1st Edition

A Safe Place to Grow A Group Treatment Manual for Children in Conflicted, Violent, and Separating Homes

    230 Pages
    by Routledge

    236 Pages
    by Routledge

    Discover the effective group treatment strategies that help your school-aged clients!

    A child immersed in a conflicted family life may be forced to cope with a multitude of trauma, including violence, abuse, and insecurity. In A Safe Place to Grow: A Group Treatment Manual for Children in Conflicted, Violent, and Separating Homes, highly respected experts give mental health professionals the tools to provide effective group treatment for children scarred by family environments of conflict and abuse. This easy-to-understand, step-by-step manual is a developmentally appropriate treatment curriculum for traumatized school-aged children. Age-appropriate sections separate therapy for big or little kids, focusing on efficacy while presenting a comfortable multi-ethnic, multi-cultural model.

    A Safe Place to Grow has easy-to-understand descriptions of techniques, with each session in the curriculum containing games and activities that are therapeutic yet flexible enough to be modified whenever the situation warrants. A chapter is included to helpfully troubleshoot problems encountered when in session with either age group of children. Useful illustrations accompany the text, along with a comprehensive bibliography listing additional therapeutic resources for different types of family problems. Appendixes are included for instruction on psycho-educational groups for parents that enhance their sensitivity to their children’s needs, as well as providing an evaluation study of the group model itself.

    A Safe Place to Grow provides a sequence of activities within the group model aimed at each of these five goals:

    • creating common ground and safety
    • exploring the language and complexity of feeling
    • defining and understanding the self
    • defining and revising roles and relationships
    • restoring a moral order

    A Safe Place to Grow is an essential resource for social workers, psychologists, family and child therapists, school counselors, and battered women and children’s advocates.

    • Acknowledgments
    • Introduction
    • PART I: LITTLE KIDS’ (LK) MANUAL
    • LK Session 1. Saying Hello and Making Me Feel Safe in Group
    • LK Session 2. How I Am Feeling: Same and Different
    • LK Session 3. Feeling Words and Faces: Who I Am
    • LK Session 4. Exploring Levels of Feeling
    • LK Session 5. Managing My Good and Bad Feelings at One Time
    • LK Session 6. Feeling and Being Me: Separate and Together
    • LK Session 7. It’s Okay to Be Different
    • LK Session 8. Going Back and Forth: Managing Transitions and Change
    • LK Session 9. Managing When Parents Fight
    • LK Session 10. Safety Planning and Ways of Coping
    • LK Session 11. Masking Feelings: My Inside and Outside Self
    • LK Session 12. Remembering and Saying Good-Bye
    • LK Session Tips and Guidelines
    • PART II: BIG KIDS’ (BK) MANUAL
    • BK Session 1. Saying Hello and Making a Safe Place to Work Together
    • BK Session 2. Exploring Levels of Feelings, Actions, and Points of View
    • BK Session 3. Making a Safe Inside Place and Learning the Rules of Role-Play
    • BK Session 4. Exploring a Safe Inside Place and Back to Reality
    • BK Session 5. Defining Wishes for Yourself and Rules That Work for Your Family and Relationships
    • BK Session 6. Exploring the Mirror: Who You Are and How You Show Your Feelings
    • BK Session 7. Exploring Your Inside Self and Your Outside Self
    • BK Session 8. Making a Family Sculpture: Who We Are and Who We Could Be
    • BK Session 9. Becoming the Experts on Living with Change, Loss, and Conflict
    • BK Session 10. Telling Your Story So Far, Thinking About Who You Want to Be in the Future, and Saying Good-Bye
    • PART III: APPENDIXES
    • APPENDIX A. Troubleshooting for Both LK and BK Groups
    • APPENDIX B. Psychoeducational Groups for Parents
    • APPENDIX C. An Evaluation Study of the Group Model
    • Notes
    • Bibliography
    • Index

    Biography

    Dr Vivienne Roseby, Ph.D. (Author) ,  Janet Johnston (Author) ,  Bettina Gentner (Author) ,  Erin Moore (Author)