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.
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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. | |