Attachment problems develop when children are unable to emotionally connect with their caregivers. Normally the result of early traumatic experiences, attachment difficulties often manifest in the form of emotional avoidance, exaggerated distress, anger, or an apparent refusal to engage and connect with caring others.

This dynamic workshop will showcase practical, creative and effective ideas for practitioners and carers who work with children and families who experience attachment difficulties.

Play based activities are a powerful way to foster healthy attachment relationships and the Play Therapy techniques that will be presented are all grounded in contemporary knowledge and understanding of attachment theory, developmental trauma and neurobiology.

Some of the specific applications/techniques that Hannah will discuss include:

• Creating safety: finding safe people and safe places.
• My feelings and me – increase understanding of emotions and how they relate to self and experiences.
• Degree of safety – increase awareness of safety boundaries.
• From fear to safely scared activities/seeking and receiving comfort and nurture.
• Resources - My support team; digging for treasures.
• What happened to me - creating new narratives.
• Using stories to integrate experiences and reflective capacity.
• Teaching brain science using play activities.
• Parent-child interactions – increase open and engaged parent-child interactions, and increase capacity to experience joy in healthy attachment relationships.
• Hope – increase capacity to mentalise a positive future.

Play-based interventions and exercises will be demonstrated and practiced throughout the workshop and participants will leave with the confidence to immediately incorporate these techniques into their work with children, young people and/or families.

Hannah Sun-Reid lives and works in Ontario Canada and has more than 25 years' experience working therapeutically and creatively with children and families. She is a certified Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy practitioner, consultant and trainer; and a certified Play Therapist, supervisor and trainer. Hannah is also certified/trained in Theraplay, Trauma Therapy, Sandtray-Worldplay, EMDR and Traumatic Incident Reduction Therapy and is also the author of a number of therapeutic children’s books and games. Her warm and engaging presentation style combined with her significant experience and expertise in creative therapies make this a workshop not to be missed.