Understanding what is happening for the child. Responding in ways that support regulation, connection, learning and participation.
Children do not leave their developmental experiences at the school gate.
For children and young people affected by adversity, difficulties with relationships, emotional regulation, behaviour, trust and learning can become particularly visible in educational settings.
Secure Start provides training and consultation to help teachers, school leaders, support staff and other education professionals understand these difficulties and respond in ways that are relational, developmentally informed and practical.
The aim is not to turn teachers into therapists.
It is to help educators understand what may be happening for a child and consider how the everyday school environment can better support development, relationships, regulation and learning.
Behaviour makes more sense in context
Schools understandably need to respond to behaviour.
Classrooms need to function. Children need to be safe. Teachers need to teach. Expectations and boundaries matter.
But focusing only on the behaviour we can see can leave important questions unanswered.
Why does this particular child react so strongly to apparently minor events?
Why do they reject help?
Why does correction lead to escalation?
Why do they appear to sabotage positive relationships?
Why can they explain the rules when calm but seem unable to follow them when distressed?
Why does behaviour that works well with most students appear ineffective — or even make things worse — with this child?
Secure Start training encourages educators to look beneath behaviour and ask:
What might be happening for this child?
AAA — Understanding the child
Secure Start’s school training can draw upon AAA, the understanding framework within the Triple-A Model of Therapeutic Care.
AAA considers children’s experience through three interrelated perspectives:
Attachment
What might the child have learned about themselves, other people and relationships?
Children bring expectations about relationships into the classroom.
Some readily seek assistance and trust that adults will help.
Others may expect adults to reject, criticise, humiliate, abandon or disappoint them.
These expectations can influence relationships with teachers, reactions to correction, willingness to accept help and capacity to participate in learning.
Arousal
What might be happening in the child’s emotional and physiological state?
Learning requires access to attention, memory, language, reflection and flexible thinking.
These capacities can become less available when a child is highly distressed or overwhelmed.
Some children become visibly activated.
Others withdraw or shut down.
Understanding arousal helps educators consider whether the child is currently in a state in which they can use the skills and knowledge adults expect from them.
Accessibility to needs provision
What might the child have learned about how important needs get met?
Children learn from experience how to obtain attention, assistance, reassurance, connection, autonomy and other important needs.
Some behaviours that appear disruptive or oppositional may have developed because they have previously been effective ways of getting something important to happen.
Understanding these learning histories creates opportunities to help children develop more adaptive ways of communicating and meeting their needs.
From understanding to responding
Understanding a child’s behaviour is useful only if it helps us think differently about what we do next.
Secure Start therefore also draws upon AURA, the therapeutic-responding framework within Triple-A.
AURA asks educators to reflect upon whether their interactions are:
Accessible
Am I emotionally and physically available when needed?
For a student, accessibility might involve knowing that there is an adult at school who can be approached when things become difficult.
Understanding
Have I tried to understand what might be underneath the behaviour?
Understanding means remaining curious about what may be happening without abandoning appropriate expectations or boundaries.
Responsive
Did my response meet the child’s need in that moment?
Different situations require different responses.
A student might need reassurance, structure, encouragement, assistance, space, co-regulation or a clear limit.
Responsiveness means considering what is most likely to help this particular student in this particular moment.
Attuned
Was I connected, warm and emotionally in sync?
Children experience our tone, expression, pace, interest and emotional presence as well as the words we use.
Attunement involves recognising the child’s emotional experience and adjusting our interaction accordingly.
Relationships and learning
Relationships are not separate from learning.
For many students, feeling sufficiently safe with the adults around them supports exploration, participation, help-seeking, persistence and engagement.
For children affected by significant relational adversity, the teacher-student relationship can carry additional complexity.
A teacher may be experienced not simply as someone who teaches mathematics or English, but as another important adult whose availability, reliability and response to difficulty matter.
This does not mean teachers should become substitute parents or therapists.
It means recognising that the way children experience adults influences their capacity to participate in the opportunities those adults provide.
Trauma-informed does not mean permissive
A relational or trauma-informed approach is sometimes misunderstood as meaning that children should not experience boundaries or consequences.
That is not Secure Start’s approach.
Children need adults who can provide safety, predictability, expectations and appropriate limits.
The question is not whether schools should have boundaries.
