2. The ARC Model Attachment Regulation Competency
ARC is a framework for intervention with children and families that recognizes the impact of adverse life experiences on specific areas of functioning. The three areas are:
Attachment
Regulation
Competency
Teach
[Read slide]
Adverse Life Experiences are are stressful or traumatic events, including abuse and neglect. 

3. Trauma Integration Self Development & Identity Executive Functioning
Teach
Here is the ARC Model
Attachment: Caregiver Affect Management, Attunement, Consistent Response, Routines and Rituals
Regulation: Affect Identification, Modulation, Affect Expression
Competency: Executive Functioning, Self-Development and Identity
Trauma Integration
Affect
Identification
Modulation
Affect
Expression
Caregiver
Affect
Management
Attunement
Consistent
Response
Routines &
Rituals

4. Building Blocks of Attachment
Understanding, managing, and coping with
our own emotional responses so we are
better able to support children in our care.
Teach
Attachment is the connection between the child and their Caregivers.
The building blocks of attachment are: Caregiver Affect Management, Attunement, Consistent Response, Routines and Rituals
The goal of attachment is to understand, manage and cope with our own emotional responses so we are able to better support children in our care.
Caregiver
Affect
Management
Attunement
Consistent
Response
Routines &
Rituals

5. Caregiver Affect Management
Depersonalization Of Child Behaviors
Education About The Trauma Response
Validation Of Caregiver Experience
Self-monitoring Skills
Affect Management
Building Supports And Resources
Teach
The goal of Caregiver Affect Management is to help Caregivers manage their emotional respsonse so that they are better able to support their children.
Tools for building Caregiver Affect Management include:
Depersonalization of child behaviors: It is important to normalize caregivers emotional response. We do this by providing education about the impact of trauma and validating their experience.
Self-Monitoring Skills: Building self monitoring skills can help Caregivers identify challenging situations and help them regulate their affect in order to effectively deal with a child’s challenging behaviors.
Building Supports and Resources: Caregivers need support and helping to connect them to supports and resources in their family and community is crucial for success.

6. Self-Monitoring Skills
Identification of triggers–not personalizing the child’s behavior
Building your own toolbox
Understanding the child’s behavior
Teach
It is important for our Caregivers to learn not to personalize their child’s behaviors.
Building your own toolbox: throughout this training you will ”build” your own toolbox that you can implement into your daily life.
By identifying our child’s triggers we are better to understand the child’s behavior and thus effectively

7. Self-Monitoring Skills
Prepare Yourself
In-your-pocket Tools
Recovery Tools
Ongoing Self-care
Teach
Self-monitoring means that we have to take time to prepare for challenging situations, have ”in-your-pocket” tools to use when challenging situations arise, we must have recovery tools to help us replenish ourselves after a challenging situation occurs and we must engage in on-going self-care.

8. Self-Monitoring Skills
Consider the following questions to help identify difficult situations:
Are there child behaviors that are particularly hard for you to deal with?
Are there child emotions that are difficult to cope with or respond to?
Are there situations that you know you find particularly hard because they remind you of hard times in your own life?
In what situations do you feel least effective?
Are there child’s feelings, behaviors, or experiences that are hard for you to understand?
What other factors affect your ability to stay centered?
Teach
Work with Caregivers to identify challenging situations. Consider the following questions. You can have the participants journal each of these and/or share in small groups.

9. Building Self-Monitoring Skills
The goal of self monitoring is to notice our own reactions across four domains: Physiological, Cognitive, Emotional and Behavioral. Do
Read slide

10. Building Self-Monitoring Skills
Physiological: What are you experiencing in your body?
Teach
Teach Caregivers to pay attention to heart rate, breathing, muscle tension, numbness, etc.
Ask
What warning signs does the Caregiver’s body provide of “losing control” or hitting a danger point?

11. Building Self-Monitoring Skills
Cognitive: What do you think in the face of difficult situations? Consider automatic thoughts about self (e.g., ”I can’t do anything to help”) as well as about the child (e.g., “She’s doing this on purpose.” Do
Ask participants to identify what they think in the face of difficult situations. Help them identify their automatic thoughts about themselves and their child.

12. Building Self-Monitoring Skills
Emotional: What do you feel in response to each identified difficult situation? Do
Help participants identify their emotional responses to each identified difficult situation.

13. Building Self-Monitoring Skills
Behavioral: What do you do in the face of strong emotions? Do
Help participants identify their behavior when confronted with strong emotions.
Some examples include: withdrawing, freezing, becoming angry, raising their voice, etc.

14. Attunement Taking time to understand the child’s perspective
Being respectful of what a child is feeling
Correcting misperceptions
Understanding triggers
Understanding how children communicate
Reflective listening skills
What to do when a child is triggered (modulation)
Teach
Attunement is the capacity of caregivers and children to accurately read each other’s cues and respond appropriately.
Ways that Caregivers can attune to their children are: [read list]

15. Consistent Caregiver Response
Praise & Reinforcement
Behavioral Management
“Ignoring”- not actively attending to undesirable behaviors that are not immediately dangerous. Reducing the occurrence of these behaviors by removing the reinforcing value of attention.
Limit Setting
1-2-3 Approach- Warning, Consequence, Follow Through
Teach
An important part of building a safe environment is building PREDICTABILITY in Caregiver response.
A caring environment that provides safe, predictable responses to behavior provides children with reassurance.
Caregivers can create Consistent Caregiver Response through [read slide]

16. Routines & Rituals
Establishing Daily Rhythm (Activity Engagement/Grounding/Stability/Predictability)
Routines Targeting Areas Of Vulnerability Or Difficulty (Bedtime, Mealtime, Homework Time, Chore/Responsibility Time)
Teach
The experience of trauma is often associated with unpredictability, chaos and loss of control.
Caregivers can increase the child’s sense of safety in relationships and in the world by creating Routines and Rituals.
Ways that Caregivers create safety through routines are [read slide]

17. Building Routines & Rituals
Developing positive “shared” & “individual” rituals.
Identify and celebrate familial, cultural, and systemic traditions.
Teach
Rituals are the repeated practice of traditions, celebrations, patterns of behavior or experiences.
Rituals offer a connecting thread to other members of the family, community and culture.
Shared rituals offer a sense of belonging, to be apart of a larger group.
Ask
What rituals do you participate in your family, community and/or culture?

