Trauma staff help build safe bridges

By CATHERINE MASTERS

A 7-year-old watches as her stepdad murders her mother.

Life will never be the same. Her sleep is disturbed, she has nightmares and despite being bright she can no longer concentrate at school. In fact, teachers now describe this real Auckland child as slow.

She sits quietly at the back of the class, seemingly "spaced out," trapped in her own frightening world.

She grapples with anxiety and fear and is constantly on the lookout for danger.

Without specialist help, she may never fully recover.

When she gets to therapy at the Auckland City Mission's Children's Trauma Centre in Western Springs she builds a picture in a sand tray, using small models of people and animals.

It is a scary sandpit, filled with spiders and buried danger. She floods the tray and in the water are sharks. People fall in and die, there is carnage and mayhem. It is a picture of her inner world and no one is ever saved.

Then one day there is a breakthrough and the trauma staff hum with excitement.

She has built a bridge. It is a small - but at the same time huge - step forward.

For Tony White, psychologist and team leader at the centre, it shows she feels safer, or wants to feel safer.

The sand trays are usually scary, he says. Children are much more non-verbal in expressing themselves than adults so the sand tray is a way to express their conflicts, worries and fears.

Not all the 200 children a year that come here have been abused. Some are traumatised because burglars broke in, or they were trapped in a crashed car. But a good proportion are referred by Child, Youth and Family Services. Several children have witnessed their mother being murdered.

In the only centre of its kind in the country, the therapy is based on the research of Professor Bruce Perry, an American expert in neuroscience and child psychiatry.

He says traumatic events in childhood change the biology of the brain, which becomes trained in fight or flight mode.

Mr White says this is why consistency and predictability are so important in therapy. It is why each child comes to the same room, sees the same person and plays with the same toys in the same calm, safe environment.

"One of the things about trauma is that it tends to disrupt a child's whole feeling that the world is a safe, predictable place.

"Children notice in a room like this that the tiger is missing, or the dolphin is out of place. For some children it's their only island of normalcy or consistency in the world. It starts to be a base where they rebuild."

The children often have a long history of witnessing domestic violence such as physical abuse - they have been living in chaos, in a "vortex of violence."

Parents, who often have their own histories of trauma, are not overlooked at the centre. If a parent needs a therapist long term, the staff will find one. Then they will follow them through the process.

Mr White believes the programme works. "I'm convinced we have already prevented some long-term problems for children ... mental problems like depression and suicide.

"There are some adults who are so damaged themselves that even acknowledging a child's needs is difficult for them, let alone their own.

"It's difficult to say we have stopped abuse, but we have certainly seen families shift to a more healing pattern of interaction."

The big message about trauma is that children can be healed, Mr White says.

"There are some situations where it has been so complex, so extreme, so frequent and somebody is so damaged that it is extremely difficult, but you wouldn't say it would be impossible. It's sad to think there are people who live with that unnecessarily.

"There must be children who are living through ongoing nightmares."

The little girl is doing well now. Her aunt says she is full of beans and so switched on she is a bit of a handful at times.

That is far better than when she seemed to be in another world.

The centre, also known as Kathleen North House after an Anglican nun, is paid for by charitable donations. Phone 09 379-2395.

Herald Online feature: Violence at home

Donations to the Safe and Sound Appeal can be sent to PO Box 91939, Auckland Mail Centre

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