Therapy Services
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Wave Connections is an experiential learning organisation. It's aim is to assist in trauma aware communities, to combat marginalisation, isolation and support neurodiversity. Wave Connections Cic purpose is to assist schools, local authorities, children & Families to become inclusive, compassionate and attachment aware. With an outcome to enhance relationships & emotional well-being. Together, service delivery has focused on developing therapeutic training courses for children, parents, schools and teachers in meeting the needs of children who are adopted.
Specializing in Mindful Yoga For Young People's Emotional Health, Theraplay, Attachment based PACE Development Dyadic Psychotherapy (DDP) Training.
Consultation and advice with regards to behavioural and emotional health management.
Training courses cater for the needs of children, families & schools who work with children who may have experienced developmental trauma, have attachment difficulties, emotional health concerns that impact on achieving education attainment, behavioural needs.
EMDR Therapy (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing)
EMDR® is a structured, evidence-based therapy designed to help people recover from trauma and distressing life experiences, including PTSD, anxiety, depression, and panic disorders.
Unlike traditional talk therapy, EMDR focuses on helping the brain reprocess disturbing memories so they no longer feel overwhelming. It uses guided eye movements or other forms of rhythmic stimulation to help “unlock” traumatic memories and support the brain’s natural healing process.
When distressing memories remain “stuck” in the nervous system, they can continue to cause emotional pain, intrusive thoughts, or physical symptoms — sometimes years after the original event. EMDR helps desensitise these memories and reprocess them in a way that brings relief and resolution.
What can EMDR help with?
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Trauma and PTSD
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Anxiety and panic
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Childhood or developmental trauma
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Grief and loss
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Phobias
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Low self-esteem or negative self-beliefs
What to expect:
EMDR sessions are safe, structured, and led at your pace. You don’t have to talk in detail about the trauma if you don’t want to — the focus is on how it’s stored in your body and mind, and helping you move through it. Over time, clients often report feeling lighter, calmer, and more in control of their emotional world.
£85,00 per hour
Theraplay® is a child and family treatment designed to enhance attachment, self-esteem, trust in others, and joyful engagement. It is based on the natural patterns of healthy interaction between parent and child, and is personal, physical, and fun. Theraplay® interactions focus on four essential qualities found in parent–child relationships: structure, engagement, nurture, and challenge.
Theraplay® sessions create an active and emotional connection between the child and parents, resulting in a change to the child’s internal working model — a shift in how the child views themselves, enhancing self-worth and enabling them to perceive themselves as lovable and capable of forming positive, rewarding relationships. Fun activities are used throughout, primarily through play-based interactions.
Various kinds of touch are essential in Theraplay® treatment. Touch is a normal, healthy part of all parent–child interaction and is very important for the healthy development of all children. Theraplay® touch is playful, engaging, and present in many of the surprising and delightful activities. It is nurturing in caregiving; organising and modulating in structuring activities; and it is used to support or guide the child during more challenging tasks.
At all times, our goal is to maintain the child’s safety and support their developmental needs.
TCTSY is the first yoga-based, empirically validated clinical intervention for complex trauma or chronic, treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Developed originally at the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts by Dave Emerson and Jenn Turner, in collaboration with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) is now a program of the Center for Trauma and Embodiment, a non-profit organization dedicated to training and educating trauma-informed professionals around the world in innovative interventions for treating trauma.
https://www.traumasensitiveyoga.com/About
£85.00 per hour
DDP is an attachment-based intervention to address complex trauma and reactive attachment disorder. In particular, it is helpful for children and younger people who have experienced complex developmental trauma.
What is trauma?
Children are affected and shaped by their experiences (Van Der Kolk 2005). Trauma impacts on all aspects of children’s lives, even their brain development. Trauma includes alcohol/substance misuse, all forms of abuse, poor parental mental health, domestic violence, affects children’s genetic make-up and they have a predisposition to stress pre-birth. When children have parents who are chronically inconsistent, neglectful or unavailable they experience this as ongoing chronic stress, and for babies and children this impacts on their brain development and their attachment style (Elliott, 2013). By understanding a child’s early life experiences this can help us to consider the impact this has on the understanding of the world, themselves and others around them. Complex developmental trauma is most often trauma that is caused by a significant person in the child’s life, and they do not have the protective safety from an adult to support them alongside these frightening experiences. These small children are left alone to try to understand and manage what has happened to them, without the skills or cognitive skills to be able to do so.
