It’s great to be working with families across the UK and Ireland. Families who live within travelling distance may prefer to come to our base at Springfield Mills in West Leeds, and meet with us in person for the assessment sessions. All other work is carried out remotely using video calls.
We’re always happy to talk with parents, carers or professionals before a referral is made to think about whether BUSS® is the right fit at the right time for the family. Currently the majority of referrals come from Social Workers who plan to make funding applications to the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF), but we also accept referrals from other organisations and from families who would like to self fund. Once we receive a referral, we’ll work with you to develop a costed proposal for a plan of work. To have a conversation about costs, or to discuss self-funded or health/education and local authority funded interventions, please contact us at info@bussmodel.org.
The BUSS® (Building Underdeveloped Sensory Systems) model is based on the understanding that, where babies and young children have experienced early adversity and missed out on safe, nurturing relationships, it’s likely that their bodies have also missed the sorts of movement opportunities that go hand in hand with those relationships. We know that babies who feel safe and happy move a lot and enjoy positive, safe experiences of touch and nurture. Babies in frightening situations (in utero and once they’re born) or who might have been born very early or with complex health needs often don’t have these same experiences. As a result, they don’t move nearly as much as typically developing children and therefore miss those critical touch, nurture and movement experiences that are so important for the development of foundation sensorimotor systems and bodily regulation.
These systems are what help us to feel confident in our movements and develop good head, neck and shoulder strength, as well as a strong core. Our movements will generally be fairly smooth and well co-ordinated and we might use our eyes to look where we’re going, but we don’t have to watch our feet when we’re coming downstairs or our hand when we’re writing to check they’re doing the right thing. Click here to find out more about stages of early motor development and how they form a foundation for later stages of development.
Sometimes children and young people can talk about and are aware of how they feel their body works for them – what is working well and what might be more tricky. More often, children learn clever ways to compensate, adapt and use other parts of their bodies to make up for what isn’t working so well.
We’re really good at noticing what a child is doing, but if you’re wondering whether BUSS® would be helpful to your family, it’s useful to begin to notice how your child is doing things. We’ll ask you about this if we have a chat before you decide whether you’d like to go ahead and work with us, but it’s harder than it sounds and isn’t something that we’re used to doing. We’re used to children just being able to ‘do’ things and progressing from one developmental stage to the next without having to really think about how that’s happening, so don’t worry if it takes a while to tune into noticing.
Sometimes it’s easier to start with yourself – notice what your body is doing as you sit or stand reading this. Where are you getting your stability from? If you’re sitting down, are you leaning against something? If you are, just try sitting up independently and notice what changes. I’m hoping that you can sit up, with your feet on the floor, and aren’t having to use any other parts of your body to get enough stability to stay in that position. Hopefully you don’t need to lean across the table to hold yourself up or move around constantly to just help your body know where it is.
If you can, just get up now and try to analyse how you did that. If you’re sitting at a table, did you use the table to help push yourself up? Where did the power for the movement come from? If you did push up, just sit down again and try again, this time just using your body to get up. Again think about that – which part of your body would you say ‘led’ the movement? Sometimes I think it’s useful to visualise a ‘line’ like the one you see on a TV screen when it’s a photo finish of a race and they’re analysing which runner crossed the line first. If you had an imaginary line when you’re standing up, which part of your body would cross the line first? And last? All of these things can be helpful in beginning to notice how we’re moving.
Once you’ve got used to noticing how you move, just try and observe how your child is moving, perhaps when they’re playing outside or at a playground with peers (without developmental trauma) and see how they’re holding themselves and moving about. You can also get good information from noticing everyday things at home, like how they come downstairs, carry a glass of juice, sit at the table to eat dinner, write, walk and run around.
It’s also helpful to notice what the quality of their movement is like. Do they move in a fluid, well-coordinated way? Does their body seem well synchronised so they’re able to do what they want to do without bumping into things or tripping over? Is there a smoothness about the movement?
