The Practice Toolkit: PACE, co-regulation and Spot, Soothe, Shift trainingTools you can use tomorrow morning.

Story. Zara, 15, comes in from school, drops her bag and answers every question with “fine”. Twenty minutes later she throws a mug across the kitchen. The staff say it came out of nowhere. Looking back, the signs were there from the moment she walked in.

Theory. Dan Siegel’s window of tolerance (1999) describes the zone where a young person can think, feel and talk at the same time. Push them out of it and they go up into fight or flight, or down into shutdown. Siegel’s hand model of the brain gives staff a quick way to explain “flipping the lid” to each other and to young people.

Action. Window of Tolerance. Each person maps one young person they work with, anonymised: what they look like inside the window, the first signs they are leaving it, and what brings them back. In pairs, people then explain the hand model to each other in under a minute.

By the end of this part people can name three early signs that a particular child is leaving their window of tolerance, and explain the hand model of the brain in plain words.

You leave with A one-page Window of Tolerance map for one child you support.

Story. Leon, 11, has just been told his family time with his dad is cancelled. He is kicking the sofa. His carer stands over him asking why he is behaving like this, and he kicks harder.

Theory. Bruce Perry’s Regulate, Relate, Reason sequence explains why: a child can’t reach the thinking part of their brain until they feel safe and connected. Co-regulation means the adult lends their own calm, through their voice, pace and body, before asking the child to think.

Action. In threes, playing the child, the adult and an observer, staff run a scenario from your setting twice: once with questions first, once calming first. The observer notes what changed. Each person then writes down what they will do with their voice and body in the first two minutes.

By the end of this part people can put Regulate, Relate, Reason in order and say what they would do at each step with a child they support.

You leave with Your own list of what you will say and do in the first two minutes, written and tested in the session.

Story. Freya, 8, has been with her foster carer for four months. At bedtime she says, “You’re not my mum. You only do this for the money.” Her carer’s first instinct is to defend herself.

Theory. Dan Hughes’s PACE (playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy) comes from his work with children who have experienced trauma. Acceptance means accepting the feeling, not the behaviour. Curiosity (“I wonder if…”) replaces “Why did you…?”. PACE is not soft and it does not mean no boundaries.

Action. PACE. Each person takes the hardest thing a child has said to them recently and writes down their usual reply. They rewrite it using acceptance, curiosity and empathy, then say it out loud to a partner, with the facilitator coaching tone as well as words.

By the end of this part people can answer an angry or rejecting statement using acceptance, curiosity and empathy, and explain to a colleague why PACE keeps the boundary in place.

You leave with Three PACE responses of your own to the things children say most often in your setting.

Story. Ollie, 16, tells a residential worker late one night that he is useless and everyone gives up on him in the end. A few minutes later he says something about what happened at his last home.

Theory. Spot, Soothe, Shift is our tool, built on John Gottman’s research on emotion coaching (1997): notice and name the feeling, soothe it, then help the young person shift how they see it. There is a hard line. A disclosure is never reframed. You listen, you don’t promise to keep it secret, and you pass it to the safeguarding lead that day.

Action. Spot, Soothe, Shift. Staff practise it on three short scenarios, one of which turns into a disclosure. The team then sorts a set of moments from your setting, agreeing which of the four tools fits each one and the words they will use for it in handover.

By the end of this part people can use Spot, Soothe, Shift with a young person who is low, recognise the point where a conversation becomes a disclosure, and choose the right tool for a given moment.

You leave with A team chart of which tool fits which moment, in shared words for handover and supervision.