Training, Talks & Workshops
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Professional Development With A Difference...
We share game-changing knowledge alongside actionable strategies which help professionals to not only make sense of potentially complex theories, but to implement their learning in practice.
Whether you need an illuminating workshop, thought-provoking keynote, or workforce CPD, you can expect transformational insights, tailored around the specific needs of your participants and thoughtfully designed to directly impact the people they support.
We don’t follow pre-determined scripts, but the below ‘Healthy Brain Development and Social & Emotional Competence & Wellbeing ‘menus’ outline the kind of knowledge that we share.
Whether you know just what you want and when already, or need to consider your options, call or message us, and if we can help, we will.
Developing Healthy Brains
Instead of being concerned with children ‘being ready’ for the setting, shouldn’t we be focused on our settings being ready for children?
Based on the crucial first five years, this session explains:
- How the ‘early brain’ is shaped – positively and negatively- by its earliest experiences
- The neurodevelopmental role of play and social interaction, and their role in learning capacity and emotional wellbeing
- How to tap into and maximise this period of rapid neurological growth, especially for those children whose start in life is falls short of ideal enrichment.
While synaptic connectivity slows from 5-11 years, there are still huge strengths within this brain, and this session dives into:
- How to maximise this period to support learning and holistic development
- How to cultivate social and emotional competence, resilience and self-esteem as children navigate increasing pressures as they mature, especially as they prepare for adolescence
- Ultimately, how to ensure you put the best in, so you can help get the best out of the growing brains!
As neuroscience shines an increasingly bright light on the ‘adolescent brain’, we now know that normal – albeit, challenging – neurodevelopmental changes explain many typical teen problems.
This session explains why many young people:
- Make seemingly ‘bad’ or unsafe choices
- Struggle with all kinds of relationships
- Exhibit emotional dysregulation and challenging behaviours
Despite its fragility, the adolescent brain is actually a power-house for learning as it reconfigures itself for the adult world, and this workshop explores how to unlock its strengths, so you can effectively support young people-and yourself!-through this turbulent transition.
Learning, behaviour, engagement, mental health, resilience, relationships etc., are just a few typical challenges of a ‘vulnerable brain’.
These vulnerabilities can be rooted in multiple causes; Adverse Childhood Experiences, retained reflexes, trauma, sensory deficits, neurodivergence, genetics and even ‘epigenetic‘ changes.
While we may never fully understand the reasons, this affirmative workshop explains:
- How these factors can impact a brain’s capacity for learning, adapting, and all-round healthy functioning
- The approaches and environments which both help and hinder these brains’ capacity to develop and possibly ‘recover’
- What you can-and must-do, to identify, protect, and ‘strengthen the strengths’ of these vulnerable brains
A common misconception about young people is that they consciously choose and can thus control all their behaviours.
While this is true for some children, most ‘difficult-to-manage’ behaviours are simply a by-product of their brains’ fight/flight/freeze response.
Typical ‘behaviour management’ systems usually hinder far more than they help in the long-term.
Not only causing untold anxieties in many compliant children – inhibiting their capacity to learn well – measures designed to control children don’t proactively teach the skills of self-awareness, emotional regulation and impulse control.
Dealing with ‘the root, and not the fruit’, this solution-focused session explains how:
- All behaviour is a form of communication, and what that can tell us about a brain’s wiring and biochemistry
- How to change a brain in order to change behaviour
- How to foster a ‘locus of control’ in young people, thus increasing the likelihood of sustainable behaviour change
Science has evidenced that neural circuits dedicated to play are hard-wired in the human brain at birth, meaning that play is an innate part of our evolution.
Play doesn’t just feel good; is does good.
This developmental process never switches off; it’s the brain’s most essential component for life-long learning.
This eye-opening session will help you to understand:
The basics of ‘Affective Neuroscience’, explaining why ‘learning‘ and ‘play’ are two sides of the same coin
How playing actually turbo-charges neural connectivity and healthy biochemistry
How, by activating the brain’s ‘Play‘ and ‘Curiosity‘ circuits, we can promote learning capacity at any point in childhood and beyond
Social & Emotional Competence And Wellbeing
Even when experienced below a child’s conscious awareness, we cannot underestimate the impact of powerlessness.
Whether acute helplessness equates to trauma, or a child has simply lost – or lacked – personal agency and autonomy, powerlessness denies them the developmentally necessary experiences that Mother Nature intended: to achieve control, independence and mastery; to grow up…
This thought-provoking session explores:
- The breadth of powerlessness, and the imprint that can be left on the brain and nervous system
- How anxiety, lack of confidence, or trust – in others the world and the future – are frequently the by-product of powerlessness
- How to practically, realistically and efficiently rebuild young people’s sense of agency, so they feel empowered to lead their own lives!
