Oxfordshire Care Limited
We feel passionately about taking a holistic and therapeutic approach to providing care to children and young people who have social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties. We strongly believe that timely intervention can bring children and young people healing and contentment, and enable them to become positive, valuable and contributing members of society.
What We Offer
Healing, participation & community
Oxfordshire Care Ltd offers residential care services for children and young people with Emotional Behaviour Difficulties aged 7 to 17 years.
We provide comprehensive services, including 24/7 residential care and therapeutically informed care.
Our dedicated professionals will work collaboratively to create a nurturing and structured environment for the children and young people in our care.
Ethos of the Home
Watlington House believes that all children and young people have the right to a safe, secure, and loving environment where they can explore themselves, their abilities, areas for development and potential in the world around them.
We believe these are the essential building blocks for the foundation of progress and integration.
All children and young people are entitled to physical and emotional care of excellent quality. Watlington House offers warmth, stability, consistency, structure, and boundaries, which are a constant active feature of our work with the young people in our care.
Genuine, caring relationships based on awareness of the dignity of the child or young person, combined with mutual respect, form the basis of the interactions between staff, children and and young people and are enabling factors in control issues.
What do I do?
Trauma-Informed Support for Children
1. Create safety
If the child is overwhelmed, perhaps guide them to a quiet corner or allow them to decompress by visiting the restroom. If you are in a classroom, maybe you have a peace corner that you’ve outfitted with blankets or a screen so that it feels like a safe place.
2. Regulate the nervous system
Stress brings a predictable pattern of physiological responses and anyone who has suffered toxic stress or trauma is going to be quickly stressed into hyperarousal (explosive, jittery, irritable) or hyperarousal (depressed, withdrawn, zombie-like). No matter how ingenious our regulation strategies, how artsy- crafty we get with tools, the child has to find what works for them.
3. Build a connected relationship
This is the number one way to regulate the nervous system. When we are around people we care about, our bodies produce oxytocin, which is the hormone
responsible for calming our nervous system after stress. If we stay connected, then eventually the calm discussion of each person’s feelings and needs can take place.
4. Support development of coherent narrative
Creating predictability through structure, routines and the presence of reliable adults helps reduce the chaos a child may feel and allows them to start creating the kind of logical sequential connections that not only help them understand their own narrative, but are also the fundamental requirement of many types of learning.
5. Build social emotional and resiliency skills
Trauma robs us of time spent developing social and emotional skills. The brain is too occupied with survival to devote much of its energy to learning how to build relationships and it’s a good chance we didn’t see those skills modeled for us. Learning to care for one another is the most important job we have growing up.
6. Practice 'power-with' strategies
One of the hallmarks of trauma is a loss of power and control. When someone is wielding power over you with no regard to your thoughts or feelings, the toxic shame of the original trauma may come flooding back. As adults, we should use our power well. If we model a ‘power-with’ relationship with children it’s our best chance of creating adults who will treat others with dignity and respect.