It’s also useful to think about whether their body is giving good, reliable signals about things like whether they’re hungry; when they’re full; if they can chew and taste what they’re eating and enjoy a range of different tastes and textures. Other clues can come from thinking about what sort of state of mind they’re in most of the time – are they able to stay in the moment of an experience and enjoy what’s happening or manage someone else being in charge; do they seem quite comfortable in themselves; or do they seem vigilant and stressed, as if they’re expecting something bad to happen or struggling to manage not knowing what’s coming next?
The BUSS® team works with children and young people from babies onward. We’re always keen to intervene as early in the life of a child and family as possible. For babies and children whose experience of the intrauterine environment and the first months of life might have been a stressful one, it’s never too early or too soon!
You’re welcome to contact us to arrange to have a chat about how we work before you decide to go ahead, but all families who are referred for a BUSS® intervention are also invited to watch a brief Introduction to BUSS® webinar. We encourage exploration of the website, which is another great source of information about the model and this way of working to help you get ready for starting the work together. Parents and carers will be sent some questionnaires to complete which will help their practitioner begin to build a picture of the child’s foundation systems and which are used to help measure the effectiveness of the intervention. This will include a BUSS® screening tool. If you’d like to read more about the measures that we use, please click here.
When these are completed and returned to us, we will allocate a BUSS® Practitioner to begin to work with the family as soon as possible after funding has been confirmed. Before offering appointments, we always check with you first which days and times are best for you for meetings. Our core hours are 9.00am to 5.30pm. Before meeting with the family, the practitioner will review all the information from the screening questionnaires, the referral form and any other assessments provided.
The initial call is for parents/carers with the allocated BUSS® Practitioner. We can arrange this via telephone or video call, whichever you feel most comfortable with. This will give the opportunity to talk through your child’s early experiences, family life, current presentation and movement, and discuss hopes and expectations for BUSS®. You can also think with your Practitioner about the best plan for working together and get a feel for the rhythm of the intervention.
Your Practitioner will ask you to play a range of different BUSS® activities and games with your child to help us make sense together of your child’s foundation sensorimotor systems and think about where to start.
For face-to-face sessions, you will meet your Practitioner at our centre in Farsley (in West Leeds, West Yorkshire) while if you are working with us remotely, your Practitioner will ask you to play the games at home with your child, video record them and upload the clips to a secure site to review. They will then meet with you to look at those videos together.
Parent/carer(s) will then receive a copy of the initial assessment report by email – we aim to share these within a couple of days of the assessment session.
Following your initial assessment, your Practitioner will schedule a chat with you to answer any questions that you might have after reading the report, and think about getting started with the BUSS® activities and games. We’ll set goals together for the work and agree on your priorities.
With your Practitioner, two calls will be scheduled (typically fortnightly) to check in on how things are going. Between these contact sessions, your Practitioner will request video clips of the activities and games you’ve been playing to review progress and think with you about any adaptations that would be right for your child. We always want to make sure we get the level of challenge just right so the games are not so tricky that your child gets disheartened, but not so easy that they’re not building their foundation systems either. It’s a fine line to tread!
After every check in call, you’ll receive a brief summary of the discussion with clear next steps.
The midway review can also take place face-to-face or remotely. Here we can reflect on the work so far and think together about next steps.
Two further check-in calls with your Practitioner… and more video clips!
The final session can also take place face-to-face or remotely. This will be your last scheduled contact session with your Practitioner to conclude the BUSS® work, review progress, and discuss moving forward.
Parent/carer(s) will receive a final summary report – we aim to have these sent out to you within a couple of days.
Three support groups, led by our Parent Mentors, run every month (except in August) on Zoom. There is a group for parents/carers of children under 6 years, and 2 groups running for parents/carers of children from over 7 years. You are welcome to join these sessions throughout your intervention and will receive an invitation from our team administrator asking you if you’d like to opt in. Click here to watch our Parent Mentors give an introduction to the BUSS® Parent Mentor Groups. They are a great space to share successes and challenges alongside other parents/carers who are also working through the BUSS® intervention.
A review meeting will be held with parents/carer(s), the BUSS® Practitioner, Social Worker and / or any other professionals to review the work and think together about future recommendations and next steps.
