The Transformative Power of Trauma-Informed Practice: Insights from Dr. Lisa Cherry
In a compelling conversation on the Secure Start podcast, Dr. Lisa Cherry shares profound insights on trauma-informed practice, drawing from her 35 years of experience working with vulnerable children and young people. As the Director of Trauma Informed Consultancy Services Limited and author of several influential books, Dr. Cherry brings a unique perspective that combines academic knowledge, professional expertise, and powerful lived experience.
One of the most striking themes throughout the discussion is the concept of breaking intergenerational cycles. Dr. Cherry reflects on raising her own children, now 26 and 28, and how this process confronted her with her own childhood experiences. “People often talk about breaking cycles,” she notes, “and for me, it’s about breaking cycles. There are some things that just repeat, but actually there are some cycles that can be broken.” This perspective highlights the intergenerational nature of trauma work – we’re not just helping individuals in front of us but potentially influencing generations to come.
Dr. Cherry’s journey from being in care herself to becoming homeless, then eventually finding her way to university and a career advocating for vulnerable young people, provides a powerful narrative thread throughout the conversation. Her experience of writing to the director of social services as a child and making complaints in children’s homes foreshadowed her future career path. This early advocacy demonstrates how lived experience can shape professional passion and purpose, providing authentic insight that academic knowledge alone cannot offer.
Language emerged as a critical focus in the discussion. Dr. Cherry emphasizes the urgent need to address how we talk about children and young people in care systems. “The language that is used to describe children and young people is hugely problematic,” she states. “It’s hugely problematizing of those children and young people, and it shapes and forms the way that they are viewed and the way that they are seen.” This observation highlights how seemingly small linguistic choices can perpetuate harm and influence both service delivery and children’s self-perception.
Another key insight focuses on understanding behaviour as communication. Dr. Cherry challenges practitioners to recognize that children rarely have the capacity to articulate their trauma verbally. Instead, they show their struggles through behaviour. This perspective requires professionals to develop self-awareness about their own nervous system responses and relationship with shame. As Dr. Cherry explains, “It’s very, very difficult to think about behaviour as communication if you don’t have the time and space to think about how you communicate your own distress when you’re distressed.”
The podcast conversation also examines the systemic challenges facing care and education services. Dr. Cherry highlights how reduced funding, diminished capacity, and increasingly procedural approaches make genuine relational work more difficult. “We have to stop thinking about people as machines fulfilling a role,” she insists. “This is relational work. Relational work is deep, it’s meaningful, it’s connecting.” This observation points to the need for systems that prioritize connection and proper staff wellbeing to enable truly transformative work with vulnerable young people.
Dr. Cherry’s three books – “The Brightness of Stars,” “Conversations that Make a Difference for Children and Young People,” and “Weaving a Web of Belonging” – each contribute unique perspectives to the field of trauma-informed practice. Her focus on making these books accessible and practical for busy practitioners demonstrates her commitment to creating real-world impact. Her current focus on supporting the wellbeing of practitioners themselves recognizes that those doing the direct work with traumatized children need profound support themselves.
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About Lisa:
Dr Lisa Cherry is the Director of Trauma Informed Consultancy Services Ltd leading a dynamic and creative organisation that provides a ‘one stop’ approach to delivering on research, consultancy and learning and development.
Lisa is an author, researcher, leading international trainer and consultant, specialising in assisting schools, services and systems to create systemic change to the way that we work with those experiencing and living with, the legacy of trauma.
Lisa has been working in and around Education and Children’s Services for over 35 years and combines academic knowledge and research with professional expertise and personal experience.
Lisa has worked extensively across many sectors with Social workers, Educators, Probation Workers and those in Adult Services, training and speaking to over 35,000 people around the world including in the US, Australia and Pakistan and across the whole of the UK.
Lisa has produced multiple pieces of research for various settings and Lisa’s own MA research looked at the impact on education and employment for care experienced adults who experienced school exclusion as children in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
In February 2024 Lisa completed her DPhil research at The University of Oxford in the Department of Education. The research asked “How do care experienced adults who were also excluded from school make sense of belonging?”
Lisa is the author of the hugely successful and award winning book ‘Conversations that make a difference for Children and Young People’ (2021), ‘The Brightness of Stars’ 3rd Edition (2022) and Weaving a Web of Belonging: Developing a Trauma-Informed Culture for All Children (2025).
