Five Rivers Annual Research Into Practice Conference

Welcome to the Research into Practice Virtual Conference. We are delighted to have you join us for a day dedicated to exploring innovative insights and practical learning. Each presenter has striven to move beyond uncertainty to create new thinking that can be harnessed to make lives better.

This conference seeks to bring together a diverse community that supports Five Rivers aims to 'Turn Children's lives Around', whether a social worker, mental health professional, foster carer, or residential care staff, teacher, or commissioning; we hope to offer a day of learning and information that you an take away and consider how this might be incorporated into your future work.

Our four areas of focus during the day will be:

• Beyond Neglect and Unseen Attachment Trauma
• Evaluation ATIC (Attachment & Trauma Informed Care) Therapeutic Care Training
• The Reflective Fostering Program
• Food as a Relational Substance

Throughout the day, you will gain valuable Continuous Professional Development (CPD) insights and practical knowledge that can be directly applied to your work.

If your work involves children and families, this conference is for you! Join us on this journey of learning and professional development. Together, we can be a catalyst for growth, innovation, and change.

ZOOM

This event will be hosted on the Zoom meeting platform where we will use our cameras and microphones to interact with each other as a group.

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We and the presenters we collaborate with are committed to working in a way that aligns with the ethical codes and frameworks of our respective professional organisations. We expect all colleagues attending our events to uphold the ethical principles of their professional membership.

If you are not a member of a professional organisation, we ask that you participate in a way that is both authentic and respectful, fostering a space of mutual learning and professional engagement.

By registering for this event, you agree to be present and interact in a manner that reflects these principles.

Meet the Presenters

Beyond Neglect: Unavailability as Unseen Attachment Trauma and Its Dissociative Consequences - Doris D'Hooghe

This presentation introduces Unseen Attachment Trauma (UAT) as a novel form of attachment trauma, where the traumatic event is the psychological and physical unavailability of a caregiver. Availability refers to the caregiver’s ability to engage in attachment interactions with the child, which centres on two essential features: sensitivity and responsiveness. These interactions are foundational for forming a safe attachment relationship. Unlike more visible forms of maltreatment, UAT remains “unseen” precisely because it involves the absence of these necessary relational exchanges.

Within a developmental framework, caregiver unavailability creates a profound rupture in the child’s developmental trajectory. In response, the child develops dissociative reactions, structured, adaptive responses to an unsafe attachment environment. These reactions compartmentalise overwhelming experiences to preserve the attachment bond and manifest across six key developmental domains: relational, bodily, neurobiological, emotional, cognitive, and moral. Though protective in the short term, they compromise the integration of a cohesive and stable sense of self.

This approach reframes dissociation not as pathology, but as a developmental consequence of relational unavailability, offering clinicians a more precise, attachment-informed lens for therapeutic work.

Doris D'Hooghe

Trauma Center Belgium

Doris D'Hooghe is a psychotraumatologist, integrative child therapist, and EMDR practitioner with over 40 years of clinical experience. She began her career as a psychiatric nurse and later founded Trauma Center Belgium, specialising in treating complex trauma across the lifespan. Her work focuses on early and prenatal trauma, dissociation, and attachment.

D'Hooghe introduced the concept of Unseen Attachment Trauma and co-developed the Developmental Model of Dissociation (DMD) with Layla Brack. Together, they co-authored a book for Routledge on attachment trauma and therapeutic intervention. She has contributed to The Neuroeducation Toolbox and co-authored the children's book "Oscar's Adventures", which explores PTSD in children. Her interdisciplinary approach blends neuroscience, psychology, and spirituality, emphasising client-centred care and the innate capacity for healing.

Website | www.traumacenterbelgium.be

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“Knowledge. Strategies. Connection.”: Evaluating the Impact of the ATIC™ Therapeutic Training for Foster Carers and Residential Workers Supporting Looked After Children - Dr Hannah Wilcox

Across the UK, services are grappling with the growing complexity of the young people coming into care. Year on year, we’re seeing rising levels of trauma, emotional needs, and complex behavioural presentations. Carers and staff are under increasing pressure and there is a growing recognition across the sector that a higher standard of therapeutic care is essential - both to support young people and to sustain those who care for them.

It was within this context that similar patterns began to emerge across Five Rivers services. Stability meetings highlighted recurrent themes: blocked care, compassion fatigue, and the need for deeper therapeutic understanding and more practical support for carers. Alongside this, our teams were telling us that there were inconsistencies in how therapeutic care was understood and delivered across regions. Clinicians and carers were doing brilliant work, but everyone had a slightly different version of what it meant to be “attachment and trauma informed.”

