Helen is an experienced trainer with 19 years in SEMH children’s residential and special educational settings and holds the L5 Diploma in Leadership of Children’s Services and L5 ILM cert in Leadership and Management.
In 2014, Helen implemented the Secure Base Model of Care (Schofield and Beek, University of East Anglia) across the organisation. Working in close collaboration with the founders she adapted the model for residential care settings. She then extended the model into educational settings. She was asked to present this work at the Secure Base Network Meetings in London and later to Norfolk County Council to demonstrate the benefits of using the Secure Base model in Special School settings.
Helen recognises that education offers many barriers for children to thrive and has worked closely with SEMH schools to align staff with therapeutic practice. This has resulted in creating a briefing system to ensure consistent approaches are used schoolwide.
She has delivered INSET days to schools on trauma-informed education and has carried out consultancy work in both schools and with foster carers to identify where trauma-informed practice could improve outcomes. She has now embarked on a book (The A-Z of Behaviours in the Classroom) and believes that it will offer teaching staff valuable insight into why trauma-informed practice is so important and offers strategies for supporting over 50 different behaviours commonly seen in the classrooms.
