At Knightlamp, we pride ourselves on our professional and trauma-informed approach and our Behaviour Support Practitioners are trained to understand and address the complex nature of trauma, ensuring a safe and supportive environment for our clients.

Our Behaviour Support Practitioners utilise evidence-based therapeutic framework and have a deep understanding of trauma and its effects. They work collaboratively with our clients, helping them process their experiences and develop effective Positive Behavioural Support Plans.

We understand the importance of ongoing support and guidance. Our team is committed to providing continuous assistance, and are here to offer advice, answer questions, and provide observations to help.

Our approach is tailored to the unique needs of each individual. We take the time to thoroughly assess and understand your specific situation, allowing us to provide personalised Positive Behavioural Support Plans and ongoing support that aligns with your goals and aspirations.

In recent years, Trauma Informed Practice has become a somewhat nebulous term, leading to levels of cynicism about what it entails and its effectiveness in foster care, residential care, schools, and other environments involved in children and young people living with developmental trauma. However, when understood and applied properly, a trauma informed therapeutic care approach has been consistently shown to lead to remarkable and measurable therapeutic outcomes (see DHS 2011).

Excellent trauma informed practice begins with your choice of training, and training provider. The Knightlamp Approach ® Seminar Series is Australia's most popular and effective training in Trauma Informed Practice for a number of reasons:

Training has been developed using the updated knowledge from the fields of neurobiology, attachment and psychodynamic theory.

Our facilitators have decades of experience in trauma informed practice so that participants can feel confident that all questions will be answered.

We walk the talk. We use the concepts and strategies discussed in training, in our work every day.

Training is free of academic jargon. We ensure a comprehensive understanding of complex trauma, without making it complicated.

Staff leave each seminar feeling enthusiastic and hopeful about their work.

Each seminar in the series builds on preceding modules for better outcomes, increased staff retention, and improved workplace safety.

Our training workshops build on an evidence based framework and can be undertaken in sequence as follows:

The Knightlamp Approach ® to Complex Trauma Fundamentals

The Knightlamp Approach ® to Applied Trauma Informed Practice

The Knightlamp Approach ® to Managing Violence in Care

The Knightlamp Approach ® to Self Care & Preventing Vicarious Trauma

Delivery: Each seminar is facilitated either as full day onsite, or live, interactive webinars (2 x 3 hour modules).

Debriefing

Timely debriefing is essential after a critical incident as part of a worker's recovery from its psychological impact. In addition, our facilitators use a combination of psychodynamic and trauma informed frameworks to assist helping professionals to:

Mitigate against potential vicarious trauma

Make sense client behaviour

Disentangle the client's traumatic material from their own emotional response

As part of clinical reflection that make inform adjustments to behaviour support plans

And to inform necessary changes to processes and systems in order to minimize risk.

Depending on circumstance and need, debriefing may be conducted individually or in groups.

Secondary Consultation

During secondary consultation, our senior clinicians will draw on extensive practice experience and theoretical knowledge to assist care teams to make sense of a specific case or situation and provide brief formulations and strategies. Secondary consultations allow the input of a specialist through a trauma lens and usually end with a number of agreed actions and suggested practice. A follow up session will check on the outcome following implementation of recommendations. Minimum 1.5 hour session.

Reflective Practice Groups

Each session is structured to accommodate a framework of evidence-based theory that underpins, as summarised above, the mitigation of vicarious trauma and facilitation of insight, team cohesion, and retention for application of training principles in the workplace. Sessions are open, do not place pressure on members to speak except at the beginning 'checking in' stage, and are contained and guided by the facilitator who offers their own reflections through a theoretical lens.

Reflective practice and clinical consultation sessions are focussed on the young people under the care or case management of the team and also provides the theoretical underpinnings of trauma informed care, and understanding of developmental trauma and how it impacts on behavioural presentation.

The group session serves as an interactive secondary consultation as well as ongoing embedding of the practice approach and tailored model of intervention. These regular sessions enable the formulation of approaches and strategies, to evaluate and modify approaches as needed and ensure that therapeutic progress is being achieved through the care plan design and approaches of carers and stakeholders.

Leadership group - Acts as a safe, reflective space for the executive team to discuss the implication of trauma theory on every aspect of the organisational role in therapeutic care, with a focus on staff teams, programs, challenges with relationships with FACS and other agencies that may not be working to a trauma-based model, and formation and sustaining of positive house 'culture'.

Clinical team - Provides an external reference point, and an ongoing avenue for trouble-shooting and reflection around coaching of staff, clinical challenges and putting the principles of the model into practice. It also, additionally ensures that the clinical staff from all areas regularly meet together to discuss practice challenges and to ensure consistency and congruence in approach and clinical systems.