In-Service Team Training – Customised to your workplace
Our in-house training option provides a more bespoke learning experience for teams of 20 or more. Our expert trainers will work closely with you to ensure course content reflects your workplace environment and the subject matter knowledge of the group.
This approach teaches the same Tuning in to Kids® suite content that is delivered in our retail training offerings, but provides opportunity for team-building and arms participants with relevant skills they can immediately put into practice with their specific client group.
Please contact tik-info@unimelb.edu.au to arrange a quote.
Tuning in to Kids® is an evidence-based suite of parenting programs that focusses on teaching parents the skills of Emotion Coaching in order to strengthen the emotional relationship between parent and child. The suite of programs includes Tuning into Kids®, Tuning in to Teens®, and Dads Tuning in to Kids®. Our programs have been proven effective in reducing child and adolescent emotional and behavioural problems in clinical and community settings, with parents reporting greater emotional knowledge in themselves and their children, reduced emotion dismissing beliefs and practices and improvements in Emotion Coaching . This leads to a greater capacity for healthy emotional expression and self-regulation.
Our in-house training option
- provides a bespoke learning experience
- ensures that all staff have a shared experience of the training
- allows for greater peer support opportunity and co-facilitation within the organisation
- allows collaboration around running the programs, supporting parents/caregivers in a group setting or one-on-one.
- greater flexibility in tailoring training to each team’s needs (for example, combining Tuning in to Kids and Tuning in to Teens programs using a three-day training model – enquire directly for further detail)
- implementation support (team supervision and research evaluations)
In choosing an in-service team training organisations are able to specify some additional needs (e.g., focus on one-to-one delivery, trauma focus, more suitable date/time of delivery etc). In our experience, in-service models have also allowed staff to improve their emotional communication with colleagues and peers, with many indicating they had become more in tune with their own emotions and continuing to use emotion coaching in their personal relationships. Organisations can also take advantage of our implementation packages, which include offer of bespoke implementation support and support in evaluating the implementation of the programs.
- An introduction to the theory behind the Tuning in to Kids program
- Information about child or adolescent emotional development and the role parents/caregivers have in fostering children’s emotional intelligence
- Experiential learning of core content of the program. This allows experience of the same activities that are conducted with parents. Skills are gained in identifying and understanding emotions, including understanding how meta-emotion philosophy (how we think and feel about emotions) impacts the responses to our own and others’ emotions, including those of the parents/caregivers we work with
- The 5 steps of Emotion Coaching and what makes this an optimal response style to emotions
- There are many activities that support the development of skills towards responding with empathy and the ability to ‘sit with’ emotions, and to impart these skills to the parents/caregivers we work with
- Facilitators will learn how to support parents’ ability to use Emotion Coaching when their children experience sadness, fears, anger or conflict; and also learn about specific emotion regulation strategies that parents/caregivers can use and impart to their children
- After completion of the training, along with accreditation, there is access to free, monthly and online supervision to support ongoing professional development
We offer our full suite of “Tuning in” programs in a range of training packages to increase your capacity to support parents in a variety of contexts.
Depending on your organisation’s cohort/demographic you may wish to train in one or a combination of programs on offer. Get in touch with our training team to discuss what will suit your team best.
We offer:
- In-person training – (2 days; 9am to 4:30pm) or
- Online training – using the Zoom platform (3 half days; 9am to 1:30pm) or
- A two–program training package for organisations (e.g., Tuning in to Teens two day plus Tuning in to Kids one-day intensive; Tuning in to Kids two day plus Dads Tuning in to Kids half-day intensive)
Training is structured in a way that uses a variety of modalities to teach the content (e.g., through lecture, break-out room discussions and activities, role plays, and video/animation material).
Why focus on emotions?
We believe that human emotions are central for communication and connection. They serve our wellbeing and have an important evolutionary role in optimising our outcomes in life. Recent research has begun to highlight that human beings who listen to their own emotions and to others’ and then use this important information in their lives, have qualitatively different experiences to those who don’t (Goleman, 1995). They have closer, more satisfying relationships, can manage the challenges of life, have better health and wellbeing, and are more likely to achieve their goals.
What’s the goal?
Our goal in this program is to help parents teach and support their children to understand and express emotions in appropriate ways. We believe it is important to foster in children both an awareness and knowledge about emotions, and a capacity for controlling, expressing or magnifying them. This maximises their social, behavioural, learning, cognitive and physiological outcomes.
What does it mean to be an Emotion Coach? or What is an Emotion Coach?
Clearly, parents play a very important role in shaping and teaching emotion skills to their children. This role — helping children to understand and regulate their emotions — is called Emotion Coaching. We believe that all parents have the capacity to Emotion Coach. As a much broader philosophical goal, through helping parents and carers to be more emotionally responsive, these ideas could contribute to a more empathic, caring society.
We have undertaken a number of randomised controlled trials to establish the evidence for the Tuning in to Kids® program as well as the other variants of the program: Tuning in to Teens®, Dads Tuning in to Kids™ and Tuning in to Toddlers®. These programs have been evaluated in both community and clinical settings.
In community settings the Tuning in to Kids program has been evaluated in efficacy and effectiveness trials with parents of preschool children. A randomised controlled trial of Tuning in to Kids was carried out with a community sample of 216 parents of pre-schoolers using parent-report questionnaires and observation measures and showed greater improvements in parents’ ability to respond supportively and less critically to their children’s emotions if parents took part in Tuning in to Kids. Parents participating in Tuning in to Kids also reported significantly greater reductions in behaviour problems in their children compared to controls.
A real world trial of the program, where Tuning in to Kids was delivered by community practitioners, replicated these findings. The findings were also replicated in a randomised controlled trial with 150 fathers of preschool children. Fathers who took part in the father-specific seven-session version of Dads Tuning in to Kids reported significantly greater increases in empathy and emotion coaching, had greater parenting satisfaction and efficacy, and reported reductions in their children’s difficult behaviours when compared with wait-list control fathers. Their non-participating partners also reported reduced emotion dismissing and less psychological distress.
Trials of Tuning in to Kids have also been conducted in clinical settings with children with behavioural problems. A randomised controlled trial with 56 children presenting with behaviour problems to the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, compared six weekly group sessions of the Tuning in to Kids program with standard paediatric care. While there were improvements for participants in both conditions, parents in the Tuning in to Kids condition were observed to use, and reported using, more emotion coaching, greater empathy and less emotion dismissing of their children’s emotions. Parents in both conditions reported significantly improved child behaviour, however teachers reported significant improvements in children’s behaviour only for those in the Tuning in to Kids condition. See our website for more information on other trials
See the Research tab our website for more information on other trials
Tuning in to Kids® has also been used in a randomised controlled effectiveness trial for primary school aged children with emerging conduct problems, delivered by Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service clinicians/education staff. The trial randomised 300 families into either control or one of two intervention conditions that included screening for behaviour problems, universal prevention (the PATHS program or professional development for teachers about behaviour problems), a child social-emotional program, a parenting program (either a behavioural parenting program – TripleP or Tuning in to Kids) and a tertiary referral service (for those who require more intervention post group programs). Findings from this study showed that both intervention conditions (TripleP and Tuning in to Kids) significantly and equally improved children’s behaviour problems compared to control families, who did not improve. Further, those in the Tuning in to Kids condition made greater change than those in TripleP if the parent also had their own psychological difficulties.
Other Tuning in to Kids programs, such as Tuning in to Teens® and Tuning in to Toddlers®, and Dads Tuning in to Kids™ have also been evaluated in randomised controlled trials with results showing improvements in emotion socialisation and reductions in child internalising and externalising problems for families who took part in the program.