TIAAS - 'Trauma Informed Attachment Aware' Practice

Marsh Hill Nursery School is an accredited TIAAS school. An Attachment Aware school promotes resilience, values relationships, supports vulnerable children to recover from trauma and promotes the development of emotional literacy and self-regulation. The ability to self-regulate is integral to positive emotional well-being and mental health. Our children are supported and encouraged to keep themselves safe and to be safe in their behaviour towards others. We are a Birmingham Local Education Authority Lead TIAAS Lead Practitioner School and our SENCO, Lisa Taylor Hawkins is a TIAAS Lead Practitioner across Birmingham Local Education Authority.

Emotion Coaching

A key element within the TIAAS programme is emotion coaching.

This is an evidence-based whole-school approach towards responding to children's emotions. It is a way of interacting with children and young people and promoting positive relationships.

Emotion coaching helps children to become more aware of their emotions and to manage their own feelings, particularly when children are experiencing strong emotions.

Through our TIAAS training, we quickly realised that emotion coaching and creating emotionally literate children was relevant for all our learners, not just those most vulnerable children who have experienced trauma. With this in mind, we decided to create our own way of making emotion coaching accessible and fun by using the book The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas.