Leeds centre opens to help children who have experienced development trauma

The BUSS Model, based at Springfield Mills in Farsley, Leeds, will enable the 11-strong team to help more children and families in the region and beyond, as well as training more people to use the model and developing research in this area.

BUSS (Building Underdeveloped Sensorimotor Systems) is a way of working with children who have experienced disruption to their early development. This disruption may have been caused by prematurity, long periods of hospitalisation as an infant, or neglect and early adversity.

As well as the clinical work, BUSS is being used in schools, as a groupwork programme and in fostering and adoption services.

Specialist occupational therapist Sarah Lloyd developed the model.

She has worked with children for 35 years in a variety of mental health settings and developed BUSS based on her deep understanding of the impact of disruption to early child development, the potential for recovery, and the role of parents and carers in that process.

BUSS focuses on foundation sensorimotor systems, the systems that grow through nurture, touch and movement in their early months and years.

Ms Lloyd said: “These systems give us a sense of ourselves on a bodily level – for example balance, co-ordination, understanding information from inside our bodies (feeling hungry or cold), and managing the sounds and feel of the outside world without being overwhelmed by them.

“Within nurturing relationships, babies progress through critical patterns of movement that allow the brain and central nervous system to develop so that we can manage to do all of this without using much conscious attention.

"Where children have had a difficult start in life, these processes have been disrupted.

"However, by bringing together sensory integration theory and attachment theory alongside an understanding of the impact of trauma on the developing brain, it’s possible to use games and activities, working with parents or carers and their children to rebuild these systems and help children to thrive.”