Safe Hands Thinking minds- Dr Karen Treisman

“Goal setting” is an important part of many professional roles across children’s homes, social care, education, therapy, criminal justice, health, and so many more. Yet in practice it can sometimes feel awkward, overly bureaucratic, or reduced to a tick-box exercise. Practitioners are often asked to translate complex human experiences, hopes and challenges into clear plans, targets, and measurable outcomes. Across many services, there is increasing emphasis on documentation, monitoring progress, evidencing outcomes and demonstrating impact. Plans, reports, targets and reviews have become a central part of professional practice. While these systems serve important purposes, they can sometimes lead goal setting to feel disconnected or misaligned from the relational work at the heart of supporting children, young people, families, and adults. Yet they are important and needed. Sometimes they are missing, unclear, vague, transactional, and more. So, we need to find ways to make sure we understand their helpfulness and the why for doing them, and that they are being done in as optimal meaningful and clear way as possible Many practitioners recognise the gap that can emerge between goals written in plans and the everyday realities of people’s lives. Goals can sometimes become overly technical, vague or system-driven, rather than meaningful, motivating and grounded in what matters most to the people we support. This engaging and practical online module invites people to rethink goal setting. Rather than focusing solely on rigid targets or abstract plans, the session explores how goals can become meaningful conversations about direction, hopes, strengths, and next steps. Through creative tools, metaphors and practical strategies, we will explore how to make goal setting more relational, collaborative, engaging and achievable. Whilst also making sure they are clear, transparent, and not too vague or wide. The module will offer a wide range of questions, visual tools and creative activities that can be used with children, young people, parents, families and adults across different settings. When done well, goal setting can become far more than paperwork- it can become a powerful conversation about direction, hope, and possibility.

Participants will briefly explore (this is a spotlight not a deep dive): • Why goal setting can sometimes feel clunky, awkward or uncomfortable in practice. • The emotional and relational dimensions of goal conversations. • The risks and limitations of tick-box goals and overly technical plans. • Why meaningful direction and shared goals remain crucial within systems and multidisciplinary work. • Ways to make goals more clear, collaborative, and achievable. • The session will also introduce creative and practical approaches and questions to exploring goals.

This module aims to help practitioners: • Develop a more relational and meaningful approach to goal setting. • Move beyond tick-box targets towards direction, hope and possibility. • Balance organisational requirements with human-centred practice. • Increase confidence in having collaborative goal conversations. • Understand why goal setting can sometimes feel difficult, clunky or disconnected from practice. • Recognise the importance of direction, hope and shared purpose within goal setting. • Use a range of creative and practical activities, metaphors and tools to explore goals and next steps. • Apply practical strategies to make goal conversations engaging, accessible and meaningful

This module is designed for practitioners who work with children, young people, families or adults in roles where goal setting, planning and progress monitoring form part of professional practice. It may be particularly relevant for: • Children’s home staff and residential workers. • Social workers and family support practitioners. • Therapists and counsellors. • Teachers and pastoral staff. • Youth workers and mentors. • Health and wellbeing professionals. And anyone who is needing to integrate and identify goals in their work.

The course is priced is £19.99 which includes 1.5 hours of video material by award winning psychologist, Dr Karen Treisman. The slides. Communication cards and 2 additional handouts. Access for 1 year. Payment takes just a few minutes and is made on the platform via PayPal or stripe using a card. This means direct debit or credit card can be used. For groups of over 10, an invoice payment can be arranged. Teams or organisations can make bulk orders and can receive a discount (this includes being able to roll out to all employees or play at team meetings/ conferences etc. You are welcome to contact [email protected] to discuss numbers and prices.

Nope absolutely not. It is presented in bite size segments ranging from 5 minutes to 15 minutes. This is purposely done to allow for people to dip in and dip out and to watch it in whichever way suits their learning style and the situation in which they are in. It is also intended that people pause, practice the exercises, reflect on them, discuss, and so forth. People may want to revisit and repeat them as well. This is also done in smaller sections to optimise people’s engagement, concentration, and attention; and to encourage people to move around, take brain breaks, practice the regulating activities etc. There is also a video clip near the beginning of the module about different ways of optimising and absorbing the material.

Absolutely, depending on our capacity and availability, we offer one-to-one or team spaces to discuss the nuts and bolts of your specific situation. We also offer FAQ or thinking spaces for those to reflect and embed learning after engaging in the module. Please email [email protected] We also are hoping to work on lots of projects together and are so motivated by what is most useful- so please do pop us wish list, requests, and suggestions.

Please note these modules are being created in a real and down to earth way. Every effort has been made to make them useful and interesting, but like this topic, it is real world and flexible. They are intentionally raw and unedited. The platform is thinkific. It was selected as it is easy-to-use and accessible. Feedback on previous modules has been very positive. They also have a great customer support and online trouble-shooting support if needed. Please when using the platform ensure that you input your details correctly and keep them somewhere safe. This includes selecting an email address you can access from home and work.

