The Listen to Me Approach has been developed to provide an early, responsive and coordinated service for parents who have been impacted by trauma within the Falkirk council area, either in relation to their own childhood or through their children’s experiences.

Falkirk Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) and their third sector partners recognised that to support parents when and where a need for support was identified required the upskilling of the workforce. To this end, the steering group (with representatives from the HSCP, Falkirk Council and the third sector) secured short-term Scottish Government “Inspiring Scotland” funding to: employ a development worker to coordinate the approach, begin mapping the adult trauma responses already being offered, and provide specific training on key evidence based approaches to upskill the workforce.

The workforce relates to any organisation within the Falkirk Council area working with parents who have experienced trauma.

HSCP are entering the next phase of this approach. Here they plan to offer the following training:

General facilitation skills training for practitioners who are interested in becoming future training facilitators
Trauma Informed Practice – this foundation training will provide staff with the confidence, knowledge and skills to begin and maintain conversations with parents who are struggling to function due to the effects of trauma. A workshop will provide information on what trauma is and tools and resources to confidently support service users who are experiencing trauma or grief. Following the workshop, ongoing support will be offered to ensure the attendees are able to embed this model in their practice. For more details please contact Alison Girdwood: alison.girdwood@barnardos.org.uk
In My Shoes – this is an I.T. based resource that helps children and vulnerable adults to communicate about their experiences, including potentially distressing events of relationships. Extensive testing shows it can be used in a wide range of circumstances, including interviews with children who may have been abused, or who have difficulties in expressing emotions, who are hard to engage or who have developmental delay or other difficulties. It has also been used successfully in interviewing learning disabled adults. For more details please contact Leni Rademacher: leni.ademacher@falkirk.gov.uk
Seasons for Growth – this training aims to build resilience and bring hope and confidence to adults who have experienced significant change or loss. Grief may be due to any number of experiences: bereavement, relationship breakdown, coming to a new country or experiencing a natural disaster. It may be a recent loss, or something that happened a long time ago. The process of participating in a Seasons for Growth group provides adults with the opportunity to practice new skills, learn new ways of thinking and acquire more effective ways of coping. It provides a safe place to discuss personal responses to loss and bereavement, the meanings that these experiences have for them, and then to make positive choices as to how they can respond to these events in the future. For more details please contact Nicola Robertson: nicola.robertson@falkirk.gov.uk

Managers are asked to begin considering their service needs and identify what training is most appropriate for individual staff and volunteers and will best support their service developmental outcomes in relation to recognising and responding to trauma.

For further information on the above training opportunities, please contact the person named in each opportunity.