The journey supporting families facing trauma...
My name is Heather Toews. I have been a lot of things in my life. I am a wife of 26 years and mother of a 22-year-old daughter. Like many, I did not take a straight path to get to where I am. I began my career working with youth at the local Youth Commission and in my local school district. My experiences in these settings led me to complete my Bachelor of Social Work and working in the field of child protection. My passion for supporting families who were caring for children who had experienced trauma naturally grew from there, leading to a career in adoption for over a decade. Because of my experiences with adoptive families, it seemed like a natural step to transition into becoming a therapist. I am currently a clinical counsellor working as a Mental Health therapist and started a private practice, specializing in helping people heal from childhood trauma.
Digging Deeper...
I have worked with foster and adopted children and families for almost 20 years, first as a social worker and now as a Mental Health therapist. As a child protection worker, I often felt helpless. I saw the aftermath of trauma - both for parents and their children. As meaningful as this work could sometimes be, my role, often seen as adversarial, made this work difficult.
When the opportunity came to work in the field of adoption, I felt more hopeful. This was my chance to change the trajectory of a child’s life. It wasn’t long before I recognized that being placed in a ‘stable home’ did not resolve the challenges. The training these parents received prior to placement didn’t fully prepare them for the degree of impact trauma had already inflicted.
This inspired me to dig deeper and explore more about how to heal from trauma. Soon after I was at a training by Dr. Bruce Perry, a psychiatrist at the Child Trauma Academy. I learned about the Neurosequential Model of Therapies. Don’t let me scare you off - this training changed my life. In fact, it sent me back to school for my Masters degree. I knew that I was meant to be a part of the healing, whether it be with birth, adoptive parents or caregivers, I learned that they were the key. YOU are the ANSWER.
I have had the great pleasure of supporting caregivers in understanding trauma and the “why” underneath their child’s behaviour and responses. I consider myself a lens shifter, empowering parents by giving them new glasses with which to see their child. When this shift occurs, it removes the personalization of their child’s behaviour and increases capacity to attune to their child, enter into their experience and work through the hard things.
Treating trauma takes time, but it is not a lost cause. I have been privileged to see families move from surviving to thriving. An attuned and responsive environment are the key to promoting healing and reducing the sensitivity of their ‘smoke detector’. A regulated nervous system has the ability to think, be flexible, respond with empathy, and respond in ways that encourage connection -- and I’m not just talking about our kids here. This is the ultimate gift for us and our child.
Helping families flourish...
In The Trauma Attuned Parent program, I aim to bring the wisdom, learning, mistakes, and curiosity I have gained throughout all these experiences. I am by no means a perfect parent and do not have all the answers, but I truly believe that parents and caregivers have a significant role, and in fact are the KEY, to helping their children heal. I like to say that we don’t know what we know until we know it and then we have a responsibility to use what we know. I believe that you have the capacity to create a therapeutic home environment that is far more effective to your child’s healing than sending them to therapy (although that too can have a role). When one person is impacted by trauma, the whole family system is impacted. My goal is to provide you, as primary caregiver, with research-based concepts and strategies to help you build deeper connections with and become more attuned to the child in your care.
I originally developed this program to fit a gap in supports for adoptive parents following bringing their child home. Although pre-placement training is helpful, I found once parents were in the thick of the hard places, this is when they truly needed the information and support. This course has been honed and adapted over the past five years to bring in the most pertinent information from experts and real-life strategies to support any caregiver who is supporting a child who has a lived experience of trauma. I am so passionate about this topic that you will regret bringing it up with me at a party…Don’t even get me going!!
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Tips for Healing Trauma sheet!
Are you struggling to know where to start as you support a child through trauma? Empower yourself in providing the safety your child needs by engaging in these healing and recovery tools.
Register For The Trauma Attuned Parenting Program Now!
I have carefully crafted two versions of this program, one for birth families, and one tailored to the specific needs of foster and adoptive families. Please select the program (below) that best fits your family's needs.