Complex Developmental Trauma impacts on the following domains:
The capacity to emotionally regulate, leading to chronic hyperarousal and difficulties in managing or articulating emotions.
Attachment and identity: Trauma can disrupt the child’s relationships patterns, and this can impact on their sense of self, often resulting in shame and a fragmented sense of self.
Display extreme behaviours as a form of communication, which can be hard for parents or professionals to understand and address.
Cognitive and language development: Trauma impacts the higher working part of the brain, and the neural pathways that enable children to learn, thin, express themselves effectively impacting on their ability to use cognitive and language skills.
Behavioural regulation: children with complex trauma may struggle to self-regulate, leading to challenges in controlling their behaviours and emotions.
Dyadic and Developmental Psychotherapy can help children and their families, by using the dyadic brain: two brains with parent and child gaining shared experiences and understanding of trauma experiences, and how these impact subconsciously in the here and now. With the support of a practitioner that parent and their child will start to develop a shared narrative of what has happened and is happening to help inform therapeutic parenting outside of the therapy space.
DDP explores the potential impact of current emotional and relationship functioning, which is naturally impacted and shaped by the complex developmental trauma. Through these therapeutic interactions the hope is that it enhances the parent: child relationship to one of acceptance and understanding. Allowing a parent to hold a space to accept the child, whilst also supporting and managing the child’s behaviour.
DDP enables parents and children, with the support of a therapist to find strategies for emotional regulation, stress reduction and ways of coping that are more helpful. Consequently, this will help the child to build on their tolerance in relation to environmental stimuli at home, school or other spaces in the community, including relationships.
By helping children to understand their own inner world, children will start to gain interoception and learn to understand and interpret signals from their body and their perception of internal bodily sensations. The hope is that over time a child will move from shame to being able to hold a sense of others experience and the impact behaviour has on them.
DDP also supports dyadic understanding and supports parents with their own attachment needs and triggers surrounding their traumatised child.
Since 2013 Carly has specialised in child trauma, adoption and Mindfulness. 2013 undertook Mindful Yoga Training for Young People’s emotional Health being taught to deliver the eight week Mindful Yoga Program.
The eight week Mindful Yoga Program has been delivered across Dorset since 2013. With over 80 families benefiting from the program. Outcomes are evaluated and feedback questionnaires can be seen on effectiveness of the programs. In 2017 the first school program was developed and delivered within schools.
Verwood First school being the first to provide the Mindful Yoga Program. Carly has delivered bespoke training within schools across Dorset since 2013, assisting schools to become ‘attachment based schools’. Below is a testimony from Fiona Utley, SENCO Allenbourne school.
‘Carly has assisted our school to become attachment aware, her knowledge is incredible and our relationships with children has significantly enhanced’’ Allenbourne School, Wimborne.
Having accredited the Mindful Yoga Program in 2016 with the CPD standards office, the programs been reviewed as a provider of training. In 2015 the Adoption
Support Fund agreed for The Mindful Yoga Programs to be an ‘In scope’ provision of service.
Teachers and professionals can gain CPD certificates for attendance while learning valuable tools and strategies for stress management, behavioural management, enhanced relationships, emotional regulations and greater effectiveness with young people.
For more information, please read on for research evidence base and history and development of Mindful Yoga.
Session Content:
Session 1. What is Yoga & Mindfulness? Auto Pilot. 3 minute breath. ‘Our sea within’ you can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf’ Jon Kabat-Zinn’. PACE Outline. Playfulness. There is no ‘ACE’ without @P’
Session 2.
What is Stress? Good and bad stress: A language without words:
How our bodies respond to stress, nervous system. Stress button in the brain. Salt timer for emotional regulation. Yoga sequence to manage stress
Session 3. Connect Body – Mind: Breathing Techniques. Boat origami. Pebble Meditation. Worksheets: define stress: emotional terms, physical terms and thoughts.
Yoga sequence
Curiosity part of PACE is explored in session 3 – Connect body – Mind’.
Session 4.
Awakening to the here and now: Self-knowledge. Strength cards, strategies for emotional regulation. Mindfulness and Yoga strategies.
Session 5. Coming to our senses! Our Brilliant Brains:
Use of senses to engage body, mind. Empathy part of PACE is explored in session 5 – ‘Coming to our senses’ our brilliant brains’.
Session 6. Respond not React: Monkey, Meerkat and elephant brain.
Planting seeds to grow, gain insight, emotional regulation.
