In-home therapy, Training and Clinical Consultancy Services
Complex Care is a Brisbane based practice that specialises in providing training, clinical consultancy services and intensive in-home therapy to children and families with complex behavioural needs.
Since 2008, our team of therapists have been stabilising placements, supporting complex reunifications and guiding other professionals to deliver quality evidence-based therapeutic care across the greater Brisbane region.
Our services include –
- In home-therapy for children, parents and foster-carers engaged with the child protection system (reunification and stabilising placements/families)
- Training, supervision and case-clinics for carers, teachers/early educators, therapists, youth-workers and child protection/family intervention workers
- Therapy and Positive Behaviour Support for NDIS participants
Nurturing with Neuroscience
Interventions grounded in the Neuroscience of trauma, attachment and child development.
Engaging Disconnected Families
We understand the need for ‘connection before correction’. Complex Care focuses on establishing safe connections, trust, and a deep understanding of our client’s needs and experiences, as a foundation for healing and building their capacity.
What our Interventions Involve
We provide responsive, trauma-sensitive and evidence-based interventions, aimed at reducing stress and tailoring interventions to the underlying needs of children and their care-givers.
Training and Online Courses
Complex Care provides face to face workshops, webinars and online video courses on Trauma and Attachment, Therapeutic care and understanding and responding to complex behaviours.
Online Training Available
Services We Offer
Intensive In-home therapy to support placements
- Preventing placement breakdowns, stabilising young people and repairing attachments
- Supporting complex reunifications and transitions out of intensive models of care
- Outreach support for disengaged high-risk young people
Clinical Consultancy Services
- Complex case-clinics
- External Clinical Supervision (Individual and Group)
- Framework Development
Training and Online Courses
- Complex Trauma and Attachment in Children: Providing Therapeutic Care
- Understanding and Responding to Violent and Controlling behaviours in children
- Collaborative Problem Solving.
Nurturing with Neuroscience
Our model of intensive in-home therapy is grounded in the neuroscience of trauma, attachment and child development, and our interventions typically involve a combination of tailored individual counselling, psychoeducation, dyadic family therapy and providing stakeholder guidance around the child or family’s ongoing therapeutic needs.
The Complex Care framework for building skills and changing behaviour in both children and adults is based on the principle of ‘competence’ rather than ‘compliance.’ The difference being that Compliance frameworks rely on rewards and consequences to shift behaviours, assuming that:
1) the child has developed all of the cognitive and relationship skills required to meet adult and social expectations (emotional regulation, impulse control, empathy, social skills etc.) and –
2) the child trusts adults enough to feel safe relinquishing control.
Many of the children and adults we support have not had the learning experiences and safety required to develop these relational skills and have great difficulties trusting others based on the harm they have experienced. Compliance frameworks may be useful for reinforcing expectations and boundaries, but they do not teach skills and increase the child’s experience of shame and rejection, further damaging their capacity to trust and hand over control to a safe adult.
In contrast, our competence-oriented framework supports the child and their caregiver to reinterpret or depersonalise behaviours in the context of their trauma history, development needs and lagging skills. We focus on engaging the child in strategies and activities that build their capacity to: feel safe, trust others, problem-solve, attune to and integrate the needs of others, and better monitor and modify their internal states.
Engaging disconnected and resistant clients
At Complex Care, we recognise the profound impact that complex relational trauma has on a person’s capacity to trust and engage in therapeutic interventions. This is often compounded by experiences of powerlessness or fractured relationships with professionals and caregivers within the child protection system. Expecting traumatised children and adults—who often begin as involuntary clients—to engage with a therapist in a clinical setting is, in our experience, unrealistic.
Neuroscience research, particularly the work of Stephen Porges (Polyvagal Theory), demonstrates that clients need to feel safe and regulated to activate their social engagement system and communicate effectively. Interacting with them in a familiar environment with a playful, accepting, and empathic approach is the most effective and beneficial way to establish a safe connection.
Our intervention model reflects this by starting with non-intrusive rapport-building and safety-promoting activities in the client’s home and community, rather than in a clinical setting. We work with the child and parent’s shallow intimacy barriers to establish a safe and authentic connection before addressing concerns.
This practice of placing ‘connection before correction,’ along with our flexibility, responsiveness, and tailored interventions, has enabled Complex Care to engage and support some of the most resistant and disconnected young people and families in the region.
Reducing Stress on the System
The immense stressors relating to complex trauma affect not only families but also professionals, organisations, and the entire child protection system. These front line pressures of interfacing with traumatised clients, coupled with limited resources and systemic restraints, can often result in front line workers and the whole system experiencing parallel processes, and start to mirror symptoms of complex trauma.
To address this, our support model also focuses on reducing stress for the Department and other professionals. Our streamlined referral process begins with a simple phone call with one of our Directors. From there, we act as a central communication point for stakeholders, alleviating some of the demands that complex cases place on Child Safety Officers.
Complex Care is often contracted during a crisis for the child or family. We understand that a timely response is crucial to safely managing a situation or maintaining a high-risk placement. Therefore, we ensure our team of therapists can remain responsive. In most cases, we can have a therapist working with the family within the same week we receive approval for the intervention.
Online Training
We now have online training available to help support your organisation. Complex Care’s online training is designed to help families and carers supporting vulnerable children where a history of trauma exists. Through our readily available learning resources, you’ll be able to access crucial information which will equip you for engagement with traumatised children, as well as provide you with the approaches needed to create the experiences they require to heal and develop.