The following list of resources was compiled by Chantelle D. Hyde, a volunteer with the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint in Canada.
Documentaries
Here are a few documentaries that might help you to realize the harm done by punitive approaches including restraint and seclusion.
This is Not About Me
Marco Niemeijer
“What is it like to be autistic and non-speaking in a world that has already made up its mind about you? This Is Not About Me tells the story of Jordyn Zimmerman. Jordyn dreamt of becoming a teacher. She started out eager to learn at school, but she was soon separated from the other children. Unable to communicate, teachers thought she was also unable to understand or learn. Year after year, her behavior worsened. She was restrained and placed in seclusion. Jordyn found herself caught in a system that unintentionally turned her life into a living nightmare. Finally, at the age of 18, with the help of educators who see her differently, she manages to turn her fate and flourish. Watch the story of one autistic woman that fought hard to be recognized and trusted.”
You can rent or buy the full documentary here.
Caution from the film makers: “This documentary includes conversations about and references to restraint and topics such as disability-based discrimination and harassment. We acknowledge that this content may be difficult to view, so we encourage you to prepare emotionally before proceeding. Take care of your safety and well-being. If purchasing the movie for someone other than yourself, please share this message with them.”
From the Director “I hope this film will inspire everyone to question our assumptions and look past our prejudices of people who can’t speak.”
Paper Tigers
Jim Sporleder
“Set within and around the campus of Lincoln Alternative High School in the rural community of Walla Walla, Washington, Paper Tigers asks the following questions: What does it mean to be a trauma-informed school? And how do you educate teens whose childhood experiences have left them with a brain and body ill-suited to learn?
In search of clear and honest answers, Paper Tigers hinges on a remarkable collaboration between subject and filmmaker. Armed with their own cameras and their own voices, the teens of Paper Tigers offer raw but valuable insight into the hearts and minds of teens pushing back against the spectre of a hard childhood.”
AASR Live Event Recordings to introduce Jim Sporleder’s Work:
You can watch the full documentary Free on Amazon Prime here.
Books:
If you are an educational professional, and would like consulting on your journey to making change, you can contact Jim Sporleder here.
The Kids We Lose
Lives in the Balance
“A collaboration between Lives in the Balance and Lone Wolf Media, The Kids We Lose is a feature-length documentary film about the human side of being a child or student with behavioral challenges, and the struggles faced by parents, educators, staff in facilities, mental health clinicians, and judicial and law enforcement professionals in trying to ensure that these kids receive the help they need. The Kids We Lose also exposes the often brutal, inhumane ways in which kids with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges are treated in schools, inpatient psychiatry units, residential facilities, and prisons. Their hopelessness, misery, and frustration are palpable. The human toll is hard to fathom. But these are also the most expensive kids in our society. Doing the wrong thing costs a fortune. When we don’t help our most vulnerable kids, we all lose.”
“The Kids We Lose is intended to heighten awareness and galvanize people to advocate for change.”
You can watch the full documentary and additional content Free here.
“If you’re interested in getting involved, become a Lives in the Balance Advocator:There’s a lot to be done, and Lives in the Balance Advocators are leading the way.
For free resources on reducing (and ultimately eliminating) the use of restraint and seclusion, visit www.truecrisisprevention.org
Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) is the evidence-based model of care that helps caregivers focus on identifying the problems that are causing concerning behaviors in kids and solving those problems collaboratively and proactively. The model is a departure from approaches emphasizing the use of consequences to modify concerning behaviors. In families, general and special education schools, inpatient psychiatry units, and residential and juvenile detention facilities, the CPS model has a track record of dramatically improving behavior and dramatically reducing or eliminating discipline referrals, detentions, suspensions, restraints, and seclusions. The CPS model is non-punitive, non-exclusionary, trauma-informed, transdiagnostic, and transcultural.”
Free AASR Facebook Live Recordings introducing Dr Ross Greene’s work:
Research:
Advocacy:
Lives in the Balance highly encourages Advocacy, and offer tools and resources to support Advocates Here.
Courses/Training
Here are courses and training programs that can help to reduce and eliminate the use of restraint and seclusion.
Dr. Mona Delahooke (monadelahooke.com)
Free AASR Facebook Live Session Recordings to introduce Dr. Delahooke’s work:
Books:
Dr Mona Delahooke Course/Webinar for purchase:
“Research from neuroscience sheds new light on two main categories of behaviors: those that are intentional, planned, or otherwise known as “willful,” and those that are automatic or instinctual. Most educational and parenting programs don’t distinguish between the two.