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Transcript:
Colby: 0:01
Welcome to the Secure Start podcast.
Lisa: 0:04
Taking your children into adulthood is probably one of the deepest education experiences that I’ve had. People often talk about breaking cycles, breaking the cycle and for me it’s about breaking cycles. There are some things that just repeat, but actually there are some cycles that can be broken, and being able to really be present, be connected, be consistent, for my children as adults feels to me like a really beautiful breaking of a cycle. We have to stop thinking about children coming out of care and that’s the end of service. The people who are doing the work you know the direct work are giving something of themselves every time they do that, and what I’m focused on in my next book is how do we make sure that those people, that the people doing that work are looked after in a really deeply and profound way so that they can do that work?
Lisa: 1:20
We need to sort out the language. The language that is used to describe children and young people is hugely problematic. It’s very, very difficult to think about behaviour as communication if you don’t have the time and space to think about how you communicate your own distress when you’re distressed. And this is what happens when you starve systems and you reduce capacity and you take away funding and you make the work really, really intense. Unfortunately, it makes real relational work much harder.
Colby: 2:01
Welcome to the Secure Start podcast. I’m Colby Pearce, and joining me for this episode is an author, researcher and leading international trainer and consultant who specialises in assisting schools, services and systems to create change to the way that we work with those experiencing and living with the legacy of trauma. Before I introduce my guests, I’d just like to acknowledge that I’m meeting with them on Kaurna land, and I’d just also like to acknowledge the continuing connection that the living Kaurna people feel to land, waters, culture and community, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. My guest for this episode is Dr Lisa Cherry. Lisa is the Director of Trauma Informed Consultancy Services Limited. She leads a dynamic and creative organisation that provides a one-stop approach to delivering on research, consultancy and learning and development.
Colby: 3:12
Lisa has been working in and around education and children’s services for over 35 years and combines academic knowledge and research with professional expertise and personal experience. Lisa’s MA research looked at the impact on education and employment for care experienced adults who experienced school exclusion as children in the 1970s and 80s. In February 2024, lisa completed her Doctor of Philosophy research at the University of Oxford. The research asked how do care experienced adults who are also excluded from school make sense of belonging. Lisa is the author of the hugely successful and award winning book Conversations that Make a Difference for Children and Young People, published in 2021, as well as the Brightness of Stars, which is in its third edition, and Weaving a Web of Belonging Developing a Trauma-Informed Culture for All Children, which has been published this year. Welcome Lisa.
Lisa: 4:23
Thank you, Colby. It’s lovely to be here and thank you for such a warm introduction.
Colby: 4:30
You’re welcome. Is there anything that I left out that you think is important for our listeners to know about the work that you’ve done and continue to do?
Lisa: 4:40
Well, listen, bios are just inherently quite uncomfortable to listen to, aren’t they? Because they sound so, you know, like Formal, like yeah, they’re just like a lot, which is lovely, and at this stage of life, you would expect to have a bio that’s got quite a lot of stuff in it, because you know you’ve been yeah, I’ve been around a long time. I guess the only other thing that would be worth mentioning is that I have two adult children and I’m a grandma, and um, taking your children into adulthood is is probably one of the deepest education experiences that I’ve had.
Colby: 5:26
I’ve always said the same yeah, I mean, it’s probably our greatest achievement, isn’t it? And also our greatest. Our kids are often our greatest teachers.
Lisa: 5:38
Oh God, I mean, it’s really difficult to even talk about them without feeling emotional. You know it’s such an emotional thing and I think, when you’ve also had to recover from your own childhood experiences and felt some of the weight of that appear in your own children in that intergenerational way, that that works. That is very confronting. It’s very confronting.
Lisa: 6:12
There were periods that were like being in therapy every day you know, as as that experience is mirrored back and I’m now at a place they’re 26 and 28, and I’m now at a place where I see what’s mirrored back is more healing and more recovery and just how much connection and support your children need, with a deep, deep awareness that I had nothing like that. And so when we think about I listen to people often talk about breaking cycles, breaking the cycle, and for me it’s about breaking cycles. There are some things that just repeat, but actually there are some cycles that can be broken, and being able to really be present, be connected, be consistent for my children as adults feels to me like a really beautiful breaking of a cycle.
