Therapeutic Parenting and PACE: A Guide for Care Teams

Therapeutic parenting is a way of caring for children who have lived through trauma, neglect or disrupted attachment. Instead of relying on rewards and consequences, the adult focuses on safety, connection and helping the child calm down, then deals with the behaviour. Foster carers, adoptive parents and residential children's home staff use it, often alongside the PACE model.

Who uses therapeutic parenting

It started with adoptive parents and foster carers, but the same thinking now runs through many residential children's homes and supported accommodation. The word "parenting" can put residential staff off. It shouldn't. A children's home team does a parent's daily work on a rota: the wake-ups, the school run, the row about screen time, the 2am chat in the kitchen.

Why star charts and sanctions often don't work

Ordinary behaviour approaches assume a child who feels safe, can think ahead and trusts adults. Lose the cinema trip, make a better choice next time.

Many children in care learned the opposite. Adults were frightening, unpredictable or absent, so their brain and body stayed on alert. When that alarm goes off, a child may fight, run or shut down, and can't weigh up a consequence because the thinking part of the brain isn't in charge.

So the sanction lands as proof of what they already believe: adults reject you, and you're bad. Behaviour escalates and the cycle repeats. Therapeutic parenting doesn't drop boundaries. It changes the order: help the child feel safe and calm first, then teach.

What PACE means

PACE stands for Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy. It comes from Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), a family-based therapy created by clinical psychologist Dan Hughes for adopted and fostered children who have experienced abuse and neglect. The DDP Network describes PACE as central to DDP: a way of thinking, feeling, communicating and behaving that aims to help the child feel safe. You don't need to be a therapist to use it.

Playfulness

A light, warm tone that tells the child you're not a threat. It isn't constant joking, and never brushes off distress.

On shift: a 13-year-old won't come down for breakfast. Instead of a third warning, a staff member announces in a radio presenter voice that the toast is going cold. He comes down rolling his eyes, which counts as a win.

Acceptance

Accepting the child's feelings and thoughts without judgement, while still saying no to harmful behaviour. You accept the anger, not the kicked-in door.

On shift: "You're really angry that contact got cancelled. That makes sense. I'm not going to let you break things, though. Let's go outside for a bit."

Curiosity

Wondering out loud, without interrogating, what sits behind the behaviour. "Why did you do that?" gets a shrug. "I wonder if..." gives the child words.

In a foster home: a 9-year-old has hidden food in her bedroom again. The carer sits with her: "I wonder if part of you worries there won't be enough."

Empathy

Showing the child you feel some of what they feel and you're staying with them, without rushing to fix it.

On shift: after a bad phone call home, the key worker sits nearby: "That sounded really hard. I'm not going anywhere."

Connection before correction

When a child is dysregulated, connect first: lower your voice, get alongside rather than face to face, name what you see. Once they're calm, talk it through and repair any damage.

Consequences still exist, but they tend to be natural and linked to the behaviour (helping fix what was broken) rather than removing things the child values. And the relationship survives: the adult comes back, stays kind and doesn't hold a grudge. For a child who expects rejection, that repair matters most.

Co-regulation and routines

Children learn to manage big feelings by borrowing an adult's calm long before they can do it alone. That's co-regulation. In practice it means:

• Stay regulated yourself: slow breathing, a steady voice, an open posture. Children read your body before your words.
• Use fewer words when things are hot. Explanations can wait.
• Find what calms this child: a walk, a drink, music, a drive. Record it in their plan.
• Keep routines predictable: the same bedtime pattern, warning before changes, extra care around shift changes and contact days.
• Be consistent across the team. Agree responses at handover so every shift handles the same behaviour the same way.

Looking after the adults

Staying warm while being sworn at, rejected or hurt is exhausting, and it builds up. In their 2012 book Brain-Based Parenting, Dan Hughes and Jonathan Baylin describe how stress can lead to "blocked" care, where a carer keeps going through the motions but struggles to feel warmth towards the child. Others call it compassion fatigue. The signs are familiar: dreading certain shifts, going cold with one young person, cynicism in the staff room.

What helps:

• Reflective supervision that makes room for feelings, not just tasks.
• Debriefs after incidents, focused on learning rather than blame.
• Respite and peer support for foster carers, including someone to call out of hours.

For the adult side of trauma, see our PTSD and trauma-informed care course.

What the regulations expect

In England, the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 set out nine Quality Standards, and Ofsted inspects children's homes against them. The positive relationships standard (regulation 11) expects staff to "understand how children's previous experiences and present emotions can be communicated through behaviour", to de-escalate confrontations, and to receive supervision and support to understand and manage their own feelings and responses. That reads a lot like therapeutic practice. The Department for Education's statutory guide explains each standard.

For fostering in England, the Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011 require providers to give foster carers the training, advice, information and support, including out of hours, needed to care for the children placed with them.

Ofsted consulted in summer 2026 on changes to how it inspects children's homes, including report cards and a new grading scale; the Quality Standards themselves haven't changed. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own regulations and inspectorates: Care Inspectorate Wales, the Care Inspectorate in Scotland and RQIA in Northern Ireland.

A word on the evidence

Therapeutic parenting and PACE draw on attachment theory and research into how trauma affects development. The research base for DDP itself is still developing: its developers wrote in 2015 that it lacked evidence from robust evaluations. NICE's 2015 guideline on children's attachment doesn't name PACE or DDP, but it does recommend sensitivity-focused training for foster carers, adoptive parents and key residential staff. Treat PACE as a sound way of relating to children, not a guaranteed fix.

How Kasorb can help

Our therapeutic parenting training is a one-day course delivered live online with a trainer, or on-site on request. It's for children's home staff and managers, foster carers, supervising social workers, supported accommodation teams and staff supporting looked-after children.

The day covers the neuroscience of trauma, attachment and developmental trauma, self-regulation, hyperarousal and dissociation, phased intervention, the PACE model and the ARC framework, and an introduction to the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics. Learning is checked through discussion, scenarios and questions. Your trainer has used these skills for real.

It's one flat rate for the group. Staff receive a Kasorb certificate of completion, emailed the next day and valid for two years; we recommend an annual refresher for anyone not using the approach day to day. It isn't a regulated qualification.

FAQs

What is therapeutic parenting?

Therapeutic parenting is a way of caring for children affected by trauma, neglect or disrupted attachment. The adult prioritises safety, connection and helping the child calm down before addressing behaviour, rather than relying mainly on rewards and sanctions. It's used by foster carers, adoptive parents and residential children's home staff.

What does PACE stand for in parenting?

PACE stands for Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy. It's a way of relating to a child that aims to help them feel safe: accepting their feelings without judgement, wondering what sits behind behaviour and staying alongside them, while still limiting harmful behaviour.

Who created the PACE model?

PACE comes from Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), a family-based therapy created by clinical psychologist Dan Hughes for adopted and fostered children who have experienced abuse and neglect. Carers and residential staff now use PACE day to day.

Does therapeutic parenting mean no consequences?

No. Boundaries still matter. The difference is timing and type: help the child calm down first, then talk about what happened. Consequences tend to be natural and linked to the behaviour, such as helping repair something broken, rather than taking away things the child values. The adult then repairs the relationship.

Is therapeutic parenting training a legal requirement for children's homes?

No law names it. In England, the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 expect staff to understand how children's experiences and emotions show up in behaviour, build positive relationships and de-escalate confrontations, and Ofsted inspects against these standards. Training in trauma, attachment and PACE is one way to give staff those skills.