Learn strategies to support your child’s emotional regulation and behaviour and enhance family relationships through evidence-based approaches.
The Family Connections Program focuses on building skills in emotional regulation and behaviour management to support children. Difficulties in these areas are often complex due to a range of factors and can be very tough for families. The Family Connections Program has a parent capacity-building focus and seeks to support families with these challenges in a holistic way.
Discover Options for Support Within the Family Connections Program
There are three different parts to the Family Connections – Individual Therapy:
Part 1 – Family Connections – Foundational Concepts
This five-session support program uses underlying principles of relationship, connection, and seeing behaviour as communication. It focuses on a range of “puzzle pieces” that contribute to supporting children with emotional regulation and behaviour, including emotion coaching, understanding sensory needs and preferences, developing routines, and considering the environments in which children participate.
Part 2 – Solving Problems Using Collaborative and Proactive Solutions
Family Connections Part 2 is also a 5 session program of support that uses principles from Dr Ross Green’s Collaborative and Proactive Solutions model. This program seeks to build skills in identifying problems in functional terms, and solving problems collaboratively with children and young people.
Part 3 – Parent Capacity Building Workshops
In addition to the above 1:1 parent capacity-building programs, we also offer evidence-based parent workshops: Tuning in to Kids, Tuning in to Teens, and Circle of Security parenting.
Circle of Security ParentingTM
The Circle of Security ParentingTM program is based on years of research and seeks to strengthen attachment relationships between caregivers and children. The program:
- Provides a map of attachment to help caregivers understand and meet their child’s needs.
- Introduces tools for caregivers to help their children learn to manage their emotions.
Tuning into Kids®
Tuning in to Kids® is an emotion-focused parenting program. It uses a five-step emotion coaching model to teach parents and carers skills in helping their children to recognise, understand and manage their emotions. This, in turn, helps children to build their emotional regulation skills.
Tuning into Teens®
Tuning in to Teens® is based on the same emotion coaching model as the Tuning in to Kids program, however provides additional information specific to the development and emotional needs of teenagers.
These workshops offer excellent principles to support building your skills in emotional regulation and behaviour and are highly recommended in addition to either or both of the above 1:1 Family Connections programs.
Why Building Blocks Therapy?
While these parenting programs are offered to the general public in other domains, Building Blocks Therapy offers these programs with the specific needs of children with disabilities (and their parents) as a key focus. This is because:
- Many children with disabilities have greater difficulty developing emotional regulation skills than their typical developing and neurotypical peers, and thus, have specific goals for skill development in this area.
- Emotional regulation difficulties can significantly impact on children’s participation in daily activities and roles and impact the whole family.
- Parent capacity building in this area is key to children developing emotional regulation skills because lots of emotional learning happens at home.
- In addition to being trained and accredited to facilitate these programs. Building Blocks Therapy OTs bring Paediatric Occupational Therapy expertise and experience working in family-centred practice to their facilitation role. This enables them to understand the different emotional regulation challenges experienced by families where a child has a disability and provide recommendations regarding effective application of program strategies to meet the specific needs of these children.
- Offering groups environments designed for families where a child has a disability also provides opportunities for families with similar life experiences and support needs to connect. This, in turn, fosters informal supports for these families within the community. Many children with disabilities have greater difficulty developing emotional regulation skills than their typical developing and neurotypical peers, and thus, have specific goals for their skill development in this area.
If you think Family Connections would benefit your family, please call our clinic on or complete the form below. We look forward to talking to you soon.