Colby: 7:20
Yeah, yeah, wonderful. We’ve heard some other stories on the podcast so far, one in particular in Graham Kerridge’s podcast that really reflected the significance of breaking the cycle, and it’s something that is very near and dear to my heart. It’s something that is very near and dear to my heart, and I often think that our work is intergenerational as well in its impacts. Sure, and so it’s not just the person or the people in front of us that we’re effectively working with. We’re working with their spouse, future spouses or part life partners there and their own children and grandchildren through, as you say, what transmits through, through the generations so it’s very powerful and important work that we do.
Lisa: 8:22
Yeah, I love that and I love that kind of circle of life. You know, and I always talk about healing Often we might be healing an ancestral wound we don’t even know we’re carrying. That is from somewhere completely different. And when we’re talking about children and young people who’ve experienced fractured childhoods and adoption and care and all of those things, then they’re often working with something within themselves which will appear across the life course that they might not know where that comes from, they might not know they’re even healing and that’s deep.
Colby: 9:05
And then when you bounce into the future and you start thinking about the future, those future spouses and future children I just think it’s such, it’s such a privilege and it’s such beautiful work yeah, it was interesting because, um, graham got me thinking about this and his training was as an economist and his interest was in human capital, and it was such a totally different way of thinking about the work we do, because I’m not an economist.
Colby: 9:43
In fact, um, my bank balance reflects very, very well that that that is the case, but, um, yeah, yeah, but I mean it was it’s a nice way of putting it anyway the looking at it from a human capital point of view, that I hadn’t done that before, but, yes, certainly I have been for a while, um, very much aware of that intergenerational impact of our work. Lisa, I think people who know you would know that your work in this space is influenced by personal experience growing up. Um is influenced by personal experience growing up, um, but I wonder if you, if you can perhaps say just in your own words, what got you into the work, um, that you’ve been doing this past 35 years or so?
Lisa: 10:40
yeah, I mean it’s. It’s a really interesting one, isn’t it? And, without a shadow of a doubt, my experience of being in care has, you know, provided me with my work, and I guess there are aspects of that that are part of me and my personality and the things that I care about and I’m passionate about, like you know, I remember as a very young child being very passionate about justice, being very passionate about the society that we lived in, um, and so I guess I could have gone into different avenues. I wanted to be Kate Adie. I wanted to be a war correspondent. You know I was.
Lisa: 11:22
I thought that looked absolutely amazing and, of course, going in know, doing research is is kind of like, really sophisticated. You know, I don’t know if researchers would like this, but journalism and research really sit closely together and I was always very interested by journalism and wanting to tell stories and wanting to highlight things that were wrong and that needed change, and I felt that very much growing up. But going into care of course exposes you to a world that is very different than a world that you would see if you weren’t in care. So you start being exposed to a whole range of professions you might be, you’ll be exposed to residential social workers, to foster carers, to social workers. Nowadays you’ll also have CAMHS workers and of back then also IROs, you know, an independent reviewing officer, and there’s all these different types of jobs.
Lisa: 12:29
And if you’re not really engaged in education for because you’ve got like loads of stuff going on um, then it’s almost like a kind of careers um opening up. You know there’s all these types of jobs and there’s these ways of doing things. So I think the combination of who I was and I was the sort of um child who was often writing to the director of social services and making complaints and, you know, kind of seeking justice in the in in the children’s home and stuff like that um and that combination I think, then of seeing people and also experiencing um a social worker I’m still in contact with Eunice who, who I always refer to as the the only social worker whose name I remember, you know we’d sit in her Ford Escort. I’d be crying, going why is everything so shit, and she’d be making me feel better and I thought that looks like a great. Get a ford escort and you get to make people feel better.
Colby: 13:31
Give me the ford escort bit a bit yeah, what’s not to love about that?
Lisa: 13:37
you know, so, at sort of 15, 15, 16 she. She was my social worker only for about a year and a half, but, um, very influential. Um, probably not at the time realizing how influential she was, but I kind of looked at um different social workers and thought I like I would like to do that, so that’s, those seeds were then planted. I mean, unfortunately, coming out of care I then had, I was homeless for a couple of years and I didn’t have an education because I had been expelled from schools. And you know, that came a bit later and I was lucky enough to get some funding to do a sociology degree, um, at the age of 21. Um, I had to do a couple of a levels which I was pretty diabolical at, but I obviously ticked the right boxes help me the right, help me boxes and and got into uni and and did sociology, which just further really cemented um how I felt about wanting to create change socially. Um, so, yeah, yeah and Lisa I’m.
