Sally Chance
From small things big things grow - A deep dive into the Acorn program
Sally Chance is a dance practitioner and Acorn dance worker. For the past fifteen years her work has been dedicated to the cultural, social and emotional lives of children aged three years and younger. Sally’s work with the Acorn program uses dance play to support the critical first relationship between mother and baby. Lee Collins is a social worker and Acorn’s Family Support Practitioner. She spent fifteen years with Anglicare South Australia working in a range of programs, including Staying Attached, the Acorn program and Sacred Little Ones, Acorn’s sister group dedicated to First Nations families.
The Workshop
The Acorn Program is a holistic, multi-disciplinary, evidence-based intervention designed to provide an opportunity for mothers with mental health difficulties to come together in groups with their infants aged from birth to three years and be supported in their relationship. In this dyadic context, and with the emphasis on how Acorn activities are mutually experienced by mothers with their children rather than taught by mothers to their children, Acorn supports and enhances the mother-infant relationship itself. One of the characteristics of Acorn is that it offers three integrated components – Dance Play, Journaling and Therapeutic Letters – within one group program. The workshop will immerse participants in these components and discuss how each provides a different type of opportunity for mothers to witness, experience, hear about, reflect on and gradually understand how to be in warm, playful, reciprocal relationship with their
children.
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