Exploring Strategies In Work With Children, Teenagers & Young Adults

24^th March 2025

A participatory workshop on Thursday, 8th May 2025: 4.30pm-7pm at Serenity House, New Beetwell Street, Chesterfield with Dr Max Biddulph, University of Nottingham. Rationale: In the twentieth century, scholars John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth proposed and refined a theory of attachment that revolutionised our understanding of emotional development, emphasising that the bonds formed in infancy shape our capacity for trust, intimacy, and emotional regulation throughout life.

In the twenty-first century, this valuable framework has been augmented by major advances in the field of neuroscience, revealing that emotions have a major influence on the development of the brain which has profound implications for the mental well-being of children and young people.

In the wake of the global Covid-19 pandemic one in four teenagers aged 17-19 in the UK have a mental health difficulty, an increase from one in six in 2021 and in 2024 the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) ranked the UK’s 15-year-olds with the lowest average life satisfaction in Europe.

Professionals who work with children and young people also report a number of challenges manifested over three decades, educators for example, noting the on-going significance of relationships and behaviour in their day-to-day work with students.

So how can this situation be reversed or improved? This workshop proposes that a focus on attachment behaviours in both supporters and those being supported, provides a key to understanding ways of improving mental well-being bringing a wide range of benefits, not just to the individual young person but to society as a whole.

Aims:

• To explore the significance of attachment theory and its implications for contemporary patterns of mental well-being reported in young people.
• To provide a safe and supportive space in which a range of professionals can explore the significance of attachment personally and professionally, via an experiential workshop.

Outcomes:

By the end of the session participants will have...

• Gained an understanding of the complex relationship between attachment histories, attachment styles and behaviours and considered their own life experience in this regard.
• Reviewed recent research evidence in neuroscience and connected this with the experience of children and young people in various contexts.
• Evaluated a range of strategies that provide support for mental well-being when working with children, teenagers and young adults Target audience: all professionals with a brief for working with children and young people (including young adults).

Programme:

• From 3.30pm: registration and refreshments.
• 4.30pm-5.15pm: Part One ‘Understanding linkages and complexity’ – connecting attachment theory, research evidence and contemporary neuroscience.
• 5.15pm-5.30pm Break.
• 5.30pm-7pm: Part Two ‘Into practice – what works?’ – reviewing the role of the supporter in terms of inner and outer resources e.g. ‘self-knowledge/ awareness’, relationship building strategies and evidence from the field.

About the workshop provider:
Dr Max Biddulph is a former Associate Professor of Education and Counselling at the University of Nottingham. Prior to working in Higher Education, his experience of working in UK secondary schools provided the grounding for some strong themes that weave through his career, namely performance, community, and empowerment.

At a national level he has worked to develop inclusive Relationships and Sex Education curricula and most recently his research interests have focussed on dimensions of narrative, visual representation and autoethnography as mechanisms for exploring and communicating experience.

Max has had an enduring interest in pastoral care in schools with a focus on attachment and mental well-being spanning four decades, publishing and researching groups as diverse as beginning teachers to gay/bisexual men who are educators.

Between 2010-24 he was Chair of the editorial board of Pastoral Care in Education, An International Journal of Personal, Social, Emotional Development. His work as a volunteer has extended to providing support in the HIV sector and LGBT+ communities with a focus on the workplace for which in 2017, he was awarded the University of Nottingham Vice Chancellor's Medal for outstanding contribution.

Booking Information:

• Cost £50 per person
• Please call 01246 232891 or email admin@drcs.org.uk asap to secure your place
• Maximum of 20 attendees
• CPD certificates available on request

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