Transforming Young Lives Through Healing Relationships

At Childhood First, we have spent over half a century developing Integrated Systemic Therapy (iST) – a unique, evidence-based therapeutic approach that delivers unparalleled success in the treatment of children and young people suffering from serious emotional and behavioural disturbance.

iST is far more than a therapy—it is a total therapeutic system that enables deep and lasting recovery from early relational trauma. By embedding therapy into every moment of daily life, iST helps children develop the ability to form healthy, hopeful relationships—the foundation for all other aspects of their well-being.

The Foundations of iST – a Powerful Integration of Therapeutic Approaches

iST brings together two key streams of therapeutic tradition:

Planned Environment & Milieu Therapy

  • The entire setting—relationships, routines, and structures—is carefully designed to create a safe and healing community where children experience stability, containment, and growth.

Systemic Thinking (Family & Group Systems)

  • iST recognises that trauma is best addressed within the context of relationships. By working with group dynamics and attachment processes, we help children rebuild their capacity for trust and connection.

iST is also perfectly aligned with the findings of Modern Brain Science

  • iST actively supports neuroplasticity, helping children rebuild their emotional regulation systems and develop healthier ways of relating to others.
  • Neuroscience confirms that early trauma profoundly affects brain development, particularly a child’s ability to regulate emotions and form secure attachments.

How iST Helps Children Recover from Trauma

When children come to Childhood First, they bring with them the profound effects of early-life neglect, abuse, and disrupted attachments. These experiences are often expressed through violent, sexualised, or highly disturbed behaviours—a desperate communication of their distress.

Healing from relational trauma requires an entirely new relational experience. iST provides this by offering:

1. A Planned Environment: Therapy in Every Moment

  • Each of our therapeutic residential homes is a carefully structured environment, ensuring that every moment—whether in daily routines, relationships, or community interactions—actively supports healing.
  • The predictability, safety, and emotional containment of this environment allows children to develop self-regulation and trust.

2. Clinical Expertise & Emotional Development

  • Traumatised children have never had the opportunity to learn how to process emotions, regulate distress, or form secure relationships.
  • iST ensures that every staff member—care professionals, therapists, and teachers—is trained in therapeutic practice, so that every interaction supports a child’s social and emotional development.

3. Hope Through Relationships

  • The ultimate goal of iST is to maximise each child’s ability to live in healthy, hopeful relationships—the key to lifelong emotional well-being.
  • With strong, trusting relationships in place, children are then able to progress in education, develop independence, and prepare for future family life.

4. A Specialised Model of Therapeutic Parenting

  • Every child we work with has been hurt by adults who struggled to relate well—often due to their own traumatic experiences.
  • iST is at heart, a highly specialised model of therapeutic parenting, designed to meet the needs of traumatised children and provide the kind of consistent, attuned care that leads to long-term recovery.

5. Robust, Skilful, and Compassionate Care

  • Robust – iST provides a structured environment that can contain and safely manage extreme levels of behavioural disturbance, ensuring stability for all children and staff.
  • Skilful – iST enables children to work through painful experiences of trauma, gradually developing the ability to form and sustain healthy relationships.
  • Compassionate – However aggressive or destructive their distress may be, every child is met with care, helping them understand that they are loveable and loved.

6. Breaking the Cycle of Trauma

  • iST helps children learn what a warm, loving, and ordinary ‘family’ life is like—something many have never experienced.
  • This allows them to break free from the cycle of trauma, either returning to birth or foster families, preparing for independent living, or eventually creating healthy families of their own.

The impact of iST

iST is more than a therapy—it is a way of life that heals trauma in every moment of a child’s day.

By integrating therapeutic care into home life, education, and relationships, iST supports children in developing:

  • Secure attachments
  • Emotional resilience
  • Healthy relationships
  • Self-regulation & emotional intelligence
  • Hope for the future

This is the foundation for a successful transition into adulthood, enabling children to lead fulfilling, independent lives beyond their time at Childhood First.