Understanding child sexual abusers

Alice Newman, Lucy Faithfull Foundation

A foundation course for professionals

Our one-day workshop provides an overview of child sexual abuse and abusers.  It will be of particular relevance to offender managers, social workers, public protection police officers and other professionals concerned with protecting children from sexual harm.

This training course provides a broad and informative overview of child sexual abuse.  It explores different ways of understanding sexual offending and how these can be applied to the decisions you make in your work with offenders, victims and families.

Based on experience, research and current practice, the course offers a clear foundation upon which to build your knowledge and skills, covering:

• The models used to understand the behaviour
• The process of sexually abusive behaviour in a variety of contexts
• The impact of child sexual abuse
• How sex offenders are assessed and managed in the criminal justice and child protection systems
• Defensible decision-making

The course will be of interest to all child protection professionals, and those new to a role that involves the assessment or treatment of abusers in particular.  It will also be of benefit to those working with child victims of sexual abuse or other family members.

With a specialist background in child protection, our course facilitators will explore:

• The scale of the problem: How many victims? Who are the abusers? What are we doing about it?
• Models for understanding and assessing this behaviour
• The differences between contact and internet offending and offenders
• How child sexual abuse affects primary and secondary victims
• Risk assessment methods and offender management and treatment

Throughout the day, you will be given the opportunity to explore the issues through individual case studies and to discuss your own case examples.

Date: 1 December 2010

Venue: Birmingham

Cost: £155 including VAT & lunch

For further information please click here for a brochure, go to www.lucyfaithfull.org or phone Nicola Wathen on 01527 591922

Deep Release Ministry Weekend for Counsellors

Includes:

• Introductory talk on unfinished business from the past
• Talk on Vicarious Traumatisation and how we need to take care of ourselves
• Small groups of 4 participants and 2 leaders
• 8 group sessions, each participant having two sessions devoted to them
• Free time and personal space
• Praise and worship times

Friday 3 December 2010 - Sunday 5 December 2010 - 11.00 am Friday to 4.00 pm Sunday

The Sion Community, Sawyers Hall Lane, Brentwood, Essex  CM15 9BX

Cost: £185.00 including Friday lunch and evening meal, Saturday lunch and evening meal, Sunday lunch.

Go to www.deeprelease.org.uk for more details and to book

Using strengths-based approaches with sex offenders

Dr Andrew Smith, Lucy Faithfull Foundation

A course for practitioners working with offenders on a one-to-one basis

Our one-day workshop explores a range of strengths-based approaches, which can be used by probation officers, psychologists, social workers and residential workers in their work with sex offenders, and the roles these methods play in reducing risk effectively.

This training course provides you with a greater understanding of how you can encourage offenders to manage their own behaviour and avoid reoffending.  Throughout the day, you will be given the opportunity to explore the issues using individual case studies as well as to discuss your own case examples.

The course looks at practical ways in which strengths-based approaches can be applied to your work with sex offenders (or suspected sex offenders) in order to help them meet everyday challenges.

With a specialist background in offender treatment and management, our course facilitators will explain ways to:

• Work with denial, minimisation and resistance
• Identify resources from an offender's life-line which can be used to manage risk
• Help sex offenders break or avoid cycles of offending
• Raise sex offender's awareness of appropriate sexual boundaries
• Formulate personal risk management and family safety plans

The formulation of risk management or safety plans can also be used to consolidate and augment statutory licence conditions, supervision plans and child protection agreements.

The theories and methods covered on this course include solution-focused therapy and the 'Good Lives' approach (The Good Lives Model, T Ward & T Gannon 2006)

Date: 9 December 2010

Venue: Bristol

Cost: £155 including VAT & lunch

For further information please click here for a brochure, go to www.lucyfaithfull.org or phone Nicola Wathen on 01527 591922

Dissociation, Trauma and Time-Travelling ...

... or Living and Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder

A joint TASC and Deep Release training day with Hazel Barton, Jane Potts and Carolyn Spring.

Suitable for counsellors, therapists, survivors, partners, pastoral workers, Rape Crisis Centre staff, and anyone else interested or involved in the field of trauma and dissociation

Carolyn Spring worked therapeutically with children for nearly ten years.  And then all of a sudden, at the peak of her career, she had an unexpected and debilitating breakdown. From working as a professional in a multi-agency team, she suddenly found herself unable to sleep, eat, think or work. At times she was barely able to speak, and when she did so it was in a four-year-old's voice, pleading not to be hurt.  She began what felt like a series of 'time-travels', back into the past, then suddenly forwards again into the present.  She would realise that she was miles from home, with no memory of how she had got there. She felt like she was stepping in and out of the TARDIS in Doctor Who.

That was over five years ago.  Carolyn is now walking down a path of increasing healing, having been diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder as a result of extreme childhood sexual, physical and emotional abuse.  Using her story as a basis, and expanding out into the experiences from 'the other side' of two leading therapists, this training day will explore the mechanisms of dissociation and DID, the effect of trauma on the body and brain, the reality and therapeutic minefields of disorganised attachment, and how healing and recovery can be possible through appropriate therapeutic work.

The training will be led by Hazel Barton and Dr Jane Potts, two therapists experienced in the field of trauma and dissociation, as well as by Carolyn herself.  It will be a fascinating day full of insights into both living and working with Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Topics Covered:

Part 1 — Dissociation, Trauma and Attachment:

• what is dissociation and what is its function?
• what are dissociative disorders and how do they develop?
• understanding trauma
• understanding attachment

Part 2 — The Experience of Being DID:

• denial, somatisation, shame, trust
• disorganised attachment, powerlessness
• identity (the structure of the personality)
• sexuality, parenting / family life, vocation / work

Part 3 — Working with Dissociation:

• the 3-phase treatment plan
• treatment modalities
• issues for the therapist
• sources of support and information

Saturday 11 December 2010, 9.30 am to 5.00 pm

Felden Lodge, Hemel Hempstead, HP3 0BL

Cost: £50.00 per person

For further details and to book please go to www.tasc-online.org.uk/tasctraining.

Child sexual abuse and the internet

Tom Squire, Lucy Faithfull Foundation

A course for those working with internet sexual offenders

Our one-day workshop explores all aspects of internet offending and will benefit social workers, offender managers and other practitioners involved in the assessment and risk management of internet offenders.

This training course provides an insight into how the internet is used as part of sexually abusive behaviour and explores practical ways in which associated risks can be assessed.  It also looks at intervention methods for internet offenders and their families.

The course provides you with a greater understanding and awareness of:

• The different types of internet abuser
• The different ways in which abusers use the internet
• The relationship between internet offending and 'hands on' offending
• Ways to develop robust and effective Family Safety Plans

It also provides a greater awareness of the range of possible responses when internet offending comes to light and how best to respond.

Drawing upon current research and our own treatment work with internet offenders and their families, our course facilitators will explain:

• The facts about pornography and the internet
• How children commonly use the internet
• The types of internet offender
• Research on recidivism and suitable assessment methods
• How to formulate intervention plans
• Suggested preconditions for family reconstruction

Throughout the day, you will be given the opportunity to explore the issues using a series of practical case studies as well as to discuss your own case examples.

Date: 16 December 2010

Venue: Bristol

Cost: £155 including VAT & lunch

For further information please click here for a brochure, go to www.lucyfaithfull.org or phone Nicola Wathen on 01527 591922