Session 7. ‘What I be’ Acceptance & Non-judging:
Understanding kindness to self and others by means of non-judging. Surfing the waves. Nurturing compassion. Acceptance part of PACE is explored in session 7 – What
I be’,
Session 8.
Jumping Hurdles: how to do daily practice for Mindfulness for greater emotional well being.
3 weeks after course end date. Come together to Explore practice.
Specialised as a Children’s Yoga Therapist in 2010 with The Special Yoga
Foundation, London. The only Yoga Centre for Children with special needs. Undertaking Yoga with toddlers to late teens for 17 years.
In 2012 Carly gained a specialist Degree in Children & Young People’s service at Bristol University. Bristol university is at the hub of current government research. Being taught directly by Julie Selwyn, of Hedley Centre, research centre for Fostering and Adoption. Carly has taken part in research relating to matching of adopters to children and has read extensively surrounding beyond the adoption order full research published in 2017.
Training programs
PACE Therapeutic Parenting Training
DDP PACE training provides you with a thorough understanding and experience of PACE embedded within the DDP framework.
It explores the PACE attitude, a way of thinking, feeling, communicating and behaving that aims to support the child to feel safe.
What is DDP PACE Training?
DDP PACE training will help you to understand the impact of developmental trauma and the challenges that children with this experience can struggle with.
It introduces how the experience of PACE within a DDP-informed approach can start to help these children to recover trust and safety.
It also explores PACE as a way of being with adults of all ages to provide a secure foundation for relationships to grow and thrive.
Drawing on their capacity for regulation and reflection, DDP PACE helps adults who support children to emotionally connect with them in ways which increase feelings of safety and trust.
What Is PACE
PACE stands for playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy. It was created by Dr. Dan Hughes, the founder of DDPI and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), as a core aspect of DDP. PACE is central to DDP-informed parenting and teaching.
You can read a detailed explanation of PACE at:
What is meant by PACE? https://ddpnetwork.org/about-ddp/meant-pace/
Who is it for?
DDP PACE training is open to everyone. It is suitable for all adults caring for, or working with children who have experienced relational trauma. This can include adoptive parents, foster carers, kinship carers, residential workers, education practitioners, and support workers for example.
How is it taught?
This training course is taught as a one-day introduction or a Core training over several days. Both courses cover the core concepts.
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One day – Introduction to DDP PACE
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2-3 days – Core DDP PACE Course (minimum of 15 hrs)
Who can provide the training?
DDP PACE training is taught by DDP PACE Trainers. All DDP PACE Trainers will have:
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Been nominated by a DDPI-approved DDP Trainer
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Completed DDP Level One and Two
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Receive ongoing professional supervision
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Demonstrated their ability to facilitate attachment and trauma training in a collaborative way, to a DDP Trainer
They are supported by DDPI*.
Training content
DDP PACE training will provide you with a thorough understanding and experience of PACE as a way of being, embedded within the DDP framework.
This attitude of playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy is modelled on secure parent-infant interactions and guided by neuroscience and theories of attachment and intersubjectivity.
Core concepts include:
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Why children who have experienced developmental trauma, behave in the way they do
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What leads to children needing a different parenting approach involving PACE alongside behavioural support?
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How do we help/parent children that have experienced developmental trauma?
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What parenting capacities do parents need?
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Understanding what PACE is, and what it is not
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Using PACE alongside regulation and behavioural support
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The importance of self care, and blocked care
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Practical strategies for living and learning
On Completion
Once you have completed a Core DDP PACE training of 2 days or more you will receive your certificate and you can describe yourself as:
‘developing my use of DDP PACE within my practice’
Nurturing Attachment Therapeutic Parenting Program
Nurturing Attachment Program. 18 sessions. A structured therapeutic Parenting Program providing theory-based strategies for parenting.
Nurturing Attachment programme is based on a ‘House Model of Parenting’ (Kim Golding) that aims to help carers develop parenting skills that are matched to the emotional and behavioural needs of their children. Parents are encouraged to manage behaviour but within the much broader context of building trust and security with children who may mistrust adults and / or experienced trauma, loss and bereavement. The programme provides a coherent set of ideas and practical suggestions for therapeutically parenting
children in a way that nurtures security of attachment and therefore contributes to the building of resilience and emotional growth.
