Attachment, Regulation & Competency

ARC Training

I am the only UK based licenced trainer for the ARC (Attachment, Regulation & Competency) framework and one of two based in Europe.

The framework was designed by Margaret Blaustein and Kristine Kinniburg as a map to guide clinicians, teachers, social workers and all caregivers in addressing developmental trauma in children and young people.

ARC is a systems approach and addresses the need to support caregivers, both professional and familial alongside any direct work with children and young people.

The framework can serve as both a treatment plan and also as a map for organisational and system change towards Trauma-informed Practice.

ARC Framework

The authors (Margaret Blaustein and Kristine Kinniburgh) build on the work of Bessel van der Kolk and others in understanding that challenging behaviour, emotional distress and impairment in many areas of functioning in young people can be seen as a response to early trauma.

By seeing this as Developmental Trauma, helping adults can begin to intervene in children and young people’s lives in a meaningful and sequenced way to address their need for; a sense of safety, skills to regulate their emotional/physical experience and then to address gaps in competencies needed for healthy development.

The framework is easily adapted to working with adults who have histories of early and ongoing trauma.

I have increasingly been using the framework to develop both organisational and leadership training.

The framework, builds on the thoughtful practices that are already part of an organisation and I work to explore how the principles of the ARC framework can be integrated and sustained within the commissioning agency or project.

Over the past 12 years I have trained a wide variety of professional groups, including:
  • Private and Local Authority Fostering Services
  • Carers and Social Workers
  • Early Help Teams
  • Youth Offending Services
  • Employment Coaching Services
  • Voluntary Sector Agencies
  • Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services
  • Adolescent Inpatient Psychiatric Services
  • Residential Childcare Provision
  • Youth Services
  • Schools
  • Special Educational Provisions (SMEH & PRU)
  • Adopters and Adoption Workers
  • Child Protection Teams

Trauma-informed Care Training

Kati explains the ARC as part of Humber and North Yorkshire’s Children and Young People’s ICB Integrated Trauma-Informed Framework

Kati Taunt - National Lead Arc Trainer

ARC Framework Training

The full training is for 2 days (15 hrs). I have delivered this in a number of ways depending on what fits for the agency (e.g 5 x 3 hours). Typically the training can be repeated for other areas of an agency and it is recommended that we would then have ongoing consultation (monthly for a year) in order to imbed Trauma-Informed Practice and the ARC framework.

Please contact me if you are interested in how the ARC framework could work within your organisation.

Find out more about ARC

I really enjoyed Kati Taunts session on ARC Training. She kept us engaged. It helped me to understand more about helping the child to regulate, rather than them reaching crisis mode. It plays a big part of the child’s wellbeing. They are ‘reaching out’ for help, and not ‘acting up’ for a no reason. I didn’t realise how much I was already applying in my everyday working with our pupils. It made me think more about my behaviour so I could model and co-modulate with our pupils. We need to regulate ourselves before we can help a child to regulate