Typically the intervention is offered over 4 months and for most families this will be as much formal support as they need – they will have made significant progress in building their child’s underdeveloped foundation sensorimotor systems and feel confident enough to continue their hard work independently with some guidance from their BUSS® Practitioner about next steps.
A small number of families, usually where the child has been impacted by fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) or drug use in utero, or where they have complex health needs/disabilities, may need ongoing direct support from our service. In this case we would think with you about helpful next steps.
While every BUSS® intervention will be unique to each child and family, it can be useful to have an idea of what a game might look like, and how it’s graded. We’ve got a big library of videos that Sarah and her daughter Ally have made, to help explain some of the games, which are also integrated into our reports and summaries.
Bubble mountain is a game that Lindsey, one of our earlier Parent Mentors, devised when we were focusing on building oral motor strength in our tactile system work. Alongside this, and in conjunction with other work, we’d been using a graded programme to build core strength and stability to support their child to lie on their tummy, with their body getting the strength and stamina it needed for this from their head, neck, shoulder girdle and trunk. By this stage of the work, they were able to lie on their tummy in a good position for a few minutes. The games they’d been playing to build oral motor strength meant that their child now knew the difference between blowing and sucking, and was able to form a seal with their mouth around a straw. This game was a great way to continue to develop both parts of those foundation sensorimotor systems.
The interplay of early feeding and communication experiences is critical to a child developing good oral motor strength, without which, the progression to weaning and language development can be compromised. BUSS® tries to break the activity down into its component parts, using games like this to build oral motor strength and to put experiences of fun and nurture alongside earlier feeding experiences, which may perhaps have been more stressful. As you’ll see, it is a short, easy activity that, when it’s used at the right stage of development of a child’s foundation systems, can be fun for parents and children to do together.
Click on the circles below to find out more about our work with each of these families
One mum’s experiences of our work together with her 18 month old son:
Sarah was able to explain which parts of Noah’s development we should pay attention to and gave us ideas for games and activities we can play at home in order to target the specific areas. Sarah also explains how we’ll know when what we’re working has ‘worked’. My husband describes it as feeling like we have a ‘road map’ now so we know how to get to our destination instead of just trying to figure it out for ourselves and hoping for the best.
We’ve seen huge changes in our son surprisingly quickly. He’s suddenly leapt forward in his physical movement and stability as well as his understanding, social and communication skills. There’s still work to do but the progress he’s made is tangible.
The great thing is that the games and activities are all things we can weave into our day easily. Even his grandparents are on board. My mum often sends little parcels through the post saying ‘these will be great for his hands’ or ‘I thought this would be fun to do when you work on crawling.’ His other grandma can be heard saying ‘what lovely flat hands’ when they’re playing. His child minder also finds it easy to incorporate activities to support our son’s development that she can do with all of the children she cares for. That’s the beauty of the BUSS model. It involves really simple games that can be done anywhere, are great fun and don’t need lengthy therapy sessions to see rapid improvements.
Our son has great fun doing it… He doesn’t realise he’s doing ‘work’ and I can’t wait to see where the BUSS Model takes him in the future.
closeElsa was 6.5 years old when we started working together and Elsa’s mum did an amazing job of tracking the changes she noticed in the year following the end of the intervention. She divided them into 3-6 months post intervention and 6 – 12 months post intervention. There’s a much fuller account of the intervention and mum’s account in Sarah’s ‘Building Underdeveloped Sensorimotor Systems’ book, but here’s a summary of some of the changes she noticed at 3-6 months post intervention, and also Elsa’s ‘best picture of a whole person’ before and after the intervention.
3 – 6 months post intervention
Bodily Regulation
Vestibular and Proprioceptive Systems
Sitting – better able to sit on a chair at mealtimes – at home this means she eats much better. At school she finds it much easier to sit and is able to complete tasks. At home she can sit at the table and write her homework really neatly. Elsa is delighted that her letters look the way she’d like them to!
Elsa recently completed a wood balancing trail without any help – she would never have been able to do this before.
Overall walking and running are much smoother and better co-ordinated. Elsa gets pleasure from moving around and being able to do the things she wants to do.
