Effective Strategies

Trust-Based Relational Intervention

Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) was developed by Dr. Karyn Purvis and Dr. David Cross from TCU, holistic intervention that is focused on attachment. It was developed thinking about foster and adoptive parents of children from hard places, but they are good strategies for children with mental health needs as well. Honestly they are just good strategies. This button has a good overview:

The Karen Purvis Institute at TCU has options for training at https://child.tcu.edu/tbri/ and her book The Connected Child is another great resource

Restorative Circles

Restorative circles focus on building community. They are practices that teach children how to resolve conflict while maintaining community. Here is a video training series by TEA https://tea.texas.gov/texas-schools/health-safety-discipline/restorative-practices-made-simple

Family Focused Intervention

Family focused intervention looks at the family as the target of intervention rather than identifying an individual “patient.” I see it referenced around intervention with adults with serious mental illness raising children, and it seems most common in Australia. The basic premise is that once one identifies an individual as the target, the family competes for what are scarce resources whereas if you go in looking at family, the focus is on the habits, routines, and occupations of the family as a whole and how to create satisfying engagement in what they want and need to do (Allchin & Fette, 2025).

Self Regulation - How Does Your Engine Run?

These are companion materials to a group we run with children called the Alert Program (Williams & Shellenberger, 2025). It walks through the use of sensory strategies to manage arrousal states and optimize both attention to task and regulating responses.