In this webinar, Dr. Mona will show us why the distinction is so important and how we can learn to observe a child’s behavioral biomarkers to better address the wide range of behavioral challenges we see in children and teens.”
Self-Reg (self-reg.com)
Dr. Stuart Shanker, The MEHRIT Centre
Free AASR Facebook Live Videos with Dr. Susan Hopkins and Dr Stuart about Self-Reg:
AASR’s Guy Stephens recently began a Blog series related to his own Self-Reg training journey. You can read the first blog post in his series here.
Shanker Self-Reg® is a process for enhancing self-regulation by understanding and dealing with stress. In Self-Reg, we consider both our responses to stress and our underlying state of energy and tension when we encounter a stress.
Shanker Self-Reg® is a valuable and accessible framework for children, youth, and adults as well as people who care about and work with them. Educators and mental health professionals from across Canada and around the world are using Self-Reg to address behavioural, emotional, and social problems and to improve learning outcomes for all students.
Courses/Training:
Sandi Lerman – Heart-Strong International (Heartstronginternational.com)
Free AASR Facebook Live Session Recording
In this session, HSI Founder and Program Director Sandi Lerman explains how to assess and address the root causes for some of the most common behavior challenges in children with ACEs, anxiety, and trauma. She also introduces the HEART-STRONG Model™, a scaffolded system of supports for growth and healing that has been successfully implemented in families and schools in the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Costa Rica, and Japan.
Free Article
What Kids with Trauma Need in School
Heart-Strong international (HSI) is a global education company providing coaching, training, and graduate-level certification for Trauma-Informed Specialists, Certified Parent Coaches, and Certified Educational Trainers. HSI believes that toxic stress manifesting in childhood trauma is the primary cause of chronic behavior challenges; not disabilities, differences, and diagnoses. We believe in the power of compassion with heart-to-heart connection that leads to hope, healing, and a life of joy, growth and transformation. HSI has been training parents and teachers exclusively online since 2014 and is the only grass-roots “lived experience” training program providing instruction for parent and teacher leaders who want to become trauma-informed experts to serve their local schools and communities.
Programs
HSI Trauma-Informed Certification Program
Training and Certification for Parent and Teacher Leaders
HSI’s high-touch, comprehensive training and certification programs give parents and teacher leaders a solid understanding of cutting-edge neuroscience and somatic brain-body approaches to growth and healing, and provides a practical, proven model to assess and address even the most challenging behaviors with compassion. HSI has an advanced training for those who wish to become Certified Parent Coaches and Educational Trainers so that they can work in schools, parent organizations, non-profits, or start a business as trauma-informed coaches, trainers, and consultants.
You can find the course brochure here.
EEEK -Explosive Episode Elimination Kit
Reduce and eliminate explosive episodes with a trauma-informed approach.
Whether you are a parent or a teacher, dealing with explosive and aggressive behaviors is exhausting! Sadly, many parents and teachers resort to holding or restraining students, or putting them in time out or seclusion, which ends up destroying the child’s feeling of safety and trust.
In the Explosive Episode Elimination Kit, you will learn…
- How to stop explosive meltdowns once they’ve started, even if the child has very aggressive behaviors.
- How to prevent these episodes from happening in the first place, so you don’t have to keep walking on eggshells.
- How to reduce the length, intensity, and frequency of explosive episodes and eventually eliminate them completely.
- How to identify the child’s triggers and work to solve problems together so that you can have a more peaceful, happy classroom or family life.
- How to keep your own sanity, peace, and patience while you are supporting a child with intense needs so that you can help your child from a place of deep compassion.
Trauma-informed Changemakers Book Club and Community
Love books? Want to learn more about neuroscience, compassionate brain-body solutions for parenting and teaching, and personal growth and development for adults, too? You can find more information here.
Join the Trauma-Informed Changemakers Book Club and Community to discuss great books and meet like-hearted parents, educators, coaches, and trainers!
Note: This community is provided at no charge for those experiencing financial difficulty and is also a free bonus program for all HSI’s other paid programs.