Elsa now goes up and down stairs without using her eyes to track her movements or her hands on the banisters. She comes down putting one foot on each step – and can do this at various speeds
She can now do handstands and really good cartwheels. Elsa also loves hula hooping – these are all things Elsa tried before but just didn’t have enough control of her body to be able to do them. She’s also started learning to roller skate
Tactile System
Much better eater – less fussy, enjoys food more.
Emotional Regulation
I’ve noticed Elsa doing things that she’s never been able to do before in terms of understanding herself on an emotional level and being able to regulate. A couple of examples from this week – when Elsa gets angry she now asks if she can do some exercise or read a book like her ‘how are you feeling today’ book. She’s got a sense of how she’s feeling and that she needs to calm down and is beginning to be able to do that. The second one happened last week, and after a crying session where Elsa suddenly said she had tummy ache (she had been fine all evening) she finally managed to tell me that she felt lonely in her bedroom at night and it was too dark. This is the first time she’s been able to tell me exactly what she feels.
Angry outbursts at home have definitely decreased as Elsa is better able to understand herself and how she was feeling. Bedtimes have also got a lot better – both in terms of how long it takes for Elsa to get off to sleep and also how much parental intervention is required.
Human Figure Drawings
As part of the assessment and in the final session we ask children to draw the best picture they can of a whole person. We’re looking at lots of things here, but it’s been interesting to see the changes in these pictures – and Elsa’s was quite a dramatic change!
Before After
There’s a much fuller account of Lenny’s therapy in the ‘Building Underdeveloped Sensorimotor Systems’ book, but here’s a brief excerpt.
Lenny was six years old and in Year One at school when we started BUSS. School had just begun to talk to his mum about whether his needs would be better met in an alternative provision – none of the strategies they were using seemed to be working. Lenny seemed hyper-aroused nearly all of the time and spent his day racing around school. He ran through rather than round other children, couldn’t sit on his chair or the carpet for longer than a couple of seconds, and was constantly getting into altercations with other children.
Lenny’s mum was fantastic and together we started to work on Lenny’s tactile, vestibular and proprioceptive systems. Here are some of the differences she began to notice.
“At school , staff were saying that Lenny had really calmed down a lot – and it was nice just to have people saying something positive to you, rather than the walk of shame. He managed to be able to tolerate groups after school, which he’d not been able to do before, and extracurricular activities he’d not managed before– it was really life changing for him.
Before the whole queuing up and taking turns was a big no no, but I remember we went to a farm about a year or so after we’d met you, and normally, going to a farm and having to wait for a go on a rope swing would be really hard for him. And I was a bit anxious watching him queue up – and it was a bit of a free for all, nobody was really supervising their children and he stood and waited and he waited. I was thinking, oh gosh, something’s going to happen in a minute, but he just waited and then he said to this girl, ‘can I have a go please’ – and I was amazed that he could manage that! So that was – wow – that’s just a major step. Then he’s moved onto other successes with his football – he’s a goalie and was scouted by a premiership team and went and trained with them for a while – and managed it! He really enjoyed that – he’s just doing so well.”
It was Lenny’s mum who ‘invented’ bubble mountain, which is now a firm favourite with many families – you can watch Sarah and her daughter doing it here.
closeWorking with older children and teenagers can be really constructive – it’s usually possible to think together about the concepts of the model and for the young person to think about how it might apply to them. They’re usually pretty aware of what they can and can’t do and have often consciously developed strategies to manage – a fifteen year old recently described feeling so self conscious about running because her arms just seemed to have a life of their own, making her look like an octopus, that she either completely avoided any physical activity or tried to keep her hands in her pockets when she was doing anything physical.
For others, that feeling of being different to others and having to struggle physically on a day to day basis, means that they can become really depressed and hopeless. While I always wish that I could have met them at an earlier point in their lives, it’s great to be able to help them so that they can use their energy for normal teenage things and not to try and manage their bodies.
