Sarah Naish doesn’t know me – but she was my lifeline when I was drowning
*Alice shares how Sarah Naish’s trauma-informed parenting approach became a lifeline when traditional strategies weren’t enough. Her story reveals the hope and practical tools that helped her keep going through the hardest moments of foster caring.
On her first visit to Australia, Sarah Naish will be a keynote speaker at the 2025 National Foster & Kinship Care Conference: Empowering Carers to Transform Lives. I, for one, will be jockeying for a front row seat.
It was through Sarah’s work that I came to really appreciate the power of a therapeutic approach to parenting. Therapeutic – or trauma-informed – parenting looks squarely at the reality of the impacts of trauma on a child’s brain.
Therapeutic parenting gives children the nurture and boundaries they need to grow to healthy adulthood.
In the UK, Sarah is well known as a leading advocate for trauma-informed parenting. She is the CEO of The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma; an organisation that encompasses the National Association for Therapeutic Parents, three therapeutic foster care agencies, Inspire Training Group and The Haven Parenting and Wellbeing Service.
She is also the adoptive mother of five siblings who were significantly impacted by trauma. It is the complete honesty – and often hilarity – with which Sarah speaks about her own experiences that drew me to her. She doesn’t gloss over how challenging it was being an adoptive mum to her kids and not knowing how to help them.
Like Sarah, I had little understanding of the impact of trauma on a child’s brain when I became a foster carer.
I had a vague but very optimistic idea of how things would go – yes it would be tough, but with some love and consistency we’d be fine!
Things did not go well. Most of us carers quickly discover that caring for children impacted by trauma is hard indeed. On top of that, it turns out that the ‘good’ ways of parenting we grew up with don’t work with the kids in our care. In fact, they can do more harm than good.
At times, I would feel like I had been presented with a bomb and given the wrong code to disarm it.
I attended training and had professional support, both of which helped. Over time my knowledge grew, but it was a slow and isolating process.
During one particularly challenging time, I was desperately searching the internet for a miracle parenting strategy that would ‘fix’ my children. I came across a video of two English women; Sarah Naish and her adult daughter Rosie. They were speaking about challenges they’d had in the years after Sarah had adopted Rosie and her four siblings.
Sarah spoke about the model of trauma-informed parenting she developed over time for her family that was realistic about the impact their early experiences of life had on them.
To see Rosie reflecting so insightfully with her mother was a revelation to me. It filled me with hope – maybe I could do this after all.
Relearning how to parent takes time. For a child to learn to trust – and heal – takes a long time. I have returned to Sarah’s work many times over the years when I’m feeling depleted or when I need a reminder of what my children need from me.
Sarah has authoured and co-authoured many books that have become the forest I turn to. They include the easy to read and incredibly helpful The A-Z of Therapeutic Parenting and The A-Z of Survival Strategies for Therapeutic Parents. NSW carers can read these for free through the Carers for Kids NSW Resource Library. I highly recommend them to you.
Sarah is just one of the compelling speakers and presenters who will be at this year’s conference – but hers is a presentation that I won’t be missing.
The 2025 National Conference for Foster & Kinship Care: Empowering Carers to Transform Lives is taking place in Sydney from 28 to 30 November. Registrations are open now at https://www.adoptchange.org.au/national-foster-kinship-care-conference-2025/
*Name and image changed for privacy.
