Developmental psychology counselling, parent-child relationship, attachment, promoting sensitivity, middle childhood

Developmental Psychological Counselling, Therapy and Further Education e. V.

Institute Childhood and Development

Vivantes Hospital Berlin

Developmental psychological counselling and therapy for families with children aged 4 to 10 (EBT4-10) is a new attachment-oriented module in counselling and therapy to promote the relationship between parents and their children. It can be used across all disorders for families with children of pre-school and primary school age, as well as in foster and adoptive families and in residential care.

Supporting and counselling families from the child's perspective

The aim is to sensitise the primary caregivers to the child's perspective of experience and to promote their ability to mentalise, i.e. their ability to adopt the child's perspective. By improving the quality of the relationship, the aim is to reduce symptoms beyond the usual counselling or treatment.

The child is at the centre of all phases of counselling. Parents learn more about their child's development, gain an insight into their inner experience and observe their child's abilities and strengths. The life situation, wishes and sensitivities of the parents are related to the child's perspective in the sense of a fit. Parents are strengthened in their role as parents by having their parenting goals and fears recognised and taken seriously.

EBT4-10 - attachment-based diagnosis and intervention

The central components of the diagnostics and intervention are the attachment story supplement procedure (GEV-B) and the EBT4-10 interaction scale. The intervention method of the core module is based on systematic video feedback of short sequences from both procedures.

Areas of application of the EBT4-10

The EBT4-10 is designed as a module that can be flexibly integrated into different fields of practice and support structures and combined with other youth and health support services. EBT4-10 can be used in various fields of work, such as the following: Educational counselling, foster care, child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy, early intervention.

Aim of the EBT4-10 training programme

Participants learn to competently observe and advise parents with children aged 4 to 10 and to develop strategies for action together with the parents. In this way, they promote positive parent-child interaction and parental sensitivity.

Target group and duration of the EPB training programme

The target group for EBT4-10 training is employees of institutions and freelance professionals who work with (mentally) stressed children aged 4 to 10 and their families, both in a counselling and therapeutic capacity and in a clinical-psychiatric capacity, e.g. (social) educators, social workers, psychologists, doctors and therapists.

The EBT4-10 further training programme comprises 16 course days (4 x 4 days) with 132 teaching units and covers a total period of approx. 1 year.

Contents of EBT4-10 training

Developmental psychology basics: socio-emotional and cognitive development of four to ten-year-olds, attachment in middle childhood, explorative procedure for recording relevant relationship and attachment issues (modified version of the story supplement procedure for attachment, GEV-B; Gloger-Tippelt & König, 2016), behavioural observation of mother/father-child interactions (EBT4-10 interaction scale)

Clinical developmental psychology: violence and trauma in the relationship context - transgenerational risks

Application of the EBT4-10: assessment of the parent-child relationship, resource-oriented video feedback, developmental psychological counselling and therapy as a process, working on and supervising own cases together (i.e. between the 4 training blocks, participants work with 3 families from their everyday practice. They are intensively supervised in and with the training group as part of the training so that they increasingly develop skills in independent video-supported developmental psychological counselling).

EPBTW e. V.: info@epb-verein.de

Institute Childhood and Development: info@institut-ke.de

Secretariat KJPP: forschungshaus.kjp@uniklinik-ulm.de