MERTIL for Families

The arrival of an infant sparks both challenge and promise in all family relationship systems. It heralds a potential therapeutic turning point, for families approaching the caregiving role with histories of interpersonal trauma.

In this one-day practice-based workshop, we focus on supporting carers and families in building the four pillars of trust with their young child. We focus on understanding the young child’s communications about relational security, and safely utilising their voice with their caregivers, to write a “new family story” about trust. The workshop is ideal for anyone working in infant mental health, maternal and child health, early childhood development, child and youth mental health, parent support and mental health, child protection and allied services.

Grounded in the MERTIL for Parents program and its growing evidence base, the workshop offers principles for application to group work and to individual family work.

Participants will:

1. Become familiar with the MERTIL for Parents framework for early relational trust, and its growing evidence base.
2. Bring developmental constructs such as attachment and trauma to life, in plain English
3. Learn how to create a healing conversation with families around the MERTIL for My Family resource, using single session principles
4. Learn how to run MERTIL for Parents in single or multiple session group formats.
5. Consider implementation enablers in their own workplace

Practitioners who work in infant mental health and building relational trust in dyads 0-5 years.

Including:

• Nurses
• Midwives
• Psychologists/Psychiatrists
• Social Workers
• Family Support Workers
• Child Protection Workers
• Infant Mental Health Workers
• General Practitioners
• Workers who provide services involving young children

Workshop style

We introduce a brief family session format, designed to create a trauma transformative space for a family to think safely together about building foundations of trust for their young child – born or unborn. Examples of interactive tasks, therapeutic conversation prompts and the family’s therapeutic letters to their child are given.

We also introduce two formats for running MERTIL for Parents as a group. Participants are encouraged to apply their practice wisdom to the creation of a framework for trauma informed, child-led family work, in their own service context.

REGISTER FOR MERTIL FOR FAMILIES