SCHOOL-BASED TRAUMA
Trauma can be caused by a mismatch between a young person’s needs and the school environment. Or it can be caused by negative social interactions such as bullying or feeling that you don’t fit in.
A child or young person may have managed in primary school, but gradually unravelled with the move to secondary: a more challenging sensory environment, more transitions, fewer strong relationships with adults, greater expectations of independence, much higher social demands and a more demanding curriculum with little autonomy or choice. This happens frequently with care-experienced young people, who often require greater emotional and psychological containment than is available in the teenage years.
For more information from government on EBSA, go to:
Young people may lack the skills to identify and communicate what they are struggling with, or their attempts to do so may have been brushed off with suggestions that they are over-reacting or they need to become more resilient.
By the time a young person is actively avoiding school, it is likely that they have been struggling for an extended period, during which their needs may have been missed entirely or have been mislabelled and misunderstood. Emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA) is a term used to describe difficulties some children and young people face in attending school or participating in class because of intense emotional distress, often linked to anxiety, fear or overwhelming sensory distress. It can manifest in fight, flight or freeze responses, either at home or at school, or both. Some children are externalising, which can mean lashing out or absconding, or verbal attacks. These difficulties may be obvious if they occur at school, but may be misunderstood as oppositional defiance. Internalising freeze behaviours or masking may not present a management difficulty at school, but can be a result of disabling distress that causes long-term harm. Some children may exhibit both types of behaviour.
Once children are out of school, they may shut down completely, and be unable to re-engage with anyone or anything associated with the school or any school. This may present as total social withdrawal, with the young person unable to leave the house or even to get out of bed, or a mental health crisis, with potentially catastrophic consequences. Or they may act out at home and in the community, putting themselves or others at risk, leading to the involvement of other services. Such crises may not be easily remediable, and some young people will require long-term low- or effectively no-demand environments to promote recovery.
By the time a young person gets to us, they may have endured repeated periods where they are encouraged to return to school or try another setting. They may have been reassured that their needs are understood, but found that there is a timescale for reintegration that they are unable to meet, or that once they are back in there is an expectation that things just return to normal, and then the cycle repeats.
Parents may have attended many meetings with schools and other professionals, taken the young person to assessments or welcomed professionals into their home, only for the young person to be unable to come downstairs. They may be worried about risk, while feeling pressured to secure a particular outcome. They may feel very alone and exhausted.
We believe our approach is different, in a number of ways. The first is that we recognise that in order for things to work, the parent must be supported. Only if they feel safe and supported can they create a process in which the young person can feel confident that they will be given the time and support to adjust; and that if they need to take a step back after taking a few steps forward, they won’t be criticised or coerced. This is all part of the process of building trust and confidence. Our therapeutic approach using DDP explicitly supports this.
The young person’s perception of psychological and emotional safety is paramount. When we say that we will start from where they are and use the things they are interested in to spark engagement, we mean it. If the young person has been out of education for a long time or has had many unsuccessful interventions, it may take a long time, but if their nervous system remains activated to fight or flight, they will not feel secure enough to relax and let their higher-level thinking system engage. They will not be able to learn or engage in creative tasks.