Conference Agenda

In the treatment groups for adolescents and elementary school children at UPC KU Leuven, we work in a highly specialized residential (or: inpatient) university center. In this setting, it seems even more crucial to take therapy outside the therapists' rooms into relational daily life.
Per treatment group eight children and young people are admitted, for a period of seven months on average after outpatient treatment has proven insufficient. Young people in our treatment groups have already been diagnosed with various conditions.

Most of them have insecure attachments, carry heavy wounds after traumatic events, and are stuck in their development. In our work we aim to create repairing attachment experiences with caretakers, for children and their primary caregivers. We focus on making care safe and secure enough again so that they can take new steps in their development. In this process we work together with their families, so primary caregivers can be more of a resource to coach their children’s impacted development.

Based on our frameworks from Nonviolent Resistance, Trauma-Sensitive Work, and Attachment-Based Care for Teams, we primarily use ‘ordinary’ or daily interactions and situations, such as diner time, bedtime, transfer to class, visits at home or peer interactions as therapeutic working material. We set up these interactions as learning trials on developing trust in care and on developing autonomy and competence. In doing so, we aim to build and broaden the attachment systems in children, young people and their caretakers.

In this workshop, we give participants a unique insight into our attachment based focus in residential care through video material from our treatment groups. The clips illustrate how we use our attachment based skills as transitional attachment figures; providing structure, holding up expectations, coregulating emotion and support approach behaviors.