In response, the ATIC™ Therapeutic Training Programme was developed. Evolving from standalone modules on topics such as attachment, shame and therapeutic parenting, the new programme brings these elements together into a structured, experiential and relational learning journey. Delivered at foundation, intermediate and advanced levels - and adapted for both fostering and residential contexts - the training is designed to build knowledge, strengthen practice, and embed a consistent, attachment and trauma-informed approach across services.

5 years on from the where we began, this presentation will share the story of how the programme was developed, what we’ve learned so far from evaluating the foundation level with over 300 carers, and how we hope to continue developing a shared, sustainable and impactful therapeutic culture.

Join us as we explore what’s working, what we’re learning, and where we go next.

Dr Hannah Wilcox

Midhurst Clinical Therapeutic Services (MCTS)

Hannah Wilcox is a Clinical Psychologist and Head of Service at Midhurst Clinical Therapeutic Services (MCTS).

MCTS has grown from 35 years of work within its sibling company Five Rivers Child Care Ltd, which provides high-impact sector-leading care and education across the country. Within that setting, the Attachment and Trauma Informed Care (ATIC™) model was developed in 2018 and has since delivered incredible results in over a dozen residential children’s homes and has been utilised in fostering and integrated education services nationwide, serving over a thousand families, children, and young people, with a growing body of supportive research literature.

From this foundation, MCTS has developed as a social enterprise to ensure that other organisations can also benefit from the ATIC™ model.

As MCTS Head of Service, Hannah oversees the evolution and implementation of the Attachment and Trauma-Informed Care (ATIC™) approach across Five Rivers and also within external residential and fostering services.

Hannah began working in mental health, social care and education settings in 2008. Since qualifying as a psychologist in 2018, she has specialised in working with young people and families affected by adversity and complex trauma and is proud to utilise her lived experience alongside her professional training, in service of those who are neglected in the current systems.

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The Reflective Fostering Programme - Dr Sheila Redfern

Have you ever wondered what’s going on in your child’s mind? Dr Sheila Redfern developed a model for parents, Reflective Parenting, to help them understand their children, manage their behaviour and build their relationship and connection with them. Following the success of this practical parenting programme, she developed it further to support foster carers and kinship carers in their demanding roles. The Reflective Fostering Programme is a mentalization-based psychoeducational group programme which has now been evidenced through a large randomized control trial as an effective programme to support the foster carer-child relationship, reduce burn out and increase foster carer’s capacity for self-reflection and understanding other people.

Dr Sheila Redfern PhD

Redfern Psychology Ltd

Sheila Redfern, PhD, is a consultant clinical child and adolescent psychologist at Anna Freud, London and Director of Redfern Psychology. She has worked with children, adolescents, and their parents and caregivers in mental health settings for thirty years.

Dr Redfern innovated the Reflective Parenting and Reflective Fostering Programmes to support parents and carers in their relationship with their children and young people. She has presented on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, Channel 5 news and is a regular contributor to BBC Bitesize, where she gives practical advice and support to children and young people on the everyday issues affecting them in their lives, including the impact of national and global events on their mental health and well-being.

Her first book, Reflective Parenting, has been used by parents and professionals across the world and her second book, How Do You Hug A Cactus? is currently being used by parents and professionals to support adolescents. Dr Redfern is a parent to three boys.

Books | Reflective Parenting | How Do You Hug A Cactus? Reflective Parenting with Teenagers in Mind.

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Food is a Relational Substance - Linda Cundy

The attachment instinct concerns survival, and that involves food. With each meal we ingest a great deal more than vitamins, protein, fats and carbs; what, when, and how we are fed in early life is an ingredient in who we become. Place in the family dynamic, class, cultural heritage, religion and attitudes to gender are digested along with dinner. Or chaos, hopelessness and neglect. Our relationship with food may be broadly secure, avoidant, preoccupied or disorganised. Traumatic experiences frequently affect appetite with eating becoming disordered and, as the ACEs research has demonstrated, eating disorders are embedded in early adversity.

This presentation will examine the role of feeding and eating in attachment and propose that increasing ‘earned security’ is intimately connected with positive changes in relationships with other people, with oneself - and with food. Conversely, exploring clients’ relationship with food can provide therapeutic opportunities.

Linda Cundy

Bowlby Centre and Private Practice

Linda Cundy is an attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist and supervisor, and Attachment Consultant to the Bowlby Centre. She has been involved in providing training for psychotherapists and related professionals for twenty-five years. She has curated, edited and contributed to four published books to date - most recently Attachment, Relationships and Food: From Cradle to Kitchen (2021, Routledge), while a fifth, Narratives of Attachment, Danger and Survival will be published shortly.

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