Conference: Understanding Developmental Trauma and its Impact on Caregivers and Their Children

Registration Info

• Friday, November 6, 2015 from 9:00am-4:00pm
• Location: UJA- Federation of New York 130 E. 59th Street New York, NY 10022
• Run by Adelphi University Institute for Parenting
• Early Registration (Before Oct. 16): $105
• Regular Registration (Oct. 17 and later) : $115
• More Information call 516.237.8513 or visit website
• Registration Link
• Be sure to register on mylearningplan.com to track hours.

About the Program

Developmental Trauma results when very young children grow up in a relational context of physical or sexual abuse, volatility from parental substance abuse or mental illness, profound neglect and/or domestic violence.  These experiences beget a range of infant-caregiver interactions that are intrusive, threatening, aggressive, rejecting, or exploitive and which communicate that the environment is indifferent, unsafe and/or, precarious.  Very young children do not have the capacity to cope with the extreme levels of stress that they experience and their fear/anxiety about their physical and psychological safety is experienced as a threat to their survival. They develop and internal working model that represents the world as inevitably bringing hurt and pain and themselves as damaged and terrible. Several areas of development are impacted when young children witness or experience chronic trauma, violence, abuse and/or neglect within the caregiving relationship, these are; affective and physiological dysregulation; attentional and behavioral dysregulation; self and relational dysregulation; chronically altered perception and expectations; posttraumatic symptoms; and functional impairment in the following arenas: academic, family, peers, legal and health.  Sadly, many of the parents with whom we work have their own history of developmental trauma, and this impacts their ability to parent, to engage productively with services, to connect with and use social supports and to navigate systems successfully.

The training will begin with an overview of early brain development. First the instructor will examine normative development, and then she will explore the impact of abuse/neglect and other traumas on neurodevelopment, the development of attachment and the capacity to self-regulate. The training will then explore longer-term impacts of developmental trauma on the capacity to form and maintain healthy relationships, risk-taking, parenting, coping with stressors and substance use. The ACEs study will be cited to highlight these impacts.  We will then explore how a parent's developmental trauma impacts his/her ability to engage with helpers, who work in and outside of the Child Welfare System.  The instructor will discuss ways to support efforts to heal this long-standing trauma as well as how to support reunification where indicated.

This program has been approved for a total of 6 continuing education/training/contact hours/credits/units for:  

• NYSED
• Social Work
• Psychology
• NBCC

About the Instructor

Michele Many, LCSW, MSW, BACS, is the Chief of the Section of Social Work for the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, Department of Psychiatry. Ms. Many is an expert clinician and trainer for many approaches to addressing trauma with children and families. She is a master clinician and nationally recognized trainer for Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) for working with 0-5 year- olds and who have experienced a range of child maltreatment particularly those in foster care.