Dr. Lori Desautels (revelationsineducation.com)
Revelations in Education
Free AASR Facebook Live Event Recordings Introducing Dr Desautels work:
Books:
- Connections Over Compliance: Rewiring Our Perceptions of Discipline
- Eyes Are Never Quiet: Listening Beneath the Behaviors of our Most Troubled Students
- Unwritten, The Story of a Living System: A Pathway to Enlivening and Transforming Education
- How May I Serve You: Revelations In Education
- Free Templates and Lessons
180 Days of Educational Neuroscience: Toolkit
“The 180 days of Applied Educational Neuroscience: Scope and Sequence toolkit is for educators, therapists, counselors, social workers, mental health practitioners and students. This toolkit serves to explore and apply the emergent social and affective neurosciences through the Applied Educational Neuroscience framework and the Polyvagal Theory into our school and community cultures. We do this as we build it into what we already do: procedures, transitions, rituals and routines.”
Courses/Training:
Undergraduate Offering
Behaviour Management for the Inclusive Classroom
This course explores the behaviors of children and youth that originate from a variety of adverse childhood experiences. We will also examine the resiliency research, the ACE studies, social and emotional learning and the many programs that address the social and emotional health of all children. We are excited to share a new evidence based relational discipline protocol, as we discuss relationships, co-regulation, classroom cultures, student motivation, and practical methods for applying the brain aligned strategies through the framework of educational neuroscience. Emphasis is on designing, implementing, and assessing all behaviors through a brain aligned relational lens in general education classrooms, including functional behavioral analysis and behavior plans.
Graduate Certificate Course
Applied Educational Neuroscience: Scope and Sequence
Applied Educational Neuroscience: Scope and Sequence
“The Applied Educational Neuroscience (AEN) certification program is specifically designed to meet the needs of educators, social workers, counselors, mental health practitioners, parent, and anyone who sits beside our children and youth. The certification is intended to provide graduate and post graduate students with an opportunity to become acquainted with the theoretical and empirical literature of educational neuroscience, social and affective neurosciences, adversities (individual and community) trauma and how the brain and nervous system are impacted and develop through the continuum of adversity and trauma. Trauma and adversity influence behaviors, relationships, and academic acquisition. This 9-credit hour track aligns with the Indiana Developmental Standards for educators. The program consists of three content courses, each three credits, with the final course designed as a practicum for creating a specific project, template, or professional development within this area. The first and second course must be taken before the third practicum course as graduate non-degree and degree status. This certification specifically addresses the research, the application of the research in the areas of the brain and nervous system development, adversity and how emotional social, and cognitive development are disrupted by these adversities and trauma. The AEN certification will also deeply explore the resiliency and the post-traumatic growth mindset of brain and nervous system reparation and healing because of intentional co-regulation and connection and emotional protective factors that buffer an individual’s experiences when adversity and trauma occur.
The Polyvagal Institute (www.polyvagalinstitute.org)
Free AASR Facebook Live Event Recording Introducing Stephen W. Porges, PhD’s work:
Research
“The PVI Research library is organized into three sections: research conducted by Dr. Porges and colleagues, research conducted by The Kinsey Institute, and psychophysiological assessments and autonomic scales useful for research related to the Polyvagal Theory.”
Training Courses
PVI Mission: “Stephen Porges first presented Polyvagal Theory in 1994. Over the next 10 years it was gradually adopted by a new wave of leading trauma therapists who found in Polyvagal Theory (PVT) a clear explanation for the effectiveness of their body-based methodologies. For these new-thinking therapists, and the generation of clinicians who followed, PVT opened up the ‘black box’ that is our nervous system and connected, for the first time, our sense of safety with behavior and communication patterns.
In the past few years, the Polyvagal perspective has spread beyond the field of trauma to other disciplines as well as to the broader wellness and healthcare communities. We, as a society, are in the process of realizing we communicate through our nervous systems as much as our intellects.”
We’ve launched Polyvagal Institute as a means to further this trend. Our mission is to advance social communication and connectivity by raising awareness, building community, facilitating research, and offering education on this new understanding of the mind/body system. We believe we can effect change at both individual and societal levels: as individuals, we become better, more compassionate communicators as we understand how human connections are formed, and as a society we can glean a new paradigm for providing care, whether the care be given in a hospital or classroom or home.”
PVI Partner Courses:
In partnership with Dr. Lori Desautels: Polyvagal Theory Comes to Life in Our Schools and Classrooms
“This course introduces the science of Polyvagal Theory and how the application of this theory into our schools will support social and emotional well-being. The goal is to understand how our nervous system drives all behaviors and learning. Current education models require compliance and control based state regulation, while to attend to mental and cognitive tasks, we need to feel safe and connected inside our environments, experiences, and relationships.”