Colby: 14:52
There’s a lot in there, but I’m the first thing that I was recalling, and I think you shared you must have shared this video at one stage was a younger version of yourself on a. Was a younger version of yourself being interviewed on a talk show about. That must be back around that time that you were at university and maybe even before. But talking about young people in care.
Lisa: 15:16
Yeah, so I guess because I was very articulate, pretty feisty and have a bit of a streak of determination in me, that did get picked up when I was younger, from different organizations and I’d been in a night shelter um around the age of 17, 18 um called Centrepoint um who are a big charity for youth homelessness in the UK and at the time a man called Nick Hardwick was the CEO and once I’d come out of that we’d kind of stayed in touch a bit. I’d been housed. I was then at uni and he asked me if I’d go on this Channel 4 programme about homelessness with John Snow, who’s an incredibly wonderful journalist, who’s retired now from his time on Channel 4 News element and wanting to create change and going through that process of being quite vulnerable. Because you know, I think when I met Nick many years later you know he said that they had only just started thinking about children coming out of care and homelessness. That actually the vision at the time so I’m going back to the late 80s, early 90s was very much that homelessness was a step you know this idea of an older male drinking.
Lisa: 16:55
You know that there wasn’t a real deep understanding about children coming out of care and being homeless, which which so many of us were, and that piece was part of a massive campaign. We did lots of things. We did Channel 4. We did lots of newspaper items and magazines and all sorts of things to really raise awareness that children were coming out of care and they were becoming homeless for lots of different reasons, you know. One of them might have been just to get as far away from that care experience as possible, thinking you can cope and you can do stuff, and not being able to Alongside. We didn’t have legislation back then that made sure that children weren’t homeless and that there were lots of options. There weren’t lots of options, actually, when you came out of care, so it was a really, really tricky time.
Colby: 17:52
Yeah, and I think it’s something that’s still being grappled with in many jurisdictions around the world. In my own local jurisdiction, um and I think you mentioned something in there that resonates with me that often my observation with young people and I’ve worked long term with the young people that I do see and will continue to see them professionally post care but oftentimes the last thing that they want is for any authority to be assisting them in any way. They just want done with the government running their lives and sadly, I mean that’s a bit of an indictment on their experience in care and also sadly sets them up for a tough run, as you experienced as well, with homelessness and various other challenges being part of their experience post-care.
Lisa: 19:03
And that’s why we have to stop thinking about children coming out of care and that’s the end of service. That has to be in the same way that you have with your own children. There has to be that ability, you know, because your own kids might turn around as well. You know, both my kids were trying to live independently long before they could and I think that’s quite a normal thing to happen. But of course there’s that elastic band, that continuous coming back. We need to really think about services in a very different way that understands the science that underpins child development, for a start, and that also understands 18 to 25 year olds in terms of a um, the, the work that’s been done around contextual safeguarding um, so that we, so that people have that opportunity to recover from some of those experiences. But they can also come back, just like your own kids can.
Colby: 20:10
Yes, and I’ve already done a podcast interview with Kiran Modi, who set up Udain Care in India, and remarkable, remarkable person and what they’ve done. And, as you say, they provide a place and people that care leavers can come back to right through to their mid-20s and beyond. They have what she called volunteer mentor parents in their residential homes who are parental figures for life for the young people that go through there. Oftentimes, I think we I wonder about this, I wonder whether in our white Western, you know, first world kind of mentality, we think we’re doing it better than um anyone else and and and uh, the challenges that we have would be the same everywhere. But um, you know, you know, my experience just very recently in talking to someone from india is that you, you can do it um very differently and provide extraordinary levels of support and opportunity for our young people.
Colby: 21:27
Um, anyway, uh, the other thing that that stood out for me in when you were talking was you talked about Eunice and her. I think it was Eunice and her Ford Escort and um, I wonder if there was any. And you also talked about um john snow, the journalist, but also the other chap put you in touch with him and um, I was wondering if there’s anyone else that you’d like to you know, acknowledge, or that you would acknowledge uh as having had a really important and significant um uh impact on you travelling this path, walking this path.
