ac.care Therapeutic Strength Based Care

Introducing the Community

Therapeutic Strength Based Care (TSBC)

ac.care deliver a high quality, trauma-informed and best-practice residential care program for children and young people living away from their family of origin in the Murraylands, Mt Gambier and Riverland regions. 

LBI Foundation has provided the ac.care TSBC program capacity building support under the Care IMPACT strategy. The intent (or outcomes) and actions of this work is summarised below.

accare

Intent ('What')

Build a Wellbeing and Trauma Responsive Care Community

As Made Practical Through the Following Co-Designed Outcomes

System

To embed a cohesive, intentional, integrated and best-practice approach to:

  • Embed all therapeutic components (e.g., TCI, clinical support, growth planning) under a singular framework. 
  • Implement a safe, growth-focused and trauma-responsive care environment. 
  • Deliver personalised child wellbeing and growth-focused care, and to meet all children at their individual starting point (needs and context), and in moment-to-moment caregiving support.
  • Embed a trauma and growth-focused care culture. 

Caregivers

To embed the awareness, skills and mindsets to: 

  • Intentionally respond (rather than react) to individual child needs (e.g., trauma, growth developmental) in a relationship focused, trauma-responsive and personalised manner.  
  • Grow child capacity through intentionally delivered caregiving, side-by-side coaching, shared Growth Action Planning processes and through both implicit and explicit caregiving support.
  • Empower the caregiver team to work together in shared intent. 

Children

To provide children with intentionally delivered relational and coaching experiences that grow: 

  • Feelings of safety and trust at all times.
  • Their awareness of self, others, world and future. 
  • Foundational social-emotional learning, meta-cognitive, self-regulation, independence and life skills. 
  • The mindsets, beliefs and attitudes associated with resilient whole-of-life outcomes. 
  • Their capacity to develop their own wellbeing, life and growth solutions (or wellbeing plans). 

Actions ('How')

Positioning

The capacity building support has been personalised to the ac.care TSBC program. The TSBC program draws upon other best-practice therapeutic components (e.g., Therapeutic Crisis Intervention, TCI), and the IMPACT Program (and the intentional practice approach) is designed to strengthen this component, and personalise caregiving responses to children’s individual needs and context. 

Summary Actions

  • Entire capacity building initiative is founded upon the science, research and practice of intentional practice, as made practical for therapeutic residential care settings (see this research article). 
  • Implementation underpinned by the Care IMPACT capacity building strategy.  
  • LBI Foundation Community Lead: Ivan Raymond. 
  • Co-design of a whole-of-program contextualised therapeutic framework (named Synchronise) to name, intentionally position and integrate all key therapeutic features and components (e.g., TCI, IMPACT).
  • Whole-of-program IMPACT Training (Train-the-Trainer), with wrap-around clinically focused Growth Action Planning.
  • House Supervisors accredited to the IMPACT Coach level to embed and coach foundational trauma and growth planning content, including through online IMPACT coaching modules and resources, and reflective practices. 
  • Key embedding strategies: documented and coached Growth Action Planning, dynamic and ongoing child-led wellbeing planning, documented growth intent planning for each shift
Happy Teenagers

Commentary and Further Information

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Why Did We Go On This Journey?

We have been using intentional practice and IMPACT to empower our program to deliver a trauma-responsive and growth-focused residential care environment, which intentionally responds to an individual child’s needs and context. It asks us to think about “what is the intent” or “what is the growth intent” of our support, and “how are we delivering therapeutic outcomes for children and young people”. It keeps growth at the forefront of our minds. I use key IMPACT content (eg What-What-How®, under the surface needs) every day in my support to staff teams. It grounds me. We have embedded the Growth Action Planning process to personalise our responses to children. This tool provides a key method for clinical input to be understood and applied by caregivers, and for us to work with a shared intent with schools, DCP and care team members.

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Role of IMPACT

IMPACT has given our carers the tools required to therapeutically respond to young people experiencing complex trauma.