• How does a person’s sense of safety, stability and sense of self-worth, impact on their development as an individual?
• What does the latest research on attachment theory tell us about this?
• How can we use this research and examples of clinical practice to help children and young people?

Just some of the questions that we will be discussing at this half-day event. Please note that we are restricting the number of places on this event to 30 to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to be involved in the discussions.

About the day

This event focusses on the popular topic of Attachment. We investigate the computational modelling of human attachment and learn about examples of lived emotional experience of children and young people with attachment difficulties in CAMHS/Forward Thinking, Birmingham. Delegates will receive CPD certification, which will be emailed to them following the event. Please note that lunch is not included.

Who is it for

This day would be beneficial to those who work in a health setting, such as CAMHS professionals, Paediatricians, Occupational Therapists, Speech and Language Therapists. Additionally, those that work in the education sector, including; educational psychologists, SENCOs, hospital school staff, and those that work with children affected with mental health issues who are looking to update their skills and knowledge on this subject.

About the speakers

Dean Petters
Honorary Research Fellow, School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham
Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Wolverhampton

Dean’s work includes computational modelling of emotion, in particular creating agent-based models to investigate architectures for social and emotional attachment. Plus consideration of how to validate agent based models of affective phenomena; and consideration of the information processing and evolutionary underpinnings of Attachment Theory. Dean was selected as a recipient of the ‘2019 Bowlby-Ainsworth Award’, an award program initiated fifteen years ago to recognise and promote contributions to John Bowlby’s and Mary Ainsworth’s groundbreaking work on the nature of human attachment relationships.

Kevin Booth
Director of Training, Birmingham Trust for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Kevin is the Head of Training for the Clinical Training in Child Psychotherapy in BTPP. He is a psychotherapist in a 0-25 mental health service. Kevin’s professional interests include psychotherapy in Early Intervention settings, infant mental health, psychotherapy with survivors of CSA and trauma, in forensic contexts. He is interested in organisational and group dynamics.