had to redo all the training; we put every single member of staff through the training and we adapted the training so it fit with our context.
 
As a manager, it is quite easy to have your go-to positions, but this has required looking at how things are actually working, understanding them and thinking through what we might try to get it to the next stage. We have had lots of missteps along the way. For example, we did a review of the rota. However, the way we went about making the change was not helpful. If I could do that again I would probably do it in different way. As a manager, you can do things with the best of intentions but when you find out you have not got it right, you need to be prepared to change it again.
 
 
“It is really tough because I was asking the team to shift from control and containment to opportunities, relationship and activity. That was an enormous ask because the team had been trained and managed to work in the control and containment way. They felt they were keeping the children safe.”
 
“There were obstacles in our way: people not seeing that you can do this in any other way and people not having the skill set to work in an attachment-focussed way. A lot of people decided this wasn’t for them and we had a lot of staff leave.”
 
“When you have lost that reflection piece, it is difficult to work with children in a meaningful way. That was a key challenge: developing that reflective ability across the team.”
 
“We put every single member of staff through the DDP training and we adapted the training so it fit with our context.”
 
“As a manager, you can do things with the best of intentions but when you find out you have not got it right, you need to be prepared to change it again.”
 
 
11. Have you seen positive impact from these changes? Have you seen improvement in attainment, attendance and reduced numbers of exclusions?
 
Massive impact. The adults here are much happier and have a much more satisfying and enjoyable experience. That is a critical thing for me because without happy adult role models, how can you tell children there is happiness in their lives. Adults are also quite chilled and relaxed. Seamab is a calm place. People are ready and alert for what might happen but they are also calm and confident about it. That has been a huge shift. It matters for the children because they can feel confident that these are adults who can support them.
 
The change for the children has been phenomenal because they have a really rich experience of life and education at Seamab that we did not offer them before. They come here and do fun things and lots of great activities; they find out things they are talented at and other things they are not so good at but they learn to put up with. They can make progress in all aspects of their lives. We took a group of children to Florida. It was the first time any of those children had been out of Scotland. They had a fabulous time. That is a life-time memory for those children. If I had proposed to the team that was here a few years ago that we would take trip to Florida, they would have looked at me like I was off my head. Whereas the team now said, ‘That’s a good idea and how do we manage that?’
 
Every year we do a sailing trip for five children with five adults. The first time we planned that there we a lot of concern among the team. It was seen as a high-risk thing to do. I had a sleepless night before the trip. When the five children came back it had been a transformative experience. One of the children came back and said, “I learned to sail a boat, I can do anything.” This is a child who had a really negative view of himself and he came back and was able to see himself in a different way. When I see that kind of impact, I can see the difference that the approach we have now makes for children.
 
“Massive impact. The adults here are much happier and have a much more satisfying and enjoyable experience. That is a critical thing for me because without happy adult role models, how can you tell children there is happiness in their lives.”
 
“People are ready and alert for what might happen but they are also calm and confident about it. That has been a huge shift. It matters for the children because they can feel confident that these are adults who can support them.”
 
“Every year we do a sailing trip for five children. The first time we made this trip, there we a lot of concern among the team. It was seen as a high-risk thing to do. One of the children came back from the trip and said, ‘I learned to sail a boat, I can do anything.’ This is a child who had a really negative view of himself and he came back and was able to see himself in a different way. When I see that kind of impact, I can see the difference that the approach we have now makes for children.”
 
12. Can you summarise why relationships are important in education?
 
Relationships are often the place where our children have experienced the most hurt and most betrayal. Relationships have got to be the place where people recover. Relationships are where they rediscover themselves as human beings and where they rediscover trust and confidence in others. We know that as you go through life relationships are the most important aspect of everything. Relationships you might have with your partner or with your family or your own children. The capacity to form loving, safe relationships is incredibly important. We have got to build that capacity in children here. We have to got to be able to show them what love feels like and it is safe. We have to give them that experience of being loved and cared for and having an adult who is crazy about them. Relationships build that capacity in the child to have a happy and fulfilling life. If we don’t do that we are failing them.
 
“Relationships are often the place where our children have experienced the most hurt and most betrayal. Relationships have got to be the place where people recover. Relationships are where they rediscover themselves as human beings and where they rediscover trust and confidence in others.”
 
“The capacity to form loving, safe relationships is incredibly important. We have got to build that capacity in children here. We have to got to be able to show them what love feels like and it is safe. We have to give them that experience of being loved and cared for and having an adult who is crazy about them. Relationships build that capacity in the child to have a happy and fulfilling life. If we don’t do that we are failing them.” 

​© 20189 Joanna McCreadie and David Woodier. Permission granted to reproduce for personal and educational use only. Copyright notice must remain intact.