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Child with a Bear

Understanding Trauma

When families get an informed understanding of how deeply stressful events early in their child's life have impacted their development they consistently say 'WE WISH WE HAD KNOWN THIS SOONER!"

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We know that one of the main reasons that adoptions dissolve and children are bounced between foster homes is because caregivers feel ill-equipped to handle the needs and behaviours of the children in their homes.

Trauma: Why it Matters

We feel that trauma is probably the MOST IMPORTANT thing for families and communities to understand when they are supporting children who have experienced family breakdown, adoption, or foster care. 

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Early toxic stress results in substantial changes to a child's brain, belief system, body and behaviours. 

The short video below explains it well.

Once we understand that what looks like a child who "won't do something" is often actually a child that "can't do something" (given the state of their brain and body) we have more compassion and empathy and we change our approach from punishment to mentorship. 

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At Home for Every Child, we are big fans of Trust-Based Relational Intervention which makes this brain development and body/behaviour response easy to understand and gives simple, practical tools to enable ANYONE to help navigate a hurt child to a place of greater stability and emotional regulation. TBRI is NOT a silver bullet, but it is proven to be effective when consistently applied and families using this approach have found hope and healing.

There are a number of different resources available to educate and support caregivers, teachers, families and community members who are seeking to apply TBRI:

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  1. FREE Videos on YouTube:

    • TBRI

    • Karyn Purvis

    • Empowered to Connect

    • Attachment styles, ACES...

  2. Empowered to Connect Parent Training – interactive training designed to teach parents and caregivers the foundations of TBRI on a biblical foundation and how to implement TBRI principles in their homes

  3. ​The Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development has videos available for purchase or online rental 

    • Healing Families DVDs – real life examples teaching practical skill to parents and professionals. Videos are broken into chapters, making them ideal for busy parents, counselors and their clients, support group discussion, or agency staff development. This video series focuses on teaching concrete tools.

    • Lecture Series DVDs – lays the foundation for understanding the elements of TBRI

  4. The Connected Child book is essentially the basics of the Hope for the Journey (formerly the 2 day Empowered to Connect) Conference in a book format

  5. TBRI 101 – A self-guided, whiteboard-style course of approximately 8 hrs of video lessons 

  6. TBRI Practitioner Training –training for professionals to be equipped to implement and teach TBRI within their organizations and those that they serve

  7. The Trauma-Informed Camp Course through the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development is an online, self-guided course that provides an overview of principles and practices for creating a trauma-informed camp. This course is for TBRI Practitioners who are looking to start their own camp or who are looking to take steps to include basic TBRI principles into their camp design. The course includes a series of webinars covering the main areas of camp as well as access to a digital camp manual.

  8. TBRI Family Camp Training through the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development is a guided, in-person experience that empowers others to create customized camps modeled after The Hope Connection 2.0. This training is ideal for TBRI® Practitioners who currently oversee a camp and are interested in empowering families to create lasting change. With this training, TBRI Practitioners participate in two weekends of the Hope Connection 2.0 as well as live trainings with the KPICD camp team. 

  9. TBRI & Trauma-Informed Classrooms Training through the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development is a digital training designed to equip educators to help children from backgrounds of abuse, neglect, and/or trauma. Join us to learn how to disarm fear, optimize learning, and facilitate healing for vulnerable children in the classroom. This training can be purchased for individuals or for a school. https://child.tcu.edu/tbritic/#sthash.f6oklho5.dpbs

  10. How We Love – Attachment and Marriage  is a 6 hr. seminar available as a DVD, online download or audio mp3 that teaches how your early life experiences create an imprint of intimacy – or love style – a blueprint that shapes your behavior, beliefs and expectations in all your relationships, especially marriage.
    This seminar is essentially TBRI for marriages.

  11. Hope for the Journey audio recordings are available for purchase 

  12. CareImpact Academy Canada offers training and resources in both faith and secular formats.  

  13. ​Trauma Competent Caregiver Training has been implemented as part of the required training for Saskatchewan foster families. This training includes TBRI within a broader scope of training material. As a result of this training requirement, Saskatchewan now has Trauma Competent Caregiver Trainers.  

  14. Created to Connect: A Christian’s Guide to the Connected Child is available as a free download at   It is a small group or couples study guide designed to outline how the TBRI methodology aligns with Biblical principals and help adoptive and foster parents to build connection with their children.

  15. The Connection: Where Hearts Meet is a 13 lesson, DVD-lead small group study by Karyn Purvis (with participant workbooks) that looks deeply into Biblical principles that support the  TBRI and how to implement TBRI principles in your family

  16. TBRI Resources and Connections for Canada Facebook Group provides resources, graphics and information on training events for Canadians

  17. Making Sense of your Past (Worth) is an 8 week curriculum (two hours a week) developed by Cindy Lee of Halo, that helps teens and adults desiring to get to a place of secure attachment (doing your own work). It helps those individuals replace shame with positive self-worth. We often ask, “How do I change my attachment style?” This curriculum gives them the step-by-step process to do so. For a map of trainers for this program see: https://haloprojectokc.com/locate/  (so far there are a few of us sprinkled across the country).

 

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Contact Us
to discuss how we can support your family in getting equipped with TBRI

*TBRI is the attachment-based, trauma-informed intervention developed by The Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development under Dr. Karyn Purvis. The Trust Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) methodology is scientifically-backed and effectively addresses the challenges faced by vulnerable children and their caregivers and brings healing.  TBRI is taught to and effective for parents, communities and professionals in any context. (No faith-content)* Empowered to Connect was developed by Karyn Purvis and Michael Monroe to equip local churches to train foster and adoptive caregivers in the TBRI methodology. In 2020 it changed. The conference has been shortened to a single day and renamed the Hope for the Journey Conference. Empowered to Connect ownership and program rights of ETC were transferred to the care of the Memphis Family Connection Center (MFCC), a holistic family care clinic based on the principles of TBRI who still provide training and resources, podcasts etc.*Hope for the Journey is the new name of the former Empowered to Connect Conference.* Making Sense of your Past (Worth) is a program developed by Cindy Lee, Executive Director of the Halo Project in Oklahoma City to help adults process their pasts and work toward secure attachment.* Trauma Competent Caregiver Training is a training program from Trauma Free World, which was founded by Back2Back Ministries. Back2Back partnered with several nationally recognized child development and trauma experts to understand the latest research and best practices around trauma care. Back2Back built a solid understanding of the academic research on trauma care by working with leaders in the field, like Jayne and Dr. David Schooler, experts in working with adoptive and foster families, the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development at Texas Christian University and built training around the essential skills outlined by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. https://traumafreeworld.org/*How We Love, although not associated with the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development or TBRI, utilizes many of the same principles within the context of marriage relationships.

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