The Nurturing Attachment parenting groups is designed to provide guidance and support and aid reflective capacity to become ‘mind-minded’ within therapeutic parenting. Carers are encouraged to write reflective logs based on day to day experiences of parenting. Affective – reflective responses are collaboratively shared and expressed based on child’s behaviours and how this is internalized within a carer.
Nurturing Attachment group differs from traditional attachment training. Carers need to have completed foundations for attachment or conscious parenting program previously in order to access this experiential mode of learning and support. With the main aim of collaboratively learning from experience over the duration of the program. Day to day parenting experiences are utilised in understanding children’s functioning, adaptive behaviours and reflect on where parenting children with attachment difficulties may have had an impact on ones own emotional health.
The program builds on existing skills and facilitates ideas for therapeutically parenting children that build bridges for connection, nurtures security of attachment, builds resilience, emotional growth, trust and enhances the relationship dance within the home.
Kim Golding’s nurturing attachment program has been researched by Julie Selwyn of \Hedley research Centre for fostering and adoption. Smaller analysis of the program have also been undertaken and can be seen. The house model of therapeutic parenting is analysed as a way of gaining a deeper understanding of what is trying to be achieved in building foundations for therapeutic parenting. Grounded in attachment, developmental trauma and neuroscience theory.
The Neurobiology of attachment focused parenting is explored within the program. Parenting may at times lead to blocked care. Understanding this in context can facilitate greater attachment relationships:
‘When the failings that emerge while parenting a mistrustful child meet a parent’s sense of failing when they were children, in relationship with their own parents, there is a risk for a perfect storm of blocked trust and blocked care’ (p.205 Jonathan Baylin, Daniel Hughes, 2016).
The Nurturing Attachments program is based on Kim Goldings House Model of Parenting (please see attached diagrams). Three key models are covered with six sessions in each model.
Just Right State Sensory Attachment Integration Program
Sensory Attachment Integration Training Programme – £1,530 6 x sessions The
Just Right State Sensory Attachment Programme consists of 6 carer sessions and 6 young person sessions. The programme was devised by Eadaoin Bhreathnach, Specialist Trauma Occupational Therapist, following her work with children with learning needs and those with attachment needs. She observed fundamental needs, which led to the creation of this programme. For more information,
please see: https://www.sensoryattachmentintervention.com/jrs The training is
most effective when a group of carers undertake the programme together.
We are introduced to the ‘Just Right State Scared Gang’, and through these characters we learn about survival strategies: fight, flight, freeze, and shutdown. This helps us match the emotions and feelings behind children’s behaviours. We explore different activities and food properties that support emotional regulation. Children and carers explore what it means that all communication and experiences are sensory, and how this leads to emotional stimuli and behaviour. We learn how survival strategies used by children with complex trauma — experienced even in utero and early infancy — can wire the neuropathways of the nervous system. We also hear about hormonal and biological changes in the body, including how high levels of cortisol can negatively impact connection. However, we learn that nurture can increase levels of endorphins and oxytocin, which help to counteract cortisol. Importantly, nurture begins with carers nurturing themselves, and learning to ask for support from those around them. Vital Foods That Support Regulation We would like to share some interesting information on foods that help with regulation, mood, appetite, and sleep: Protein is a “building block” for increasing serotonin – found in foods like turkey, cheese, and milk. Calcium, magnesium, and vitamin D also help to increase serotonin levels. Parent Testimonies from the Programme “Our daughter was given a long hot water bottle. She hadn’t settled or slept for months. That night, she went straight to sleep and has now slept for a full week.” – Adoptive parents “I realise that I need to stop giving solutions and instead sit alongside my child to understand what they are trying to communicate.” Watch this space for more! Sensory Attachment Intervention (SAI) Sensory Attachment Intervention (SAI) was developed to recognise how trauma affects the way individuals process sensory information and relate to others — essentially, they organise around danger. We consider the core fears: Sensory: fear of sensation, or fear resulting from an inability to organise sensation for use. Attachment: fear of rejection or separation. SAI is an integrative treatment approach for children, young people, and adults who have experienced trauma and abuse.
Key Components of SAI: The focus of therapy is to enable self-regulation and co-regulation by embedding regulation into daily life. It draws from the theories of: o Ayres’ Sensory Integration o Crittenden’s Dynamic Maturation Model of Attachment o Developmental Trauma o Porges’ Polyvagal Theory SAI Principles Focuses on enabling self-regulation and co-regulation. Two key relationships: 1. Relationship with others, especially attachment figures. 2. Relationship with the environment. All information is sensory. Sensory processing creates representations of: o Attachment relationships o The physical self (body scheme) o The physical environment How a person perceives sensory and attachment experiences influences how they behave and the strategies they use to engage with people and their surroundings (home, school, workplace, leisure). What is the intention/function of the behaviour? SAI looks beyond behaviour to understand its purpose.