Lisa: 22:08
Yeah, I mean to be honest, I wouldn’t know where to start and I think that’s really part of our work, really, isn’t it, that people influence you along the way. I do remember somebody else I don’t know their name, but I was living in Cornwall. I’d gone down to Cornwall, I was homeless. I was. I lived across all sorts of different types of non-housing across Cornwall for for a few months before I went to London, which is where I kind of Cornwall for for a few months before I went to London, which is where I kind of uh was, was saved, if you like. Um and some journalists came down from shelter and did a piece on homelessness and as soon as I got to London, I went straight down to the shelter head office on Old Street and became a really pain in the arse volunteer um, which was, um, one of the first experiences that I had, but it was again. It was. It was a stunning experience because it was the 21st uh anniversary. So it would have been, I suppose, 1987, something like that, the 21st anniversary of Kathy Come Home. And we had this amazing event with all these very famous people, and there’s a wonderful picture of me stood next to Jeremy Irons, kind of gazing at Jeremy Irons on this stand, this podium stand, at the age of I must well, maybe I was 17, 18, and so those were the kind of things that really, really influenced me.
Lisa: 23:46
But, as I say, you can’t take away who you are as a person as well, because the first thing I did when I got to London was I’m going to find that journalist, that person who did that writing piece.
Lisa: 23:59
I want to be there, I want to do that, you know, and I think that’s why it’s so important for children, young people, to meet as many different types of people as possible.
Lisa: 24:09
I can’t remember her name, but what happened was a chain of events that led me into a campaigns department, that led me to start writing articles for their magazine, you know, all of those kind of things that really showed me where my passion was, and so, mostly across my work, I’ve never felt like I’m working because I found that passion, I found what I wanted to do, and if we can give that gift I found what I wanted to do and if we can give that gift to to young people, how incredible is that to have this exposure to so many different people with different ways of life that spark and ignite a passion that, yes, you’re not. You’re not always going to be doing the things that you really want to do, but you’re going to be in that field. So, yeah, I feel very, very fortunate and can’t ever really feel cross about the experiences that I had, because they gifted me those types of events that have given me the ability to work from a place of passion.
Colby: 25:27
Yeah, it’s a not uncommon, I guess, response from people who have experienced hardship in their life, but it has, and who have overcome it and, um, they, they wouldn’t. It’s quite common to say they wouldn’t change. Um, those difficult, you know, those things that shape those experiences, that shape them. And what’s really coming through, lisa, listening, listening to you talk, is how driven you were to, even in the latter stages of your time in care. You’re being driven to try and to stand up and say this is not good enough for me, nor my peers who are in this space.
Lisa: 26:34
Yeah, yeah, and again I feel very blessed that you know I have that within me.
Lisa: 26:41
You know you’re very focused on attachment and I absolutely believe that the first attachment relationship that I had with my grandmother was profound in terms of of my development, and you know she was present, you know she could give me things, emotionally and through that attachment relationship that I couldn’t get from my mother. You know that wasn’t and still isn’t possible, and so I have so much gratitude for that because I think if I hadn’t had her, I’d have been in care from very young, you know, and that would have brought a whole other set of challenges and difficulties and it would be as much as there are no regrets in the sense of what the experience gave me. There’s still sadness and there’s still loss and there’s still grief, and I think it’s really important to hold both of those things. And I wonder, anyway, I’ve met enough humans, many, many humans, to know that sadness, loss and grief is part of the human experience and that, whatever experiences you’ve had, invariably most people are grappling and dealing with their, their own?
Colby: 28:30
families and their own beginnings in life. Yeah, yeah. So, um, at some point you you kind of started out your your advocacy in care about the conditions within the care arrangement that you were in, and then moved to the homelessness of care leavers, post-care, and at some point in time you turned your attention to schools and, uh, the experience of of, of young people who had experienced relational trauma, and, uh, and their experience of schools. Do you mind telling us a bit about that?
