To improve the lives of children who have experienced developmental trauma and their families.
For BUSS® to make a significant contribution to the international community of understanding about the impact of trauma on the developing child.
For BUSS® to be a well recognised and respected intervention available to all children who have experienced developmental trauma.
Our intention is that the BUSS® Model can enhance the practise of professionals working with children who have been or who are looked after. It’s not intended to be an alternative to other ways of working, but rather to sit alongside the skills and expertise of professionals working with children. We have developed a training programme for professionals who wish to develop their skills in using this model with children and families so that we can be sure that the high standards that we set and fidelity to the model are maintained. All Accredited Practitioners must have their BUSS® work supervised by a BUSS® Consultant.
I’m embarrassed to say, I’d been working in CAMHS for about 25 years before I gave much thought to bodily regulation and how crucial it is to all other areas of development. It feels hard to believe it took me so long! I started my career as an Occupational Therapist in 1988, working briefly in adult mental health before moving into Child and Adolescent Health in 1991. I’ve always been lucky to have worked in multidisciplinary teams with people with a zest for learning and improving practice, within settings that were keen to develop staff – starting early in my career with the Department of Psychotherapy in Leeds, which offered weekly training for professionals working in mental health services. The first 2 years of which were reading and theory, and for me, the next 4 years, ongoing training and supervised practice.
This really ignited my curiosity in better understanding what might underlie any presentation, and I went on to do my MA in Psychoanalytic Studies (Leeds Metropolitan University, 1991), and later the BAPT training in Play Therapy (York University, 2000) and worked to become an Accredited EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) practitioner (2005- 2018), as well as training and delivering programmes like Solihull, Webster Stratton and Second Step. I worked in CAMHS services in hospital settings, community settings and schools.
It was only when we moved back up to Scotland, in 2005, and I was working as part of a joint CAMHS and Social Work team, supporting foster carers and their children, that I began to realise that something was missing from my understanding and practise. The Springfield Project was another wonderful team, offering the best evidence based therapies for children who had experienced early trauma. This was really helpful for a lot of the children and their carers, but there was a significant group of children who just didn’t seem to be able to absorb the good experiences that either their foster family or therapy were able to offer. I began (slowly!) to realise that these children and young people were as out of touch with themselves physically as they were emotionally. They seemed to bump, trip and fall much more than their peers, and struggled to make sense of information that was coming from the world outside without hugely under or over responding to it. This was when I began to realise that unless we addressed that, the best evidence based psychological therapies were much less likely to be helpful.
For me, a gap was understanding what bodily regulation is, and how that synthesis of early love, nurture, touch and movement allow children to grow into their bodies – and make sense of the world around them. I suspect that we’re so used to seeing babies and young children progress through predictable stages of development that, unless there’s a medical problem, we don’t really give it much thought. We don’t think much about how us soothing a baby by holding, stroking and rocking them, builds their sense of wellbeing about the world but also gravitational security and their body map. Or how tummy time builds a foundation of core strength and stability that enables us to sit and not have to concentrate on sitting, but be able to engage in conversation, or watch a film or read a book.
Creeping and crawling are like super powers for the development of the young child’s core strength, the right and left sides of their body working together in an integrated way and their hand development. So much needs to happen for a baby to progress from that whole hand holding of a baby spoon, to sitting in a class and being able to write. And the foundations for all of these things are built during these pre-school years.
But what became really clear to me is the extent to which that natural process can be disrupted, and how important it is to attend to this. It’s important, not least because it’s really hard to go through life in a body that doesn’t really work with you, but crucially, because it’s possible to go back and fill in those gaps in early touch, nurture and movement experiences and allow children to get that sense of agency in their own bodies that most of us have without even thinking about it.
BUSS® sits within a neurosequential understanding of development and brings together the psychological and relational impact of disruption to this, with an appreciation of the role that foundation sensorimotor systems play in the development of our bodies. A foundation of bodily regulation gives a platform for the development of language, learning how to recognise and manage feelings, make relationships, negotiate friendships, play and learn.
BUSS® takes as its starting point the understanding that without predictable, consistent, nurturing relationships, babies don’t progress through the stages of movement that are needed to feed the brain and central nervous system with enough information to build an internal map of the body and lay the foundation for well coordinated movement. Without those relationships mediating a baby’s experience of the world, their tactile system remains in a state of high arousal which interferes with their capacity, as they grow, to be in the moment of an experience and really be present in it.
Clinical experience and growing evidence (visit our Research and Resources page) suggests that these systems aren’t broken in the way that might be seen in children with sensory processing disorders, rather they are underdeveloped because they haven’t had the right sorts of nurture, touch and movement experiences at critical stages of development. We know that parents are the experts on their children and our team feels privileged to work alongside families, offering our lens and expertise about child development and trauma to their knowledge and understanding of their child. It’s families who can rebuild underdeveloped systems, not therapists. Our job is to give parents the understanding and skills so that we can work together to develop a programme for each child that is right for them and for their family.
