The Importance of Understanding Intergenerational Family Patterns on Child Psychological and Emotional Development

with Christina Enright, Psychotherapist and Attachment Specialist

Friday 20th November, 10am to 1pm

Online via Zoom

For Foster Carers and practitioners throughout the country

To Book You Place: email Katherine on learning@ifca.ie

Course Overview:

For parents and foster carers ,understanding a child’s experience of parent-child and interfamily dynamics and how they shape the child’s development and behaviour is important to be able to support a child when there have been  negative impacts. This course takes a deep dive into interfamily relationships and negative relational patterns that can develop that can affect how a child thinks, feels and behaves. Ideas for responding to a child who has experienced harmful or dysfunctional parental/family dynamics will be shared.

Learning Outcomes:

• What kinds of difficult patterns/dynamics can present in families?
• How different family relational patterns might impact on children through their development;
• How might these dynamics present in the relationship between child and foster carer/adoptive parent?
• How to recognise how negative family dynamics impact a child’s behaviour;
• How to communicate with and respond to a child who has come from a family where there have been harmful dynamics in order to help the child to develop more constructive ways of relating.

About Christina Enright

RN, BSc Psychology, Dip in Family Therapy, MA Child Psychotherapy, Dip Clinical Supervision. Over the past 20 years, Christina has worked as a psychotherapist with traumatised children, adolescents, and birth parents as well as with foster carers and adoptive parents. Her experience includes the development of a multidisciplinary clinical service for families experiencing trauma and attachment problems who were reluctant to engage with main-stream social care and mental health services. From 2015-2017 Christina provided trauma consultancy to the clinical team developing a children’s service within the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in the UK.

Christina’s special interest is in early childhood development and the impact of trauma on a child’s developing capacities, functioning and behaviour. From her experience working with children who have endured developmental trauma characterised by neglect and abuse, she has found it necessary to use a comprehensive integrated approach in order to address the multiple complexities which such children present with. Christina returned to live in Ireland in 2016 and currently works as a Developmental Trauma and Attachment specialist providing training, assessment and clinical interventions on behalf of Tusla Child and Family Agency and in independent practice with birth and adoptive families. She also delivers training on child development, trauma and attachment both within the NHS and other education and social care systems across the UK and Ireland.