The Secure Start® Podcast

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“All you need is a big heart and a spare room” might be the most damaging sentence in foster care. I'm joined by Gareth K. Thomas, former foster parent and childhood trauma consultant (Clarified), to unpack why that kind of messaging sets carers up to fail and pulls children into yet another painful move. If we want placement stability and better outcomes for children in out-of-home care, we have to stop treating foster parents like the hired help and start treating them as the primary healing environment.

We talk about what trauma-informed fostering looks like on the ground: co-regulation, widening the window of tolerance, and the small “magic micro moments” that add up to a therapeutic bath no weekly appointment can match. Gareth shares why the best services don’t do therapy to children in isolation, they bring carers into the work and build a shared understanding across schools, social workers, and clinicians. We also dig into the uncomfortable bit, how “support” can become shaming training when a carer says they’re struggling, and why reflective space matters when everyone’s prefrontal cortex is going offline under stress.

You’ll also hear practical examples of the scaffolding that keeps families going: consistent short breaks, empathic listener phone calls, therapeutic supervising social workers, and peer groups where lived experience is treated as real expertise. Gareth closes by sharing what he wants from policy leaders, plus what he’s building next, including Trauma Space and a new book on therapeutic parenting for teens and tweens.

If this conversation helps, subscribe, share it with someone in the care sector, and leave a review so more carers and professionals can find it. What would you change first to make fostering sustainable?
Gareth's Bio:
Gareth K Thomas is a former foster parent and child trauma specialist. He’s a trainer, speaker and (soon-to-be-published author). He works as a trauma-informed consultant through his organisation, Clarified, and is in the process of launching Trauma Space, which will be a course collection and community for those parenting and working with children who’ve experienced trauma.
Links:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheSecureStartPodcast
Podcast Blog Site: https://thesecurestartpodcast.com/
Disclaimer: Information reported by guests of this podcast is assumed to be accurate as stated. Podcast owner Colby Pearce is not responsible for any error of facts presented by podcast guests. In addition, unless otherwise specified, opinions expressed by guests of this podcast may not reflect those of the podcast owner, Colby Pearce. Finally, all references to case examples are anonymised to the extent that the actual case could not be identified, or are fictional but based on real-life examples for illustrative purposes.
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“Residential care is the last resort” sounds like a policy line, but it lands as a verdict on children and on the people who care for them. In this podcast conversation, Co-Director of the Residential Child Care Project at Cornell University, Martha Holden, and I push back on that idea and explore what happens when group care is treated as a serious, skilled, trauma-informed option rather than a dumping ground for system failures. 

We dig into what TCI is actually for: preventing harm during crisis, reducing power struggles, and helping staff respond to aggressive behaviour without re-traumatising kids. Then we zoom out to the bigger question, what guides the other 23 hours of the day? Martha explains why CARE was built as a foundational program model, how shared principles create congruence across shifts, and why consistency is not a “nice to have” when young people are highly sensitive to change and unpredictability. 

We also get practical about quality and accountability. Measuring residential care against foster care often ignores the reality that many young people arrive after multiple placement breakdowns, so we argue for outcomes that track change from each child’s starting point using effect sizes. 
If you care about residential child care, out-of-home care, workforce wellbeing, and what evidence-informed practice looks like on the ground, this conversation will sharpen your thinking. Subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a review. What would you stop doing tomorrow to lift the quality of care?
Martha's Bio:
Martha is a Senior Extension Associate with the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, and Co-Director of the Residential Child Care Project at Cornell University. Ms Holden is the author of the book, CARE: Creating Conditions for Change a program model for child caring agencies. She is the lead developer of the Therapeutic Crisis Intervention System (TCI) in use in children’s residential organizations since 1980, redeveloped for foster and adoptive parents in 1996, and redeveloped for schools in 2012. She provides technical assistance and training to residential child caring agencies, schools, juvenile justice programs, and child welfare organizations throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Spain, and Israel. In addition to her extensive experience in training, writing, and curriculum development, Ms Holden has served as an administrator overseeing the day-to-day operation of a residential treatment agency for children, including its education resources. 
During her career, Martha has been studying how to prevent the occurrence of institutional abuse and improve the quality of care for children in out of home placements through program development, training, technical assistance, and influencing organizational culture.
Links:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheSecureStartPodcast
Podcast Blog Site: https://thesecurestartpodcast.com/
Disclaimer: Information reported by guests of this podcast is assumed to be accurate as stated. Podcast owner Colby Pearce is not responsible for any error of facts presented by podcast guests. In addition, unless otherwise specified, opinions expressed by guests of this podcast may not reflect those of the podcast owner, Colby Pearce. Finally, all references to case examples are anonymised to the extent that the actual case could not be identified, or are fictional but based on real-life examples for illustrative purposes.
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A child can walk into a house with a full fridge and a clean bed and still feel terrified. That’s the gap we’re trying to close, and it’s why this conversation matters.

