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The Co-Working Model
WHAT IS THE CO WORKING MODEL
"Closeness is about resonance where two systems become linked as one."
- Dan Siegel
Children can not do the deeper work of healing alone.
The word 'Parent' in the following text refers to all parents/foster parents/carers/legal gauardians or any adult acting as the primary caregiver of the child.
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A child does not develop in isolation. They grow within a family system - adapting, responding and shaping themselves around the needs, patterns and dynamics of those who care for them. The co-working model begins with this truth.
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One therapist holds the child in the playroom - listening deeply to what the child is communicating beneath the behaviour, beneath the defiance, beneath the withdrawal.
The other therapist holds the parent in an experiential, relational space - working with what emerges when the deeper needs of the child are truly seen and felt.
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Both therapists work in close collaboration, holding a shared and evolving understanding of the whole family system. When the child's deeper need becomes clear - to feel safe, to surrender, to be held without having to manage everything - the parent work moves toward meeting that need. Not through instruction, but through their own felt experience.
"When the connection between a child and the people who love them most is restored, everything else can grow, and anything is possible"
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- SAFE STEPS THERAPISTS
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Practioners trained to IAPTP standards integrate play-based methods within a robust therapeutic framework that is grounded in clinical training, ethical practice and supervision
HOW IT WORKS
Healing the whole relational system
What is your child trying to communicate? What deeper need is not yet being met? What is the block that is keeping everybody stuck? And what opens when that block softens?
These are the kinds of unspoken questions the co-working model aims to answer and work through, for the answers are often held simultaneously within the inter-playing, dynamic and relational system between the child and parent.
We see time and time again that often times children can only move as far as the adults around them can move too. As the child shifts, bringing new needs, new vulnerabilities, new parts of themselves into the light - the parent must be ready to meet them there. This is why the parent's work is not separate from the child's healing.
As the parent learns to shift, soften and respond, the child feels it and moves further along their healing journey. This happens within the system that is alive between the parent and child - it is a space that is living and breathing. It is within this relational field the bridge between parent/caregiver and child can be rebuilt and they can find each other once again.
AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION
Parent Support V's The Co-Working Model
In parental support, a parent is held and nourished in their own right, they are supported and valued and it can profoundly help parents in understanding their child and learn how to meet them at a deeper level - and that matters profoundly. The co - working model however, goes a little deeper still where something else becomes possible.
Two therapists, working in deep collaboration, create the conditions for what Dan Siegel describes as contingent, resonant, communication - a living flow of energy and information between the child and the parent that is responsive, attuned and alive.
What the child carries into the playroom is felt in the room next door. What shifts in the parent, creates new possibilities for the child. Not because information is passed between rooms -but because the two therapists, holding the system together, allow that natural resonance between a parent and child to be restored.
This is not co-ordination. It is not parallel support. It is something far more alive than either - two differentiated processes, deeply linked, moving as one system toward integration, attunement and healing.
What the child carries into the playroom is felt in the room next door. What shifts in the parent, creates new possibilities for the child. Not because information is passed between rooms -but because the two therapists, holding the system together, allow that natural resonance between a parent and child to be restored.
This is not co-ordination. It is not parallel support. It is something far more alive than either - two differentiated processes, deeply linked, moving as one system toward integration, attunement and healing.
THE BENEFITS
How the co-working model helps your child
The Child is Deeply Met and Understood
What the child communicates through play and behaviour is understood at depth - and met with care across the whole system. The child no longer has to carry their distress alone. It helps children identify, understand and manage their feelings in a safe and supportive environment, building lifelong emotional skills.
The Parent Embodies Understanding
The parent's sessions are experiential in nature. This is not about being told what your child needs - it is about coming to know it through your own felt experience. An understanding that information alone could never create.
Healing the Developmental Journey - Together
For children with developmental trauma, development itself has been interrupted. As the child moves through unmet developmental stages in the playroom, the caregiver is supported to move through them too - at the same pace, experientially. The child does not have to go back alone. The caregiver makes the journey with them.
Family System Change
Two therapists in deep collaboration create conditions for resonant, contingent communication - a responsive flow of energy and information between child and parent. When one shifts, the other has space to shift too.
Deeper and Faster Therapeutic Progress
Because the child's relational environment shifts alongside their inner world, therapeutic progress is accelerated. The whole system is moving - and so the change that emerges is deeper and more lasting than either therapy could achieve alone.
Parent and Child Learn to Share the Same Rhythm
The goal is attunement. A parent and child who are connected, responsive and moving together. Not ahead. Not behind. Together - finding their way back to each other.