About Us

Sarah Naish was a foster parent for many years, started her own Fostering agency and went on to adopt a sibling group of 5. This introduced her to the extreme challenges faced by families whose children have suffered developmental trauma and led her to develop a model of parenting to support these children called therapeutic parenting. Sarah also recognised that parents became exhausted because of these challenges and that this often led to family breakdowns. This is called compassion fatigue and Sarah funded research into this phenomenon.

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Since these beginnings, Sarah and her team have increased their knowledge through research and experience and have developed specific training and resources to help parents and families.

 

Including:

• Important research* which was requested by the Commons Select Committee to be heard in evidence as part of the central government’s Fostering Inquiry.

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• Feedback from the social media network of over 8000 Therapeutic Parents and supporting professionals (now over 26,000).

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• Many training events, seminars, conferences, and workshops carried out throughout the U.K. with foster parents, adopters, kinship carers, step parents, special guardians, and biological parents of children who had suffered trauma or separation.

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*Research into Compassion Fatigue, Ottaway & Selwyn 2016

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Most parents and carers were found to be dealing with the same central themes:

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• Difficulties managing the behaviour of children who had suffered trauma.

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• Difficulties in accessing correct information about the effects of trauma on the child.

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• Difficulties in gaining the understanding and support of others about their parenting style.

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• Lack of knowledge around the impact on themselves, regarding caring for traumatised children and how to minimise those effects.

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• Feelings of isolation.

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• Feelings of being blamed, misunderstood, and unsupported.

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• Feeling unable to continue caring for the child or children.

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Many parents did not have any central support system in place at all it was decided, therefore, by members of the committee, to form an organisation to help all parents caring for traumatised children, to be able to access resources and pool information about available services, regardless of their legal status.

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The suggestion was met by exceptional positivity within the social media site (Therapeutic Parenting), which had grown from 120 members to over 38,000 members.

 

The NATP is now driven by a team of parents and professionals who have first hand experience of supporting children and parents. Their aim is to assist parents in gaining the specialist knowledge, skills, insight and strategies required to support their children now and support them to flourish in the future.

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The NATP is part of The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma, a network of companies with a shared ethos, to support children and families who have experienced trauma.