A NEW organisation that supports parents caring for traumatised children is celebrating the opening of their office in Dursley.

The National Association of Therapeutic Parents (NATP) launched on Monday, March 6 and moved into their Dursley office on Wednesday, March 22.

The support service is the brainchild of 55-year-old Sarah Naish, a former social worker who works to establish better outcomes for children who have experienced trauma in their early life.

Sarah hopes to promote the idea of ‘therapeutic parenting’, a style of parenting that helps children who have attachment difficulties. 

Through the NATP, she provides training courses for professionals who work with traumatised children and gives foster parents and adopters much needed support.

The former social worker was inspired to develop the organisation after adopting five siblings herself.

She said: “I quickly realised that there was a big gap between what I knew as a social worker and what I came to know as a parent.

“So many people are told to follow the ‘super-nanny’ style of parenting, where you reward and punish a child for their behaviour.

“But for children who have experienced trauma, this is a poor approach.

“Therapeutic parenting is about reacting to behaviours in a calm way and nurturing children to feel safe.”

Sarah decided to create the NATP following the success of a Therapeutic Parenting facebook page that she launched in 2015.

The group, which offers support to adopters and foster carers, has over 8,000 members. 

She explained: "According to our research, which has been conducted with the help of Bristol University, 75 per cent of foster carers experience burn out.

"It is therefore clear that we need much more effective support and training for carers and parents.

"That's where therapeutic parenting comes in."

An example of therapeutic parenting would be using a "time in" technique instead of "time out" when a child has missed behaved.

This means that a parent keeps their child close by when they are having a tantrum or misbehaving.

"This helps the child feel accepted by the parent," Sarah said.

"A lot of children who have been previously abused would not respond well to being placed on a naughty step or being isolated in a time out."