By ANEEKA SIMONIS
DOZENS of maternal and child health nurses working with Cardinia Shire’s most vulnerable families will undergo specialist trauma training.
The training will help nurses support parents to manage their child’s development if they have been exposed to traumatic experiences, including abuse in their own home.
Children and young people will also be among those able to access the non-invasive information gathering tool about their experiences with family violence as part of Together We Can’s Year of Action.
Family violence experts will develop a specialised curriculum over the next months which will form part of an online discussion tool where children ask each other questions about healthy relationships and develop ways to track and change it.
This ‘Map Your World’ program promises to capture the voices of children and identify issues to be addressed in creating a safer environment for kids.
The 16-week initiative will be launched in Cardinia Shire schools in line with a respectful relationships curriculum rolled out next year.
Nurses who often see first-hand the long-term traumatic impacts abuse has on women and children will take part in the two-hour intensive training session on Thursday 15 September.
Nurses working with families from all walks of life, will take part in the specialist training run by provisional clinical psychologist Tom Mulvaney from Family Life.
The training will focus on helping parents with children exposed to violence to develop healthy brain function, particularly when faced with high stress situations.
Mr Mulvaney said broken relationships between a child and parent did more than frame unhealthy ideas about relationships in the eyes of a child.
It can have a huge impact on their long-term coping mechanisms.
“When a child is distressed, the caregiver soothes them. The child’s body then learns to respond to being soothed and over time, they can self-regulate that response,” he said.
“When the caregiver is a perpetrator of violence or is affected themselves, they are less able or available to teach kids to self-regulate. Children then learn unhealthy ways to self-regulate.”
Such reactions could be prolonged states of alertness or flatness experienced by the child.
Mr Mulvaney said this was particularly damaging.
The longer a child finds themselves in either state, the easier it is triggered when experiencing non-threatening, normal situations.
“Over time, despite experiencing less (dangerous) stimuli, they will still have that acute response to stress,” he said.
“We often see this in children. It plays out in their behaviour in conduct disorders where they can’t handle the stimuli. They’ll scream, not focus or withdraw completely from the classroom, impacting their access to education.”
The training will work repair such a ‘rupture’ in the child’s brain and encourage the formation of positive brain function.
Nurses signed on to take part in the specialist trauma training work in kindergartens and childcare centres across Cardinia Shire.
The initiatives make up Together We Can’s Year of Action, planning to drive down rates of family violence in Cardinia Shire.
At the recent launch, the community was invited to take a binding pledge to stop, prevent and end family violence in their community and spread the awareness message.
Signatories made commitments to hold people who use violence and abuse to account for their actions and do what they can to protect children from unsafe environments.
Statistics show children were present at more than 40 per cent of family violence incidents in 2013-’14.
Anyone who is experiencing family violence can phone the safe steps 24/7 Family Violence Response Centre on 1800 015 188. The Men’s Referral Service Victoria can be reached on 1300 766 491.