We are keen to promote parents as supporters for each other as families work with us, and currently have several parents who, as well as having additional training in the model, are experts by experience. We’re really delighted to have our Parent Mentors working as part of our team and would welcome other parents and carers becoming involved in these mentoring roles. You can read more about our Parent Mentors here.
We want children to run, climb, scoot, cycle, explore, play, relate, or do whatever they’re wanting to do, without having to use their conscious energy and attention to manage their body. We want children to be able to make themselves understood when they’re talking, to be present in the moment of an experience, open to learning and exploration, to enjoy a hug, to be able to go outside and feel whether it’s hot or cold and be able to decide what to wear, rather than their body being in the state of high alert that might have been appropriate at an earlier stage of development. These are the things we mean by good bodily regulation, and where there has been disruption to the earliest part of a child’s life, whatever the cause of that, it’s hard to imagine that their foundation sensorimotor systems can be working as well as they could be.
Evidence from clinical work and growing research and evaluation (please see our Research and Resources page for more information) is showing that improved bodily regulation has a significant impact on children’s emotional wellbeing and regulation, and parents talk about how much better their relationship with their child becomes as they help their child to feel more comfortable in themselves on a bodily level. Other parents talk about how much less angry their children become and it’s interesting to think how frustrating it must be for children who have to fight against their bodies to move around and do things. If you’d like to hear more about the changes that parents have noticed and described, please click here. You can also read more examples and reflections on the BUSS® intervention here.
This is different to work with children who have a sensory processing disorder. Although a child with an underdeveloped system may move in a similar way to a child with a sensory processing disorder, they’re actually completely different. For a child where there has been disruption to the earliest part of their lives, it can be helpful to start from the premise that their systems are unlikely to be broken, rather that they haven’t (yet) had that careful synthesis of touch, nurture and movement that will allow them to thrive.
All therapy is delivered in partnership with the Oakdale Centre who are an organisational member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), meeting their robust professional and ethical standards. The Oakdale Centre is also an accredited provider of Adoption Support Services for Local Authorities and Regional Adoption Agencies that span across England and Wales.
In addition, all practitioners working at the Oakdale Centre and on the BUSS® programme are required to be members of their relevant professional body and adhere to their standards and guidelines. All BUSS® Parent Mentors have DBS clearing suitable for their role in supporting families.
We want everyone who contacts us or comes to us for support to feel comfortable with how any personal information shared with us will be looked after. This Privacy Policy sets out how we collect, use and store personal information (this means any information that identifies or could identify you) and how this complies with the requirements of GDPR, and all relevant data protection legislation. We conform with professional guidelines laid out by the Information Commissioner’s Office. Any personally identifiable information will be used in accordance with our privacy policy.
We collect information in the following ways:
When you interact with us directly: This could be if you register with us to attend training or an event organised by BUSS®, if you visit us for therapy, or otherwise provide us with your personal information.
When you visit our website: We gather general information (not personally identifiable information) which might include which pages are visited most often and which services, events or information are of most interest to our website visitors.
The personal information BUSS® at Oakdale collects includes details such as the name, date of birth, email address, postal address, telephone number and sometimes also the credit or debit card details of our clients and customers (if you are booking a place on a training course or paying privately for therapy provided by BUSS® at Oakdale). Personal information may also include details shared with us during the course of any therapy provided by BUSS® at Oakdale.
We use this information:
The personal information we hold about you will only be used by our staff and any affiliated practitioner(s) involved with the provision of any therapy you receive. This is done in order to best support you and the clinical management of your case.
Any information you provide to BUSS® or Oakdale will be treated in confidence and we do not pass any details to anyone else without express permission other than in exceptional circumstances. For example, if we become aware that someone presents a clear and serious risk of harming themselves or others.
We will never sell or share your personal information with any third party organisations so that they can contact you for any marketing activities.
We take our responsibility to look after your information seriously. We maintain physical, technical and organisational policies and procedures that protect all personal information we hold from improper access, use, alteration, destruction or loss.
We only retain personal information for as long as is reasonable and necessary for the relevant activity. In circumstances where someone has received therapy with Oakdale we comply with all statutory obligations relating to the proper time-frames for storage of clinical information.
You have rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you:
If you have any queries about your case or would like further information about our privacy practices, please contact our Data Protection Officer by emailing dpo@oakdalecentre.org
If you wish to make a complaint about how Oakdale has handled your personal data you can do so by contacting dpo@oakdalecentre.org or writing to us at Oakdale Centre, 49 Valley Drive, Harrogate, HG2 0JH.
You can also make a complaint to to the data protection supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office, https://ico.org.uk/
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For more information, see Google Privacy Policy
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