Dr Karen Treisman, MBE, is an award winning Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist, organizational consultant, and trauma specialist who has worked in the National Health System and children’s social services for several years. Karen has also worked cross-culturally in both Africa and Asia with groups ranging from former child soldiers, asylum-seeking young people, to those living with HIIV/AIDS, and to survivors of the Rwandan Genocide. She also is the bestselling Author of 11 books/ workbooks, including, “The therapeutic treasure box”, and of 5 sets of therapeutic card decks (trauma/ strengths/ feelings and sentence completion/ parenting patchwork/ regulating, grounding and soothing/ trauma and stress). (Check out Karen’s amazon page sharing all of her resources- https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/page/BD57A40E-2602-44B5-A3A8-F72EA04950C4 Karen has extensive experience in the areas of trauma, parenting, adversity, child protection, fostering, and attachment, and works clinically using a range of therapeutic approaches with families, systems, and children in or on the edge of care, unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people, and adopted children. As well as being a supervisor, reflective practice facilitator, and trainer. Karen also specialises and spends more of her time now supporting teams, organisations, and systems to move towards becoming, and to sustain adversity, culturally and, trauma-informed, infused, and responsive practice (at a language, policy, culture, and practice level); and is an organisational consultant to numerous organizations around the world including numerous social services, health services, schools, nursery schools, the police, prisons, charities, residential homes, nursing homes, churches, and many many more. This work focuses on creating meaningful and multi-layered cultural and paradigm shift across whole systems. This was the focus of Dr Treisman’s Winston Churchill Fellowship Award where Karen visited several places in the USA to further study whole system and organisational approaches to trauma-informed and trauma-responsive care and this topic is the focus of Dr Treisman’s bestselling books (2 volumes) entitled “A Treasure Box for Creating Trauma-Informed Organizations: A Ready-to-Use Resource For Trauma, Adversity, and Culturally Informed, Infused and Responsive Systems” In addition to holding a doctorate in Clinical Psychology, Karen has undergone a range of specialist training courses including in EMDR, Narrative Therapy, Narrative Exposure Therapy, Court work, Trauma-focused CBT, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, Video Interaction Guidance, Sensory Approaches, Theraplay, amongst others. Karen previously worked in both Milton Keynes’s and Kensington and Chelsea’s Children in care and fostering services, and within the National Implementation Service for evidence-based interventions for “Looked after children, children on the edge of care, and children in custody” at the Michael Rutter Centre in the Maudsley Hospital; and as Clinical Lead for a court assessment and intensive intervention team for children on the edge of care and in proceedings in Islington. Karen is an external consultant, trainer, speaker, and assessor to a variety of UK and International Local Authorities/child welfare, health care teams, schools, nurseries, charities, and organisations including Barnardos, PAC-UK, AdoptionPlus, BAAT, Pause, Action Trauma, Candle Trust, Grandparents Plus, and the Fostering Network. Karen is also an expert witness and regularly undergoes a variety of assessments for court. Additionally, Karen is also an associate editor for the Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma and a reviewer for the Journal of Adoption and Fostering; and for several book publishers. Karen was also awarded the 2018 Psychology Professional of the Year Award for Excellence in Attachment and Trauma; and Youth Psychology Professional of the Year 2020. Karen was awarded an MBE for outstanding services for children and is on the Queens 2020 Honours list. Karen regularly attends and presents at local, national, and international trauma, parenting, and attachment conferences (See the events tab on this website). Karen is also a TEDx speaker on the power of relationships and viewing behaviour as communication. Karen is the author of 11 books including “Working with children and adolescents who have experienced relational and developmental trauma” (Routledge, 2016); and the best-selling book- “A Therapeutic Treasure Box for Working with Children and Adolescents with Developmental Trauma: Creative techniques and activities”. Karen is also the author of the “A Treasure Box for Creating Trauma-Informed Organizations: A Ready-to-Use Resource For Trauma, Adversity, and Culturally Informed, Infused and Responsive Systems”. Karen is also the designer of “A Therapeutic Treasure Deck: Sentence-completion and Feelings Cards” and “A Therapeutic Treasure Deck: Grounding, Regulating, Coping, and Soothing Cards”; the Parenting Patchwork cards; the therapeutic treasure deck of strengths cards, and a card deck focusing on trauma, stress, and survival modes. Karen is also the designer of Neon the Ninja toy and workbook; Gilly the Giraffe (Self-esteem & confidence), Cleo the Croc (Children who have been hurt and learned to be afraid to let people close, Presley the Pug (Emotional regulation, relaxation, calm, mindfulness, and finding an emotional safe place), Ollie the Octopus (grief, bereavement and loss), Binnie the Baboon (Anxiety, fear, stress, and worry), and Taya the Tortoise (Children who have experienced trauma who shrink, slam up, internalise, disconnect).