Rebecca Baker

Foster mum; worked in alternative provision & mentoring projects; passionate about trauma-informed approaches to care & therapeutic parenting.

[TouchBase @TouchBase_UK]

Trauma encompasses so much, here are three things it’s useful to know when working with trauma 💡

#trauma #fostercare #adoption

[TouchBase @TouchBase_UK]

We are always trying to understand the experience of the child, to communicate our understanding and acceptance of it, even if it is very different to how things seem to us!

#trauma #ddp #danhughes #adoption #fostercare #traumainformededucation

[TouchBase @TouchBase_UK]

Healing isn’t about perfection - it’s about integration. As we travel alongside children and families on their journeys, let’s celebrate the courage it takes to face all the parts of their stories🌟

#healing #traumarecovery #adoptionjourney #traumasupport

[Giles Paley-Phillips @eliistender10]

A powerful message on how just a few seconds of small talk might really help someone @samaritans

[Jessie Hewitson @jessiehewitson]

Great column from @johnharris1969 dismantling Kemi Badenoch's nonsense. According to Badenoch having an autism diagnosis confers economic advantages - well tell that to the two-thirds of autistic people out of work. https://t.co/9S3GuqzQXo

[Steve B @75ThunderRoad]

On #worldmentalhealthday🧵

It's been two years since anxiety began to consume my daughter, when she was at the start of Year 7.

It's a year since she stepped back into her first lesson.

Now in Year 9, she has attended 20 out of 25 lessons every week, for the past month.

1/

[Needs Light @needs_light]

After eighteen months of activism on the Soul Survivor situation, I am stepping away from doing anything more. I’ve written this post which explains more. I’ll be leaving this account open, but it will no longer be checked.

https://t.co/dEWRtBuEzL

[Rebecca Baker @Rebecca_TP_FC]

@needs_light Thank you for all you have written and shared ❤️

[Trauma Informed Schools UK @TISUK_]

Andrew Fuller has the whole audience absolutely captivated this afternoon!

#TISUKTraumaConference
#MentalHealth
#TraumaInformed

[God loves women @God_loves_women]

The Scolding Review of Soul Survivor is out today. I have written this critique of the review: https://t.co/Ew9GY8UIMj

[Martin Barrow @MartinBarrow]

Worried about the state of the care system for children and young people? Ofsted’s inspection reports for children’s homes from the past few days make bleak reading. Buckle up for a long🧵

[Naomi Fisher @naomicfisher]

Whenever I write about keeping children’s curiosity alive through more choices and more play, someone says something like ‘well I’m glad my doctor learnt how to follow instructions’. Or ‘Naomi would like to see a world where people choose how to drive and don’t bother about following the Highway Code’.

This is why an understanding of child development is so important in education. When adults learn a specific skill (like medicine or driving) they use mastery learning. This is the type of learning which enables us to become experts. Deliberate practice. Goal-oriented exercises which aren’t about the here and now. Intentionally practicing your French verbs so that you’ll be able to speak French when you go to France next year.

It is often quite narrow in scope - learning to be a doctor won’t qualify you to work as a lawyer. It enables us to develop specialist skills.

This isn’t how young children learn. Their brains are literally structured differently. They are discovery learners. This type of learning enables them to explore and find out about the world. It is wide in scope. When they learn a language, there is no deliberate practice of verbs going on. They watch, they listen, and they give it a go.

To adults, it often looks frustratingly unfocused. That’s because discovery learning is about widening children’s experience of the world, not about becoming a specialist or an expert. They flit from thing to thing and lose interest fast. The results can be hard to measure.

The capacity for mastery learning starts to develop as children approach adolescence. It improves gradually over time. By age 17 or 18 they are approaching learning in a very different way. This takes longer for some of them - the brain changes of adolescence continue until at least the age of 25.

As adults, we tend to overvalue mastery learning and dismiss discovery learning as ‘just play’. We want to hurry children onto learning measurable knowledge and skills. We try to sit them in desks and give them worksheets to do, whilst they often fight us to be allowed to run around and pretend to be superheroes instead.

Discovery learning lays the foundations for everything that is to come. It is a special and unique time of life. Following instructions and colouring in the lines can come later, but once you are grown, you can never go back and learn like a 6-year-old (or an 8 or 10-year-old) again.

Humans are pure discovery learners for a short and intense period of our lives. We have our whole adult lives to specialise, but you’ll never again have quite the same drive to play.

(For more about discovery learning, I recommend Professor @AlisonGopnik's book The Gardener and the Carpenter)

[Chris van Tulleken 🏳️‍🌈 @DoctorChrisVT]

This @bmj_latest investigation reveals that more than half the members of the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) have conflicts of interest with food companies including Nestlé, Tate & Lyle, and the world’s largest ice cream producer: Unilever🧵

[Betsy de Thierry @betsydet]

You may never know what someone has experienced. But when emotions come ‘from nowhere’ and the person seems overwhelmed in sadness, grief, fear, terror, overwhelm, shock or they are frozen and stuck- be kind to them. Our bodies store memories way deeper.We need to learn as humans

[Rebecca Baker @Rebecca_TP_FC]

@Christianitymag @liccltd @ChineMcDonald @Jeffreylucas @martinsaunders @Preston_n_Perry Is episode 5 of the Soul Survivors podcast still going ahead?

[Rebecca Baker @Rebecca_TP_FC]

@megs_cornwell Really sorry to hear this. Hope you’re ok. Thank you for your courageous work on the podcast. Hope that your voice continues to be heard ❤️

[Rebekah Pierre @RebekahPierre92]

If you know any care-experienced people aged 25 and under who would be interested in a FULL undergraduate scholarship, FYI this brilliant initiative from @jlpartnership in partnership with the @OpenUniversity.

Applications close 24 July.

https://t.co/SpnlOCNqbV

[Become @BecomeCharity]

💬 "There's a stigma with kids in foster care and we genuinely get seen as just a number. I want to show people what a number can do."

💜 An incredible performance from Brad for his foster parents:

[Dr Krish Kandiah OBE @krishk]

Such a beautiful and humane interview from @EdwardJDavey. I feel the same way about the foster children we care for and ask myself on a daily basis who will care for them when we are gone.

So pleased to have someone with the lived experience of being a carer in our politics.

[Julie Roys @reachjulieroys]

When whistleblowers expose church abuse, they often have their motives questioned and are told their truth-telling is "premature."

Journalist Rebecca Hopkins (@reb_hopkins) surveys obstacles that leaders use to hinder whistleblowers’ ability to be heard.
https://t.co/6bfcKdys4r