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Healing Complex Trauma through Therapeutic Residential Care: The Lighthouse Foundation Therapeutic Family Model of Care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Pauline J. McLoughlin  and
Rudy Gonzalez
Pauline J. McLoughlin
Affiliation:
Lighthouse Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Australia
Rudy Gonzalez*
Affiliation:
Lighthouse Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
*
address for correspondence: Rudy Gonzalez, Executive Director, Lighthouse Institute, Victoria, Australia. E-mail: rudyg@lighthouseinstitute.org.au
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Abstract

Therapeutic Residential Care (TRC) has attracted increasing interest in Australia, as a specialised out-of-home care option for children with complex needs. Extending beyond the limitations of traditional residential programmes, TRC aims to address the impact of trauma and promote positive development and wellbeing. The Lighthouse Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation based in Melbourne, providing a long-term programme of TRC to young people aged 15 to 22 at intake. The organisation has developed an attachment and trauma-informed therapeutic community approach, embodied in the Therapeutic Family Model of Care. This discussion paper explores how the therapeutic community approach taken by Lighthouse provides a different experience of the cultural ‘sites’ in which early traumatic experiences occur – including the home environment, experiences of family, and the wider community. In doing so, we propose that an important dimension of TRC is the capacity to challenge traumatic relational blueprints of abuse and neglect. This, in turn, supports children to form and sustain positive and reciprocal relationships, and to live inter-dependently in the community.

Keywords

trauma-informed carechild developmenttherapeutic residential caretherapeutic communitiesfamily therapy
Type
Articles
Information
Children Australia , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 2014 , pp. 169 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2014 

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