Fragile self-esteem is at the heart of many struggles, for both and the adults that they will (or have already) become.
But what exactly is self-esteem?
Bringing clarity to an issue we sense instinctively, but may struggle to articulate, this session explores:
- How to define self-esteem, enabling you to understand what it is, and where it comes from
- How poor self-esteem manifests itself in a breadth of ways; not just in the withdrawn, self-deprecating or defeatist attitudes that we typically identify as ‘low self-esteem’
- Simple strategies, practical tools and actionable techniques to use in your daily interactions to nurture children’s ability to flourish
Childhood experiences affect an individual’s outcomes across the lifespan, meaning that taking care of young minds should be our most important job, AND theirs.
This practical session equips you with the a range of hands-on, flexible ideas and creative activities, helping you to:
- Meaningfully engage children in learning about, protecting and strengthening their own wellbeing
- Help them to view themselves as capable individuals; in charge of their own mental health, and the future that depends on it
- Equip children with fundamental competencies ensuring they are ‘prepared well for being well‘.
Some young people appear disenchanted, apathetic, lethargic or lazy, but the barriers to engagement and motivation are usually deeper than this.
Drawing on motivational theory, this informative session takes a closer look at the variables in children’s motivators, so you can:
- Identify and adapt to individual children’s intrinsic‘ and ‘extrinsic‘ motivators, and ‘validation preferences‘
- Plan actionable strategies to implement this theory in your setting
- Differentiate your approaches to individuals’ ‘motivational profile‘, to most effectively enhance their appetite to engage
The increasing pressures of being young – real and imagined – are creating a host of problems associated with resilience; determination, self-acceptance and imperfection; exacerbated by their lack of capacity for delayed gratification.
This session explores:
- The basic neurology of ‘bouncebackability’ and perseverance
- How to strengthen young people’s capacity to stretch themselves, tolerate boredom, and experience failure as an opportunity, rather than defeat
- How to cultivate an ‘I Can’ mindset in children, preparing them with the confidence and courage to mend broken wings and fly anyway!
It can be difficult to support a young person who is bereaved, dealing with unwelcome change, unexpected loss, or any other significant separation; knowing what they understand, how they’re processing their experiences, and how well they can express themselves may be impossible.
Exploring how any sudden or distressing change can leave children at a loss, this workshop explains:
- Why destabilising change, grief or even uncertainty affects children psychologically, neurologically and biochemically, and how this can impair their healthy functioning
- The child-centred approaches that any practitioner can use to help them move through the normal, necessary, but usually painful process of grief and change
- How you can effectively – and realistically – nurture their wellbeing and resilience in the face of what may be a shattering experience circumstances.
We tend to think of ourselves as human beings, but in practice, we’re more accurately ‘humans doing’.
But there is magic in our ‘presence’ as well as our practice, especially for those who support young people (and adults) who may be considered as ‘vulnerable’.
Unfortunately, it’s easy to miss this magic because trusting our intuition without a theory to back it up is not easy.
This illuminating but accessible session simply decodes:
- The growing body of scientific research around intuition, teaching us not only to trust it, but how to attune more deeply
- The fascinating interplay between the ‘thinking’ brain and the ‘intuitive’ heart
- How, through the phenomenon of ‘synchronicity‘, our nervous systems unconsciously attune to others’, and how you can tap into and use this to do your most powerful work, simply by being who you are.
‘Primitive reflexes’ are an evolutionary system which support children’s neurosequential development from birth.
For a number of reasons these reflexes may not ‘switch off’ as nature intended, disturbing the flow of development, which frequently presents as learning delays, behavioural disorders and conditions such as ASD and ADHD.
Without intervention, retained reflexes can impact any and all areas of development over the lifespan.
Incorporating theoretical and practical elements, this workshop explains:
- The role of the different primitive reflexes, and why they may be ‘retained’
- How to recognise when struggles, i.e. sensory issues and executive functioning, are likely to be rooted in retained reflexes
- How to create an enriched environment and physical interventions to support their integration into the nervous system.
Our costs vary according to length of talk or session, complexity of material, audience size, availability of recordings, travel costs etc.
As a guide:
- Keynotes and presentations: £250-£500
- 2 hour training: £495-£600
- 1/2 day training: £550-£750
- Full day training: £950-£1200
Costs include a copy of slides and resources, and e-certificate templates on request.
Book a programme of 3+ sessions for reduced price.
Enquire here.
“The online session you just delivered for teachers was amazing. It made so much sense. It is certainly making me rethink my teaching and how I might encourage other staff to do similar. You explained it all so well.”
Primary School Teacher