The question is:
What does the child experience from us while we maintain them?
We can hold a boundary while remaining calm.
We can stop unsafe behaviour while remaining interested in what happened.
We can communicate that behaviour is unacceptable without communicating that the child is unacceptable.
Understanding and accountability can coexist.
Punishment and learning
Behaviour management is often based upon the assumption that sufficiently rewarding desired behaviour and punishing unwanted behaviour will produce lasting change.
Learning principles are important, but children are not behaviour occurring in isolation.
Their emotional state, relationships, developmental capacities and previous experiences influence how they interpret and respond to adult interventions.
For some children, punitive responses can increase arousal, shame, defensiveness or disconnection from the adults whose support they need.
Secure Start training helps educators consider:
What is the child learning from this response?
not simply:
Did the behaviour stop?
A behaviour stopping in the immediate moment is not necessarily the same thing as the child developing the capacities we want them to carry into the future.
The ordinary school day contains developmental opportunities
Therapeutic and developmentally supportive experiences do not require special programs or therapy rooms.
They occur through ordinary moments.
Being greeted in the morning.
Receiving help when work is difficult.
Being corrected.
Making a mistake.
Managing disappointment.
Joining a group.
Returning after an incident.
Being encouraged.
Experiencing success.
Having a disagreement with a teacher.
Repairing the relationship afterwards.
For children whose earlier experiences have involved adversity, these repeated interactions provide opportunities to experience adults and relationships differently.
The individual moments may appear small.
Their repetition is what gives them developmental significance.
Classroom AURA
The Classroom AURA app was developed as a simple reflective companion for educators.
It brings the four AURA dimensions into everyday classroom practice:
Accessible
Understanding
Responsive
Attuned
Rather than adding another complex task to teachers’ workloads, Classroom AURA provides brief prompts to help educators keep relational practice in mind during the school day.
It is not an assessment of teacher performance or student functioning.
It is a reflective tool designed to support the question:
What kind of relational experience am I creating for the students I teach?
Training tailored to your school
Secure Start school training can be adapted to the needs of individual schools, groups of schools and education organisations.
Topics may include:
- understanding behaviour as communication;
- attachment and relationships at school;
- trauma, adversity and development;
- emotional and physiological regulation;
- AAA and understanding what may be happening for the child;
- AURA and relational responding;
- behaviour management and its limitations;
- maintaining boundaries within a relational approach;
- supporting students who reject help or connection;
- relational repair following challenging incidents;
- staff reflection and emotional responses;
- supporting educators working with complex behaviour; and
- using Classroom AURA to support everyday reflective practice.
Training can be tailored according to the age of students, the school context and the particular challenges facing the workforce.
Supporting the adults around the child
Working with children who are distressed, dysregulated or persistently challenging can have a significant emotional impact upon educators.
Teachers and support staff can experience frustration, helplessness, anxiety, anger, rejection and exhaustion.
These responses do not mean that staff are uncaring or unsuitable.
They are part of working in emotionally demanding environments.
Secure Start training therefore encourages reflection not only upon:
“What is happening for the child?”
but also:
“What is happening for the adults around the child?”
Supportive leadership, opportunities for reflection and a psychologically informed school culture can help staff remain thoughtful and relational when situations become difficult.
Training is most useful when it changes everyday practice
A professional development session can introduce useful ideas.
Its real value is determined by what happens afterwards.
Can staff recall the ideas when a student is distressed?
Do they have a shared language for discussing challenging situations?
Can leaders reinforce the approach?
Can teams reflect on what happened rather than simply identify who was at fault?
Are new staff introduced to the same principles?
Secure Start can work with schools not only to provide training, but to consider how learning can be translated into sustainable everyday practice.
Triple-A and schools
The Triple-A Model of Therapeutic Care was developed primarily as a framework for understanding children affected by adversity and supporting therapeutic caregiving.
Its psychological and relational principles also have relevance within education.
School training may therefore draw upon AAA and AURA without requiring a school to adopt or license Triple-A as its organisational Model of Care.
This distinction is important.
The objective is to use relevant aspects of the framework to strengthen educational practice while respecting the distinct purpose, responsibilities and professional context of schools.
Learn more
Triple-A Model of Therapeutic Care
Enquire about training for your school or education organisation