I’m joined by Mary-anne Hodd, founder of Journeys That Care, a CPD accredited training and consultancy that blends lived experience with psychology, teaching, and therapeutic practice. Mary-anne grew up in the care system and now supports the adults around care experienced children across fostering, residential care, local authorities and schools. Together we dig into what actually changes outcomes: not perfect plans or flawless paperwork, but relationships that hold steady over time. We talk about the adults who keep showing up, the “fresh start” that helps a young person risk trust again, and why hope often takes years to bloom after leaving care.

We also go deep on language in social care. What do labels like “challenging behaviour” and “hard to engage” really do to a child’s story, especially when those words end up in files a young person might read as an adult? Mary-anne shares her experience of requesting her records, the long wait, the emotional hit, and the one simple line that brought her identity back to life. We unpack how to write case notes with compassion and curiosity while staying professional, and how understanding rights and entitlements can lift aspiration instead of shrinking it.

If you work in trauma-informed care, child protection, out-of-home care, education, or youth mental health, you’ll take away practical ways to centre the child’s voice and create everyday moments of safety. Subscribe, share this episode with someone in the sector, and leave a review so more carers and professionals can find it.
Mary-anne's Bio
Mary-anne Hodd is the founder of Journeys That Care, a CPD-accredited training, consultancy, and speaking organisation that combines lived experience with professional insight. Care-experienced herself, she draws on a background in psychology, teaching, and therapeutic practice to support the adults who work with and around children and young people in care, right across the UK.
Her work is about bridging the gap between policy, practice, and lived experience, supporting the adults around children and young people to build and sustain relationships in which both they and the children they care for feel safe, hopeful, and able to thrive. She is passionate about amplifying lived experience, challenging assumptions, and supporting professionals to create environments where children and young people feel understood, valued, and able to thrive.
Links:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheSecureStartPodcast
Podcast Blog Site: https://thesecurestartpodcast.com/
Disclaimer: Information reported by guests of this podcast is assumed to be accurate as stated. Podcast owner Colby Pearce is not responsible for any error of facts presented by podcast guests. In addition, unless otherwise specified, opinions expressed by guests of this podcast may not reflect those of the podcast owner, Colby Pearce. Finally, all references to case examples are anonymised to the extent that the actual case could not be identified, or are fictional but based on real-life examples for illustrative purposes.
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Turning 16 should not feel like a countdown to being on your own. Turning 18 should not require a letter proving you deserve a roof over your head. I sit down with German social worker, researcher, and care leaver Tanja Abu to unpack how leaving care really works in Germany and why the systems designed to build “independence” can end up creating pressure, instability, and loneliness instead.

We talk about what makes Germany distinct, including the fact that residential care and group homes are the most common placements, and how that shapes public perceptions compared with foster-care-heavy systems. Tanja walks us through recent legislative changes, including extended aftercare and the long fight to stop forcing young people in care to hand over most of their income to the state. We also name what too often sits behind the data: classism, structural inequality, and how poverty can drive families into welfare involvement while wealth buys privacy and options.

From there we get practical about transition points. Tanja describes Germany’s “two cliff edges”, the push to semi-independent living at 16 and the high-stakes jump at 18, and why checklist-based assessments of readiness miss the real determinants of long-term stability: trusted relationships, belonging, and mental health support that does not punish you for needing it. We also dig into care leaver self-organisation, global community building, and the difference between genuine participation and tokenism, including why lived experience expertise must be paid and respected rather than mined for emotional impact.

