Matthew
Bradley tells the history of Beatitude House...
I first encountered attachment
treatment in 1994 when I was asked to accompany an adoptive
family to Evergreen, Colorado, for two weeks of intensive
therapy. By the end of the first week, I knew what they
were doing was very effective at setting the stage for real
healing.
Moving to Colorado for Attachment
Training
I was eager to learn more
so I traveled back to Colorado several times. At this point,
I realized that in order to master this approach, a full
immersion was necessary. After months of prayer and deliberation,
Fawn and I pulled up stakes in Florida, where we had been
established for 15 years, and moved on faith to Evergreen.
We became licensed as therapeutic foster parents to meet
our financial needs but looking back it was the best training
of all… in the trenches. The kids taught us a ton!!!
Attachment Intensives and
Foster Children
As therapeutic foster parents
we had up to four children in our home ranging in ages from
4 to 17. All of them needed an extended stay to practice
how to be a good family member so they could work their
way home. Fawn did the bulk of the parenting during the
day while I trained with a number of different attachment
agencies in Evergreen.
The attachment training was initially observation but very
soon I had hands-on involvement. I feel very blessed to
have been a treatment team member for more than 100 two-week
intensives over the course of the five years we were in
Colorado.
The experience was extremely
rich. Sometimes there would be two intensives going on at
the same time and I would find myself in different roles…sometimes
therapist, sometimes therapeutic Dad.
All the time we were learning
different approaches from world-renown experts in the attachment
field; people like Terry Levy, Michael Orlans, Dan Hughes,
and Nancy Thomas. Attunement, Corrective Attachment Therapy©,
and specialized parenting techniques were all part of the
learning experience.
| Beatitude
House Comes to Be
During our third
year (2000), we felt led to start our own agency
so that the healing power of the Lord would not
be limited in any way.
Many adoptive
parents are Christian
and they often commented about the benefit their
family received from attachment therapy, but lamented
the lack of open
prayer and acknowledgment of who was
really doing the
healing. Beatitude House was incorporated that
year and He has continued to bless the direction
we are headed.
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