Children and Complex Trauma
A Roadmap for Healing and Recovery
by Chuck Geddes

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If you’re a foster or adoptive parent, family caregiver, social worker, or professional supporting children who have experienced trauma, you may have felt confused and overwhelmed at some point. It may seem like typical parenting and strategies just don’t work. Children from difficult life situations can experience bewildering emotional and behavioural challenges. Often current approaches to help these kids are fragmented and ineffective. However, when we understand how trauma can affect the developing brain and adopt strategies that are complex trauma focused, we can turn these kids’ lives around. Children and Complex Trauma: A Roadmap for Healing and Recovery presents simple, practical, and proven strategies – based around the Complex Care and Intervention Program. This approach, fine-tuned in well over 300 challenging cases, and supported by compelling outcome data, will help you answer questions like: • Why does my child act like this? • What do I need to understand about how these children’s brains work? • How can I help a child heal from past traumatic experiences? • What proven strategies can help a child manage their big emotions? There is a powerful message of hope in these pages and the case stories will forever transform how you understand and support children. It's also a roadmap for necessary changes in practices and policies across our systems so that we can help children heal from their pasts.

www.drchuckgeddes.com

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"This was my rescue book when I found myself completely out of my depth, parenting our little granddaughter. The book helped me to understand her odd behaviour and gave me the action plan we both needed." —Sharon Miller, Teacher and gramma "I often support foster parents and others who work with kids with complex needs and challenging behaviours. Part of my responsibility is to provide education on child development and use brain science to recommend strategies to heal their child’s brain. I found this book to be an easy read and highly informative. It lays the foundation for understanding how adverse childhood experiences impact brain development and what we must do to help our kids." —Catherine Drennan, M.A., Child and Youth Mental Health clinician "Chuck Geddes's psychologically astute book Children and Complex Trauma draws on brain science to suggest ways for adults to support children who are reckoning with their pasts. Children who have experienced trauma, particularly those in foster care, face challenges to their brains' development, Geddes says. But these interruptions to their development can be addressed, using calming strategies that answer their psychological needs and give their brains the opportunity to "re-wire and re-set." While most focused on the roles of parents and professionals (including psychologists) who are positioned to help such children adapt, grow, and flourish, this work also issues a general call for trauma-informed approaches to medication, as well as for systemic changes to the foster care system, that support its broader notions. Directed by overarching trust in neuroplasticity, or the brain's ability to change, this book makes complex psychological and neuroscientific concepts easy to understand. Further, it uses case studies to bolster understanding, following as children recover from their traumas, and revealing the impact of its strategies upon their processes. And Geddes narrates how he learned these concepts himself (in the process, unlearning previous misunderstandings), imparting hope that others can do the same. " —Foreword Clarion Reviews

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Chuck Geddes. Ph.D. is a psychologist who has worked in the fields of Child and Youth Mental Health and Child Welfare for the past twenty-five years. He has worked at various levels in these systems and in many locations around British Columbia, from big cities to small towns and First Nations reserves. This broad experience gives him a unique perspective on what is necessary to help kids heal and recover. Dr. Geddes lives with his wife, his adult son, and his parents in Chilliwack, British Columbia, surrounded by farmland and nestled among beautiful mountains and rivers.

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Contributors

Author

Chuck Geddes

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