I’m delighted to share that my article, “Trauma is Contagious: Why Whole-Family Support Matters,” has been published in this month’s NCPS Counselling Matters magazine https://magazine.ncps.com/

Something I’ve learned over years of working with children, young people and families touched by the care system: trauma doesn’t stay contained within the child who experienced it. It ripples outwards and the parents and carers holding that child every day are often the ones who feel it most.

So many of the carers I sit with are living with secondary trauma of their own: hypervigilance, exhaustion, self-doubt, grief for the relationship they’d hoped for. I don’t think our systems name that nearly often enough, let alone support it.

In the article, I write about why I believe so strongly in whole-family support, offered early, and sustained for as long as it’s needed, not on a timeline that suits a funding cycle. I also talk about why a child knowing their own story, told with honesty and age-appropriate detail from the very start, changes everything about how a family can respond to them with understanding instead of confusion.