Adolescence is never easy but when trauma is part of the story, the challenges become more complex, more intense, and often more misunderstood.

This emotionally grounded, strategy-rich workshop explores how trauma disrupts the core developmental tasks of adolescence: identity formation, emotional regulation, safety, boundaries, and connection. Professionals will gain tools to work directly with teens to help them make sense of their reactions, regulate their nervous systems, and build trust, while also learning how to guide the parents, carers, and systems around them to stay steady and supportive.

Drawing on neurodevelopmental theory, attachment models, and lived case examples, Dr Slavin explores how professionals can work with teenagers who push connection away and how to guide the systems around them to stay regulated, compassionate, and consistent.

In this one-day workshop, you will develop a grounded understanding of what adolescence is for, how trauma can complicate or intensify this stage, and why many young people struggle most at the point where demands increase but regulation and thinking systems are still developing.

Key Learning Areas:

• Understand how trauma affects adolescent development, and how to explain this clearly to teens, carers, and professionals
• Strengthen your confidence in staying connected and thinking clearly during high-stress moments
• Identify survival behaviours (e.g. withdrawal, shutdown, defiance, over-compliance) as adaptive strategies
• Build and apply practical regulation strategies (emotional, sensory, somatic, and relational)
• Build confidence in recognising and responding to risk (including self-harm) in ways that reduce shame and support safety
• Strengthen adults’ ability to hold clear boundaries with empathy, and to respond to relational ruptures in a way that maintains connection

You’ll leave with an integrated, trauma-informed toolkit for supporting both traumatised teens and the adults around them, with the insight, strategies, and language to promote safety, trust, and emotional growth, even in the most turbulent moments.

Who should attend: This workshop is ideal for youth workers, social workers, psychologists, counsellors, foster care teams, educators, and all professionals supporting traumatised adolescents through direct work and by supporting the systems that hold them.