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EMOTIONAL HARMPlease see our Risk Options section. This one day course (is best extended to two days for staff) is intended for childcare practitioners or LSCB multi-agency training day. This course is taught from the perspective of Attachment Theory. Emotional
abuse or maltreatment is always a parallel of other types of abuse and, in the longer run and
leaving aside fatal or disabling injury, it is what causes the most harm. For
example, children who become adults exhibiting serious disorganised attachment
are often personality disordered (or even become seriously mentally ill) in
various ways. It is some of these people that end up in prison, in mental
hospitals, become permanently homeless or harm their own children or other
adults and, in some extreme cases, become predatory paedophiles or rapists. “Disorganised Attachment” is a term that is only applied to children and young people. By the time people who exhibit disorganised attachment are around the age of majority (18) they will have either “resolved” their attachment problems into one of the main “attachment styles” (secure, avoidant or ambivalent) or, if remaining “disorganised,” would likely be diagnosed as “personality disordered” to some level or degree. However, less than 1% - 2% of the UK adult population have an “official” diagnosis of personality disorder but the true figure is estimated (mental health foundation) to be around 10% - 15% of the population. The main reason for this distortion is that a diagnosis of personality disorder tends to only be given for persistent and serious criminal offending. Statistics
vary, but research on the general prevalence of child maltreatment (all types
and ranging in severity) in society varies between 1 in 10 (10%) to 1 in 20 (5%)
of the child population. This group of children is part of the 4,000,000
children thought to be “vulnerable” by the DE. Only some of these children
will receive services from social services or health. The
“quality” of parenting in terms of how the child is emotionally treated is
rarely addressed adequately in intervention programmes although it is (as can be
seen above) probably the most important aspect of intervention. If this isn’t
corrected by the time the child is approximately age 3 (at the latest) it is
probably too late (even then) to radically improve life outcomes. Much can be
done to make things better but the “true” potential of the child will
unlikely ever be recovered. Early outcome specific intervention is critical.
This also applies to Neglect cases. The discussion of emotional abuse in the absence of a theoretical baseline seems to us a recipe for fragmentation and confusion. This, we perceive, has traditionally been part of the problem (including neglect) of definition and effective treatment. The essence of Attachment Theory is emotional well-being or its deficiency. A great deal of recent research has been based around Attachment Theory (notably, Fonagy (2001), Allen (2001) and Holmes (2001) which has at one level clearly demonstrated the worth of some of the “old ideas” of practice, e.g. Life Story Work (therapeutic model rather than the chronological "Life Story Book" model -see Osiris Direct Work course) as being the prime indicated intervention strategy for ALL abused children no matter the placement plan, and, at another level, greatly enriched the depth of the explanatory and predictive power of the theory in terms of assessment and intervention strategies. This course will provide a basic introduction to Attachment Theory and its powerful connection with the assessment of emotional abuse. Learning Objectives:
See: information on Attachment Theory - user materials.
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OSIRIS: Lighting the Way Forward
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