The Four Levels of Processing: 1. Level 1: Autonomic Nervous System Activation / Regulation 2. Level 2: Modulation 3. Level 3: Interpretation 4. Level 4: Organisation Children and adults are supported to explore their ‘Just Right State’ sensations, to understand how these influence perceptions and thoughts. Using a combination of: Exercises (e.g. on a gym ball) Food exploration Games …children are supported in understanding and regulating their sensory and emotional world.
Mindful Yoga For Adult Emotional Health & Mindful Yoga For Young People's Emotional Health
Mindful Yoga For Adults Emotional Health.
Since 2013 Carly has specialised in child trauma, adoption and Mindfulness. 2013 undertook Mindful Yoga Training for Young People’s emotional Health being taught to deliver the eight week Mindful Yoga Program.
The eight week Mindful Yoga Program has been delivered across Dorset since 2013. With over 80 families benefiting from the program. Outcomes are evaluated and feedback questionnaires can be seen on effectiveness of the programs. In 2017 the first school program was developed and delivered within schools.
Verwood First school being the first to provide the Mindful Yoga Program. Carly has delivered bespoke training within schools across Dorset since 2013, assisting schools to become ‘attachment based schools’. Below is a testimony from Fiona Utley, SENCO Allenbourne school.
‘Carly has assisted our school to become attachment aware, her knowledge is incredible and our relationships with children has significantly enhanced’’ Allenbourne School, Wimborne.
Having accredited the Mindful Yoga Program in 2016 with the CPD standards office, the programs been reviewed as a provider of training. In 2015 the Adoption
Support Fund agreed for The Mindful Yoga Programs to be an ‘In scope’ provision of service.
Teachers and professionals can gain CPD certificates for attendance while learning valuable tools and strategies for stress management, behavioural management, enhanced relationships, emotional regulations and greater effectiveness with young people.
For more information, please read on for research evidence base and history and development of Mindful Yoga.
Session Content:
-
Session 1. What is Yoga & Mindfulness?: Auto Pilot. 3 minute breath. ‘Our sea within’ you can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf’ Jon Kabat-Zinn’. PACE Outline. Playfulness. There is no ‘ACE’ without @P’
-
Session 2. What is Stress? Good and bad stress: A language without words: How our bodies respond to stress, nervous system. Stress button in the brain. Salt timer for emotional regulation. Yoga sequence to manage stress.
-
Session 3. Connect Body – Mind: Breathing Techniques. Boat origami. Pebble Meditation. Worksheets: define stress: emotional terms, physical terms and thoughts. Yoga sequence Curiosity part of PACE is explored in session 3 – Connect body – Mind’.
-
Session 4. Awakening to the here and now: Self-knowledge. Strength cards, strategies for emotional regulation. Mindfulness and Yoga strategies.
-
Session 5. Coming to our senses! Our Brilliant Brains: Use of senses to engage body, mind. Empathy part of PACE is explored in session 5 – ‘Coming to our senses’ our brilliant brains’.
-
Session 6. Respond not React: Monkey, Meerkat and elephant brain. Planting seeds to grow, gain insight, emotional regulation
-
Session 7. ‘What I be’ Acceptance & Non-judging: Understanding kindness to self and others by means of non-judging. Surfing the waves. Nurturing compassion. Acceptance part of PACE is explored in session 7 – WhatI be’,
-
Session 8. Jumping Hurdles: how to do daily practice for Mindfulness for greater emotional well being.
3 weeks after course end date. Come together to Explore practice.
Carly Barrett-Greening has Specialised as a Children’s Yoga Therapist in 2010 with The Special Yoga
Foundation, London. The only Yoga Centre for Children with special needs. Undertaking Yoga with toddlers to late teens for 17 years.
In 2012 Carly gained a specialist Degree in Children & Young People’s service at Bristol University. Bristol university is at the hub of current government research. Being taught directly by Julie Selwyn, of Hedley Centre, research centre for Fostering and Adoption. Carly has taken part in research relating to matching of adopters to children and has read extensively surrounding beyond the adoption order full research published in 2017.
Consultations and Supervision