A Paradigm Shift in Understanding Children’s Behavior: Conversations with Dr Mona Delahooke and Dr Stephen Porges
This course includes four Modules:
- Understanding Behaviors Through a Polyvagal Lens
- The Power of Respecting a Child’s (and Parent’s) Physiological State
- Individualizing Education and Caregiving
- Real life Examples & Application
The Neurosequential Model Network (www.neurosequential.com)
Dr. Bruce D Perry
Free AASR Facebook Live Event Recording introducing The Neurosequential Model:
“The Neurosequential Model is a developmentally-informed, biologically-respectful approach to working with at-risk children.
The Neurosequential Model is not a specific therapeutic technique or intervention; it is a way to organize a child’s history and current functioning. The goal of this approach is to structure assessment of a child, the articulation of the primary problems, identification of key strengths and the application of interventions (educational, enrichment and therapeutic) in a way that will help family, educators, therapists and related professionals best meet the needs of the child.”
Recent Publication What Happened To You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing” is Dr. Perry’s most recently published book with co-author Oprah Winfrey.
Dr Perry has published extensively. His work includes overviews, applications and outcomes related to The Neurosequential Model. This multimedia link will take you to a variety of content.
Courses/Training on The Neursequential Model in Various Environments:
- Therapeutics
- Education
- Caregiving
- Reflection & Supervision
- Sports
- Early Childhood
All courses can be found here.
LASER, Low Arousal and ATLASS Training (studio3.org)
Studio 3
“Studio 3 trainers have been running courses in physical intervention training since 1992, providing crisis management coaching for individuals working with adults and children who struggle with a range of issues across the life span, from Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) to intellectual disabilities. Our courses are founded upon applied academic research, carried out by specialists within residential homes, day centres, respite care homes and institutional settings. Our aim is to give carers the skills they need to manage challenging behaviours, subsequently improving the client’s environment, and developing more positive relationships between carers and clients. “
Books:
- Freedom from Restraint and Seclusion: The Studio 3 Approach
- The Reflective Journey: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Low Arousal Approach
- Coping with Stress and Adversity: Inspirational Stories by Raj Soren
Training:
Crisis Management: Managing Signs of Distress Course – Studio 3’s Managing Signs of Distress (formerly Managing Challenging Behaviour or MCB) course is a three-day BILD-certificated programme which promotes a person-centred approach to crisis management. Our philosophy is to approach behaviours of concern in a gentle and dignified way by providing a better understanding and insight into what causes an individual to become distressed, and through the use of low arousal approaches and gentle physical skills. In essence, we provide de-escalation training which not only seeks to control crisis situations, but avoid them altogether.
The ATLASS Programme – The Atlass programme delivers a comprehensive set of tools including both teaching skills and practical information, and is the next step on from our Managing Signs of Distress Course. This programme is based upon a proven, well-established and internationally respected model of positive psychology.
The Low Arousal Approach – Studio 3 has been providing training in the use and application of the Low Arousal Approach for three decades. Professionals, support workers, carers and family members have been able to access workshops focusing primarily on practical, non-confrontational approaches to supporting individuals who experience significant stress and present behaviours that may be difficult to manage. Training has encouraged support providers to focus on the person rather than the behaviour and try to understand the underlying causes of the behaviour, rather than viewing it as a problem that needs to be solved.
The LASER Programme – The LASER Programme is a training course launched earlier this year specifically for classroom and educational settings. This programme provides support for teachers, staff, families and pupils to create Low Arousal environments and manage behaviour of concern.
A complete list of Studio 3’s Training and Coaching programs can be found by clicking here.
Ukeru (ukerusystems.com)
Grafton Integrated Health
“Backed by decades of brain-based research and neuroscience, Ukeru is a simple, yet highly effective approach to crisis management that offers an alternative to coercive behaviour techniques” (Including Restraint and Seclusion).
Free AASR Facebook Live Event Recording with Christopher Feltner of Ukeru Systems
Courses/Training:
Customized to fit the unique needs of each organization, Ukeru® offers hands-on participant trainings as well as a “train-the-trainer” series. Training is straightforward and easy to implement, and focuses on what caregivers want to do most: communicate effectively with clients and diffuse stressful, escalating behaviors.
Each training covers:
- Verbal and nonverbal communication to convert/divert an aggressive individual
- Physical release techniques that keep both client and caregiver safe
- Physical re-direction to avoid injury and self-harm
- Safe Blocking®—the only trauma-informed, restraint-free blocking technique
Ukeru provides training on the concept of trauma-informed care.