Lisa: 29:17
yeah. So once I’d got my degree, I moved into um, I worked in leaving care teams, uh, for nearly 10 years and then, and then I moved into and then lots of things changed. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it anymore. It became very admin-y, um, it lost some of the fusion with youth work that Leaving Care Work had back then, which I loved and which was very relational and consistent and it was lovely work. So I wandered across the road and went into the education department and that was a very different experience. All of a sudden, you know, know, I was not in my jeans anymore. I was, you know, covering my tattoos. It was all very, very um, I don’t know how to describe it, but it was a cut. It was a bit of a culture shock. Everyone was very proper and social work had it.
Lisa: 30:25
It’s just not, it’s not quite as proper yeah it’s got a bit of activism and it’s got some rebellion in it. It’s got, you know, social work often brings people in with all sorts of different lived experiences. Education back then was incredibly straight, um, and so I had a bit of a steep learning curve, but I met some amazing people who kind of taught me how to be in the education space, and I spent time working in schools. I spent time working with people who children and young people who were not attending school, and we would be setting up like different tutoring arrangements and alternative plans so they could stay on roll at school. It was very much about reducing exclusion, preventing exclusion. So, yes, I did that for 10 years, um.
Lisa: 31:45
So yeah, so I did that for 10 years, um, and I kind of got to a point because I also had two young bringing the body into the way that I had been thinking about the work that I was doing, and that was around 2005 2005, so 20 years ago and then I did a small piece of work with a local authority which was very much about creating services across different sectors and getting people around the table, and that was an amazing piece of work because it really taught me how long it takes to build relationships, not just the relationships that you’re having, but when you’re trying to engage other sectors, to sit around a table and talk to each other and become friends. That takes a long time, um, so that was a real gift to watch that process, um, and then it was after that, because we had we had, um a change of government and the financial crash and, uh, I also had something personal happen in my life that just threw everything open, and that’s when I became self-employed 15 years ago.
Colby: 33:08
Yeah, and you’ve been very active in that 15 years, as you likely were prior to that. Amongst other things you’ve done is you’ve written three books, which I mentioned earlier in the intro.
Lisa: 33:41
I wonder if you just would like to talk a little bit about each of those books and what particular messages they might have for children’s services and for schools. Yeah, so well. The first book was the Brightness of Stars, and I wrote that back in 2012, 2013. And I wrote it because I’d hit a bit of a roadblock. I wasn’t particularly open about my experience, I hadn’t really talked about it, but I was very aware, like lots of people who get to their kind of late 30s, early 40s, that midlife period, that it had massively influenced me and that whatever I hadn’t dealt with in the recovery journey I’d had so far, I was going to have to deal with. And that led me to think. But there must be lots of other people with this experience. Where are they? I mean, think about this there there’s no Facebook groups, there’s no social media where everyone’s connecting.
Lisa: 34:30
I think we were sort of very much at the beginning of that um, and so I had a few connections and I wanted to share stories. You know, as I where I started at the beginning of this podcast talking about sharing stories and journalism and I wanted to share stories and I’ve been fortunate enough that Routledge republished that book, because I’d self-published originally and they published it and what was beautiful about it was when I read what I’d written. It wasn’t relevant anymore. I’d written it wasn’t relevant anymore. I didn’t have those feelings about it anymore and it made me think. Everybody that was in it needs to write. What do they think about it?
Lisa: 35:11
Now, 10 years later, let’s have an exploration of the healing journey and how, at different points in your life, something really troubles you and is really defining and is really intense.
Lisa: 35:23
And 10 years later, when you’ve processed it and used writing to make sense of it and perhaps had some therapy and perhaps done some body work and all of those things, um, that help us process stuff. So there’s a there is a new section in there as well that’s more contemporary, but there’s that beautiful section at the beginning that’s got the reflections of what people had written to use earlier. So that’s wonderful. So I guess the messages in that book are about what does the experience look like and what does a healing journey look like? You know, it’s really good for people to know that over time we change and we grow and we transform and I think that that’s that’s a real gift of of the third edition. Conversations that make a difference is very much a book that infuses, as everything that I do I try and infuse, with academic knowledge, professional practice and lived experience, and that book infuses that conversations that make a difference for children and young people and the opening chapters with unis are wonderful which is wonderful, um.
