Child’s Play?: Helping children of prisoners overcome trauma
- - An overview of the therapeutic story, its adult guide and video game will be provided, along with their benefits for children affected by parental imprisonment and their families.
- - The fact that there is minimal (if any) current research or professional development work directed primarily at supporting children affected by parental imprisonment - particularly concerning the impact of therapeutic resources designed to support healing and resilience from this particular trauma (with extensive desk-based research yielding no results).
- - Policy implications, planned research outputs and plans for publication and dissemination arising from the study will be shared.
Schedule Information:
On Demand
Session Description
The session will focus on a study framed around an innovative storybook, ‘Maya’s ACE Adventures!’, its adult guide and video game. Together, they make up a set of therapeutic resources for talking with children about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) (hence the story’s title) they’ve been exposed to. Used with a trusted adult, it’s anticipated the resources will foster hope, agency and recovery from trauma. Specifically, the study will explore how story/play serves as a protective factor and promotes post-traumatic growth for children affected by parental imprisonment. Critically, there’s no formal process/central record in place to systematically identify these children.