Introduction

The Sleeping Dogs® method is for children ages zero to 18 who were severely and chronically traumatized in early childhood, for whom ‘standard’ trauma treatment is not possible and every other therapy fails or the child refuses to participate. The goal of this method is to help children who were chronically traumatized in early childhood overcome their barriers, so they can participate in trauma processing and integrate their trauma. Trauma processing relieves their symptoms instead of only stabilizing them by teaching them how to manage their symptoms. The Sleeping Dogs method can be used by individual clinicians, by multidisciplinary teams, by foster care or residential teams and by child protection, frontline and youth workers. The Sleeping Dogs method can be used to plan trauma-focused treatment for the child, support the parents and caregivers as well as to guide decision-making by child protection services around disclosures, safety, contact arrangements with biological parents, contact between foster parents and biological parents, and reunification. Child protection or youth care workers can assess the child’s development, health and wellbeing and plan interventions for improvement with the Sleeping Dogs method.