Amber is one such young person who was so relieved to find out that there might not be something wrong with her physically, and that it might be possible to work to fill in the gaps, that she made fantastic progress… When I first met Amber, her foundation sensorimotor systems were so underdeveloped that she had to expend a phenomenal amount of energy just trying to ‘manage’ her body. She struggled with everything from getting dressed, making breakfast, writing, running – everything was an uphill struggle, leaving very little energy for creative thought or friendships. Amber and her mum worked really hard together to rebuild those systems and Amber herself described how much less tired she felt once her foundation system were in better shape, and described the confidence she found she had to go out and do things, make friends, engage in activities that she’d often thought that she’d like to do but just couldn’t manage. Amber’s mum writes a really moving account of the work in the ‘Building Sensorimotor Systems in Children with Developmental Trauma’ book.
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All families supported through a BUSS® intervention are invited to complete measures at the beginning and end of our work together. Our experience has been that by the end of the intervention, we see significant improvement in a child’s bodily awareness, core strength and stability, co-ordination and fluidity of movement. These improvements in bodily regulation often facilitate positive changes in emotional regulation, learning and relationships, as can be seen in the testimonies from parents and carers.
We would suggest that building bodily regulation is usually a good starting point for any therapeutic intervention and find that children are often much better able to make use of psychological therapies or attachment interventions once they are better regulated on a bodily level.
We are also working hard to build the evidence base for BUSS® and use anonymised outcome measures to evaluate and consistently improve our offer to families.
We appreciate that parenting a child who has experienced developmental trauma can be a great challenge at times as well as bringing great joy. Because the child’s parent/carer is the main agent of change in a BUSS® intervention , this can be hard work if you’re already feeling under extreme pressure. We sometimes find that families benefit from other help such as therapeutic parenting support alongside or indeed before BUSS®.
We would NOT recommend that families begin a BUSS® intervention alongside dyadic interventions such as Theraplay or individual interventions for children such as art or play therapy. We would either ask for that work to be put on hold so we could do BUSS® or delay starting BUSS® until after the other therapeutic support has finished.
You can get in contact with us by emailing info@bussmodel.org to discuss any other requests or needs.
Here is the link to a blog post from a family who have just worked through the BUSS® programme. The post gives a lovely insight into how to integrate games into daily life, the value of Parent Mentor groups and the changes they’ve seen in their family.
Follow this link to read more:
https://www.timetobedad.co.uk/post/from-walking-to-our-first-jump-with-buss-model
"BUSS has given my twin girls freedoms they didn't have before. It's allowed them to access and explore the world in the ways they have been so desperate to. It's given us hope and endless positivity that our girls will get there and so we continue to do the BUSS activities. It's given us knowledge, understanding of why and how our girls are wired the way they are and given us the tools and self-belief to make a significant difference. Thank you so so much. Your work is powerful and helps children live the lives they deserve and empowers and tools up parents to help their children which they are so desperate to do."
“The impact so far on our daughter is remarkable. Our main concerns were around the way she manages her emotions, mainly at school and when playing with other children. She can feel very angry very quickly at seemingly small things. She also struggles to sit still and can’t cope with unpredictability. These were impacting on her friendships and her learning.”
"I just wanted to say an enormous “Thank You” to you for your work with us. You have been so fabulously knowledgeable and understanding and seem so quickly to have understood our family! Even though my son didn’t have standard BUSS type needs, I know we have benefited a lot from your input. I could not recommend what you offer more highly - You are awesome"
“We were struggling to understand how this physical work could help her emotionally, but the improvement so far has been remarkable. We have noticed that her reactions to unexpected situations are much more measured, school has fed back that she is calmer when she is there and that they can reason with her much more easily, she seems to be able to stay in the moment a little longer and generally seems less angry and frustrated all round. We will be continuing with great gusto and hoping that the improvements will continue!”
“My own personal understanding of what’s going on with my child and what they need is incredible. I have learned so much in the last few months and become really creative in how to use the sensory integration techniques in everyday life. Taste tests, exercise balls, balancing and combat crawling fun games that have been adapted to suit my child.”
“For her to feel comfortable walking down the stairs without being afraid was the biggest accomplishment I can think of, and in a very short space of time. I would definitely highly recommend this work; an essential understanding of what has been missed or gotten stuck and how it affects the body.”
"I think it's worked brilliantly and I've found it easier to fit into my life in terms of childcare and work commitments."
“It’s amazing that something that’s so completely life changing can be so much fun!”
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