Lisa: 36:39
So there’s there’s a whole range of conversations in there. It’s a lovely way of sharing conversations in a book like that, because it’s quite easy to read, and I’ve tried to make most of my books easy to read. Practitioners are busy. We haven’t got time to get through Dostoevsky, you know, like you’ve got to be able to just dip in and read something that really makes a difference and that makes you think about something in a different way. So there’s lots of reflections and then weaving a web of belonging, which has just come out this year, is very much underpinned by the research, uh, the PhD that I did, the research, um, which again was a really interesting experience.
Lisa: 37:28
There’s lots of voices in there, but writing academically is so hard and so dry, um, and it felt equally hard to strip the dryness back and create a practice book. So it’s very much underpinned by extensive research, but again, I’ve tried to make it very readable. I’ve even got some recipes in there, some grounding exercises, you know, anything that makes reading about some really difficult stuff just just a bit more manageable, because the people who are doing the work you know the direct work, um are giving something of themselves every time they do that, and what I’m focused on in my next book is how do we make sure that those people, that the people doing that work, are looked after in a really deeply and profound way so that they can do that work.
Colby: 38:39
That sounds wonderful. I look forward to reading that book as well. Lisa, I think you’ve. I mean, writing a book is a very generous thing to do, I think, and particularly when you have such extensive lived experience and knowledge and drive. And I’m really just really pleased to hear that your books do well. And see all the posts on social media of people who’ve got the latest book on belonging yeah, that’s just wonderful. If you could sit down with, you know, the heads of education or the heads of child protection, child safeguarding statutory authorities, what do you think you’d say to them?
Lisa: 39:38
So I guess I mean I’d say a lot, but I think there’s two things that I think are really important and really misunderstood. So the first thing I’d say is we need to sort out the language. The language that is used to describe children and young people is hugely problematic. It’s hugely problematizing of those children and young people and it shapes and forms the way that they are viewed and the way that they are seen. So language is the first thing. Let’s get on with a piece of work sorting that out. Let’s get on with a piece of work sorting that out.
Lisa: 40:22
And I guess the second thing that is also hugely misunderstood is that behaviour is communication. That seems to me to be such a difficult concept for people to understand. It’s almost as if people think children have an articulation of their trauma that it can take you decades to get of their trauma, that it can take you decades to get that they can somehow come and say to you I’ve got to have a chat with you later because I’m really struggling with something and I’d like to walk it through. You know, and of course that is not possible, but that’s the expectation. So when a child shows you which is what children will always do that they are struggling with something.
Lisa: 41:04
I would say that’s something that I would really like to be understood more. First, ways of understanding that is, for people to drop into their own central nervous system, their own relationship with shame and their own relationship with struggle. And if they can do that and that’s some of what I try and do with people if they can do that I try and do with people if they can do that, then that expands that space of compassion, because then there’s some compassion for self. It’s very, very difficult to think about behavior as communication if you don’t have the time and space to think about how you communicate your own distress when you’re distressed. So I think that would be what I would be looking at. Let’s give people some space for reflection. Let’s give people some space for some really good training opportunities. Let’s give people some space to drop into their own bodies, um, so that that exploration can happen.
Colby: 42:19
Yeah, I think listeners of this podcast will be very, very familiar with me saying that um, one of my um and another issue that’s very close to me, um is the fact that too many practitioners in education and also in child safeguarding are so flat out with the work that they don’t have time to stop and think about what they’re doing. And it manifests to me in a couple of things. I’ll often ask people, you know, if we, they’ll say they’ll give me the shopping list of problems with a young person and then, and I’ll say to them a couple of things, one of them would be if my intervention was successful, what would you expect to see? What would be different? And people find that very hard, very, very hard to answer because, as you say, they’re so stuck in a problem focus and talking about the problems of the children. I also say to people and I think this ties very much in with what you’re saying about just take some time to think about what it would be like we, if you were struggling, if you were having some of these experiences. I asked, I asked three questions if the child could or would, how would they truthfully describe themselves, other people and their world? How fast does their motor run and what did they learn in their first learning environments about how you get your needs met? Again, really difficult questions to answer, I’ve found, but I do think you’re right. I think, if I think, I think and again, people need time I think, if you can, if people have the time to drop in and reflect on their own experiences of struggle, or you know what it would have, what, what they can imagine it would be like to experience significant struggle. I remember the first. It was not the first time I thought about it, lisa, but it’s one of the first times that it really stood out, so much that I remember Very early in my career, mid-90s, in my first posting as a clinical psychologist doing assessments of young people, I had a young person that I was expecting to see first thing in the morning at the office, and when I arrived I used to live on one side of my home city of Adelaide and work at the far extremity of the other side and, depending on traffic in between, that journey could be elongated or otherwise.
