Warning: The content on this website discusses trauma and may be distressing to some readers. If you find this topic distressing, please prioritise your well-being and choose whether to engage with the material.
It seems like we hear about trauma everywhere these days, including in the EYLF V2.0.* This framework lays out what is expected of early childhood education (ECE) service providers, teachers, and educators and describes trauma-informed practice as a responsive practice relating to childhood trauma. This is an important new inclusion.
However, trauma does not only impact children. It impacts all people. A trauma-informed approach in ECE should therefore acknowledge the prevalence of trauma more broadly, including its impact on service providers, teachers and educators, and its impact on teachers’ and educators’ interactions with children, families, and colleagues.
From this perspective, trauma-informed practice must include supportive strategies that promote therapeutic spaces across the entire ECE service to create a responsive educational environment for children. However, achieving this in practice is complex. Addressing trauma in the early years requires specialised knowledge and skills, most of which are not included in teacher education programs and are costly if accessed via professional learning programs. Many professional learning programs also focus exclusively on developing practitioners’ skills for responding to child behaviours arising from trauma.
During our 2024 and 2025 meetings and events, many people asked for support with providing in-service training for their own staff after attending one of our trauma-informed workshops. In response to these requests, during 2025 we ran a series ofworkshops at the Albury/Wodonga CSU campus AND we provided all of the content and resources that you would need to run the same workshops at your service (accessed via the Program Content section of this website).
During the series of workshops, it became apparent that many people wanted more opportunities for ‘hands-on’ learning of practical strategies that they could use to help build ‘A community of respect; A community of regulation’ in their early childhood setting.
To enable us to provide these opportunities, in 2026 we are moving away from a scheduled series of workshops. Instead, we are offering a variety of in-person and experiential gatherings that will focus on topics that local early childhood services, teachers, and educators have asked for more information on. The gatherings will be of varied sizes (sometimes with limited places) and they will take place in a range of settings, including bush settings.
Because the gatherings will be in varied settings, including outdoors, we are not using PowerPoint presentations, or sharing them on the website. However, we will continue to provide other resources that you can use to support trauma-informed practice in your workplace (and beyond!).
Across all gatherings, we prioritise the wellbeing of those working in, or studying to work in, early childhood settings. Together, let’s slow down, listen from the heart, and challenge traditional curricula to create ‘communities of respect; communities of regulation’. We see you. We hear you. We understand the layers of complexities you face. We care.
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