If you care about leaving care policy, residential care practice, trauma-informed support, or care leaver advocacy, this conversation offers both challenge and clarity. Subscribe to Secure Start, share this episode with someone in child and youth welfare, and leave us a review with your biggest takeaway or question.
Tanja's Bio:
Tanja Abou is a German social worker, researcher, author, and social justice educator whose work focuses on classism, intersectionality, and structural inequality. She identifies as a queer “poverty-class academic” and brings together academic research, lived experience, and political education.
Tanja works at the University of Hildesheim on the CLS – Care Leaver Statistics project, the first longitudinal study on young people transitioning out of residential and foster care. Alongside her research, she teaches and facilitates workshops on anti-classism, and is a founding member of the Institute for Classism Research.
Tanja’s background includes years of practice in Berlin’s youth welfare system and training as a systemic therapist. She is the author of Classism in the Education System, a critique of structural barriers and the stigmatization of poverty in education.
Beyond academia and activism, Tanja also works creatively as a children’s book author (including Starship Cosinus), comics artist, and occasionally as a DJ.
Links:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheSecureStartPodcast
Podcast Blog Site: https://thesecurestartpodcast.com/
Disclaimer: Information reported by guests of this podcast is assumed to be accurate as stated. Podcast owner Colby Pearce is not responsible for any error of facts presented by podcast guests. In addition, unless otherwise specified, opinions expressed by guests of this podcast may not reflect those of the podcast owner, Colby Pearce. Finally, all references to case examples are anonymised to the extent that the actual case could not be identified, or are fictional but based on real-life examples for illustrative purposes.
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Send us Fan Mail
“Problem behaviour” is a label that can make adults defensive, punitive and quick to control. We wanted to slow that down and ask a different question: what if the behaviour is pain, showing itself the only way it knows how? For the 50th Secure Start Podcast conversation, I am joined by Professor James Anglin, one of the world’s most influential voices in children’s residential care and therapeutic group home practice. 

We talk through Professor Anglin’s journey from philosophy and Gestalt training into frontline child and youth care, then into the research that shaped his landmark framework. He explains grounded theory in plain language and why building theory from practice gives workers something they can actually use at 2 am when a young person is dysregulated. At the centre is a struggle for congruence: aligning decisions across funders, leadership, supervision and frontline care so the whole system acts in children’s best interests, not just the words on a policy page. 

We dig into three major processes: creating an extra-familial living environment, responding to pain-based behaviour, and helping young people develop a sense of normality and dignity. Along the way we unpack the interactional dynamics that make change possible, the real harm of repeated placement breakdown, and how the Cornell CARE model has scaled these ideas across countries and cultures. 

If you work in child protection, residential care, foster care systems, trauma-informed practice or therapeutic care, this is a concrete guide to doing the work with clarity and humanity. Subscribe to The Secure Start Podcast, share this with someone shaping policy or practice, and leave a review. 
Professor Anglin's Bio:
Professor Anglin began his career as a child and youth care worker in a mental health centre in Vancouver, after which he developed a 6-bed group home for adolescents in Victoria Canada.
He then pursued graduate studies, worked in social policy in Ottawa and Toronto, and returned to British Columbia in 1979 to join the faculty of the School of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria.
He served as the School of Child and Youth Care Director for three terms, after which he became the University’s Associate Vice-President Academic and Director of International Affairs.
From 1995 to 1999 he was an international advisor to the South African Inter-Ministerial Committee on Young People at Risk involved in the country’s Transformation of the Child and Youth Care System.
Currently, he is President of FICE-Canada, Chair of FICE Americas, Asia and Australia Region, and a member of the FICE-International Coordinating Committee. He also serves as a member of the International Work Group on Therapeutic Residential Care,
His major research interests have included parent education and support, quality assurance, professionalization of child and youth care, and what constitutes quality residential care for children and youth. James is a Research Affiliate with the Bronfenbrenner Centre for Translational Research at Cornell University advising on the development and implementation of the Cornell CARE Program Model that is now being delivered in 7 countries..
He has published widely in international journals and texts, and serves on the Editorial Boards of the Scottish Journal of Residential Child Care, the Residential Treatment for Children and Youth journal, and the International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies.
Links:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheSecureStartPodcast
Podcast Blog Site: https://thesecurestartpodcast.com/
Disclaimer: Information reported by guests of this podcast is assumed to be accurate as stated. Podcast owner Colby Pearce is not responsible for any error of facts presented by podcast guests. In addition, unless otherwise specified, opinions expressed by guests of this podcast may not reflect those of the podcast owner, Colby Pearce. Finally, all references to case examples are anonymised to the extent that the actual case could not be identified, or are fictional but based on real-life examples for illustrative purposes.
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