Colby: 45:18
But anyway, I walked in and I walked into one of the at uh, the professional areas of the building and, and, and there was the young person I knew it would be her because she had a distinctive um background. So I immediately knew, ah, this must be the, the young person that’s come to see me. And I was very aware of her surroundings at that time and what she made of them and the fact that the taxi driver a taxi driver had collected her from her placement and dropped her at the office and she was about nine years old from memory. So, yeah, just really. From then on it was very much foremost in my mind the experience of our young people. It’s very hard. If you don’t give people the time to stop and reflect, then they just become very procedural and the work loses a bit of its heart and it becomes heartless and procedural. I think.
Lisa: 46:29
We have to stop thinking about people as machines fulfilling a role. You know this is relational work. Relational work is deep, it’s meaningful, it’s connecting um and so people. And this is what happens when you starve systems and you reduce capacity and you take away funding and you make the work really, really intense. Unfortunately, it makes real relational work much harder. Now I say that knowing that some areas that I work in prioritise it above all else. But it does mean that something else has to give. So there’s an intentionality when you’re thinking about belonging relationships, connection, proper staff well-being not, you know, let’s go bowling every fortnight or something, but the proper stuff that really nourishes and fills people’s cups. And you know you’re absolutely right when, when we don’t have that, then that’s where the procedural stuff comes in and burnout and secondary trauma and you know all of that stuff kicks in one other thing I just want to say I the the language we use.
Colby: 47:52
My first edition of the attachment book I. I say I wrote I didn’t write two editions. I wrote two of the attachment book. I say I wrote I didn’t write two editions. I wrote two books, the first book and the second book. They’re different books and the language is quite different. And a little example when I do, every now and then I’ve spoken to our heads of our child protection department here in my local jurisdiction department, here in my in my local jurisdiction. But I, on the language thing, I’ll say um, because one of one another thing that’s really near and dear to my heart is is the main, where possible, the maintenance and I think it’s more possible than we we think but the maintenance of good connection with birth family. So I I will say you could probably achieve a lot in terms of practice by changing one word in the sentence that is routinely said about our children and young people.
Lisa: 48:50
What’s routinely said and written is that they cannot be safely cared for at home and I say replace cannot with couldn’t or could not, and I I dare say you would, yeah, you would um notice a big, I mean language is powerful it’s so powerful and maybe could not right now, you know like allow parents the opportunity that we all afford ourselves of transformation and recovery and wellness and sobriety and all those other things you know, in a dynamic, trauma-sensitive way in the writing. You know that, but right now that wasn’t possible. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible later on. It’s just not possible now and it’s those kind of things, isn’t it’s having that, that, that eye for the life course? But services, unfortunately, are so divided and siloed into what you know how they work that the life course approach and that holistic approach is often lost. And look at us, we could talk for hours I think so we could.
Colby: 50:07
I was literally I I say to the kids, when the you know you’re supposed to say, colby, get out of my head, it’s rude, you gotta ask permission. Permission before you’re reading my mind. But you were just literally reading my mind then, lisa, because I was going to say, yes, we could talk for hours. Maybe we’ll just have to do this conversation in installments perhaps, but if you’re keen, I do give all of my guests an opportunity to ask me a question without notice at the end. We’ve heard a lot of my voice already. I’m not sure if you had something that you wanted to ask me.
Lisa: 50:46
Well, I don’t have anything to ask you today because I’ve already interviewed you on my podcast. So I asked you lots of questions. So if anybody wants to hear those questions, then I’m sure Colby will drop that episode into the show notes and you can listen to me ask you lots of questions.
Colby: 51:06
Yeah, I think I’ll do that. Well, I mean, is that a bit I’ll do it because you’ve raised it? It’s an invitation.
Lisa: 51:14
It’s an invitation and it would be lovely to share that conversation and it’s it’s been really lovely to be on the other side of that and, um, and be asked lots of questions, so thank you for having me yeah, well, thank you for agreeing and uh, yeah, I hope you have a good day and you continue to be well, lisa as well as you can be.
