“Traumatized children tend to re-create their trauma, often experiencing bad dreams, waking fears, and reoccurring flashbacks.. Young children have a very hard time putting these behaviours into any context of safety. Many withdraw and isolate themselves, regress and appear anxious, and develop sleeping and eating disorders as a mask for the deep interpretations of their trauma.”

“The government’s more joined up approach to children’s services now means there is an ever greater need for a multi-professional approach. Though the rhetoric is all about ‘every child matters’, personalisation etc, I feel that prescriptive, goal-driven approaches may have diminished open-minded observation and led to less sensitive understanding.”

“We believe that learning about and developing social competency and social interactional skills must occur within the naturalistic environment of peers and groups. However, for children on the spectrum, this must be approached in thoughtful, systematic, effective ways with a variety of variables considered and addressed to be successful.”