18. Self-Regulation
Working with adolescents to build an awareness of internal experience, the ability to discriminate and name emotional states, and an understanding of why these states originate.
Teach
Regulation is the ability to manage our experience on many levels: cognitive, emotional, physiological and behaviorally.
The building blocks of Regulation are Affect Identification, Modulation and Affect Expression.
The goal of regulation is to work with youth to build an awareness of internal experience, the ability to discriminate and name emotional states and an understanding of why these states originate.
Affect
Identification
Modulation
Expression

19. Why We Regulate Children
Provides a safe environment
Supports connection
Highlights for both the parent and child that feelings come and go – builds tolerance
Communicates to the child that someone can and will meet their needs
[Read slide]

20. I’m Ok, You’re Ok
If you can stay calm, you can help the child stay calm or get back on track quicker
Be a detective – know what triggers your child, how they can be soothed, and what makes them calm or agitated in the moment
Teach
The Caregiver’s own expression and modulation provide both a visual language for understanding affect as well as a model for coping.
So, if a Caregiver is Ok it tells the Child that they are Ok.
[Read slide]

21. Affect Identification
Build understanding of and ability to express feelings/emotions
Identification of emotion in self and other
Involves ability to accurately read cues such as body language, voice tone, eye contact, etc.
Building emotional vocabulary
Understanding of emotional triggers and responses
Teach
Affect identification is the ability to identify emotions.
Children who have experienced trauma may have learned to disconnect from their feelings or to use unhealthy coping skills when dealing with intense emotions.
Our goal is to [read slide]

22. Modulation Building understanding of degrees of feeling
(i.e., number scale, thermometer, etc.)
Normalizing and teaching the concept of energy (arousal level) and linking that energy (arousal level) to feelings.
Differentiate safe versus unsafe emotional expression.
Teach
Modulation is the ability to safely regulate emotional and physiological experience.
We do this through [read slide]

23. Modulation
Build understanding of their “comfort zone” while exploring arousal states.
Teaching positive modulation skills, such as:
Teach
Additional ways to modulate include [read slide]
Diaphragmatic breathing
Grounding
Movement
Muscle Relaxation
Imagery
Address self-harm behaviors when appropriate.

24. Affect Expression
Use of “I” statements when communicating their own experiences.
Develop routine discussions in the home to encourage open communication.
Teach importance of expressing feelings
Helping the youth identify safe people in his/her life. (Circles of Trust)
Teach
Affect expression is being able to share one’s emotional experience with others.
Affect expression skills include [read slide]

25. Affect Expression Teaching nonverbal communication skills
Understanding tone of voice, physical space, and eye contact in emotional expression
Exploring emotional self-expression through:
Teach
[read slide]
Play
Art
Writing
Movement
Drama
Music

26. Building Blocks of Competency
Working with youth to act, instead of react, by using higher-order cognitive processes to solve problems and make active choices in the service of reaching identified goals.
Teach
Competency includes additional developmental competencies relevant to successful navigation of life experiences through working with youth to act instead of react, by using higher order cognitive processes to solve problems and make active choices in the service of reaching identified goals.
The goals of competency include:
To feel a sense of mastery over your environment
To have a sense of yourself
To effectively engage in problem solving
Executive
Functioning
Self
Development
& Identity

27. Primary Components: Strengthening Executive Functions
Improve problem-solving skills by helping youth:
Notice there is a problem
Establish basic safety and inhibit instinctive danger response
Identify and understand the problem
Brainstorm and identify possible solutions. (Don’t throw anything out yet!)
Evaluate all the possible consequences (good and bad) of each solution, and then make a choice
Implement and evaluate solutions and revise as needed.
Teach
Executive function are a set of cognitive processes that are necessary for the cognitive control of behavior: selecting and successfully monitoring behaviors that facilitate the attainment of chosen goals.
A major goal is to improve problem-solving skills by helping youth [read slide]

28. Primary Components: Strengthening Executive Functions
Helping adolescents recognize opportunities
Helping them to apply problem-solving skills to achieve goals.
Anticipating consequences
Evaluation of outcomes
Improvement of active decision making
Teach
Additional ways to help youth strengthen executive functions include [read slide]

29. Primary Components: Self-Development and Identity
As a Parent, your role is to help your Child:
Explore their unique self
Tolerate their vulnerable self
Honor the past
Capture the present
Build the future
Teach
Additional ways to help youth strengthen executive functions include [read slide]
We will look at each of these more in-depth in session five.

30. Trauma Experience Integration
Working with youth to actively explore, process, and integrate historical experiences into a coherent and comprehensive understanding of self in order to enhance their capacity to effectively engage in present life.
Teach
As we move through the building blocks our ultimate goal is to integrate all of the components. We do this by working with youth to [read slide]
Trauma
Integration

31. Putting It All Together
Trauma
Integration
Self
Development
& Identity
Executive
Functioning
Affect
Identification
Modulation
Affect
Expression
Caregiver
Affect
Management
Attunement
Consistent
Response
Routines &
Rituals