Severely Disturbed Youngsters And The Parental Alliance

Every professional who has worked with severely disturbed youth is familiar with the problems that arise in dealing with their parents. These problems, particularly those related to the feelings evoked in the therapist (or any professional responsible primarily for the child) toward the parent, are rarely discussed in the literature. Here is a much-needed book that shows how important it is to establish a therapeutic alliance with the parents of severely disturbed young people in order to improve the success of counseling with them. It also explores methods of how to ease the difficulties encountered in establishing such a relationship with the parents or guardians. In Severely Disturbed Youngsters and the Parental Alliance, the insights of psychoanalysis are used to understand reactions to parents and to develop an empathic approach to them through a new theoretical framework. Although in the popular view, a psychoanalytic approach is considered to be opposed to parents, this volume is testimony to the unique contribution such an approach can make to the support of parents and, thereby, their children. A major and unique emphasis of Severely Disturbed Youngsters is placed on exploring the feelings, reactions, and sensitivities of the therapist that can interfere with this important aspect of treatment. The thrust of the book is to put the understanding of this interference in a theoretical context and to indicate ways of coping with the interference. The book starts with the premise that the cooperation of the parents of severely disturbed youngsters is necessary in order for treatment to be effective, and that it is, therefore, necessary to develop a therapeutic alliance with parent as well as with child. The authors then use a psychoanalytic perspective to understand some of the difficulties that arise in the pursuit of this alliance. Two of the chapters address situations that have particular pitfalls--parent loss and parental abuse. A third sketches the dynamics and needs of the typical severely disturbed child. A fourth presents a combination of clinical and theoretical perspectives, and the final chapter explores aspects of the alliance of a school and its staff with the parents of disturbed youth. All persons who work with severely disturbed children--therapists of all disciplines, teachers, child care workers, and administrators of any children's agency--and need to have some contact with their parents, even minimal contact, will find this book to be a clearly written guide to establishing excellent therapeutic relationships with both parents and disturbed children.

Originally published in 1992 this was a much-needed book that shows how important it is to establish a therapeutic alliance with the parents of severely disturbed young people in order to improve the success of counseling with them. It also explores methods of how to ease the difficulties encountered in establishing such a relationship with the parents or guardians. In this title, the insights of psychoanalysis are used to understand reactions to parents and to develop an empathic approach to them through a new theoretical framework. Although in the popular view, a psychoanalytic approach is considered to be opposed to parents, this volume is testimony to the unique contribution such an approach can make to the support of parents and, thereby, their children. A major and unique emphasis of Severely Disturbed Youngsters is placed on exploring the feelings, reactions, and sensitivities of the therapist that can interfere with this important aspect of treatment. The thrust of the book is to put the understanding of this interference in a theoretical context and to indicate ways of coping with the interference.

Meet the challenge of coordinating effective board-staff teamwork! Using specific real-life examples and informed recommendations for board management, The New Board: Changing Issues, Roles and Relationships explains why and how to consider redesigning your board form and practice. The innovations suggested here, from minor adjustments to far-reaching reorganization, can help you find and keep board members, make board functioning more efficient, and help you comply with the new, stricter rules of managed care. The New Board informs the boards and staff of nonprofit residential service agencies about the nature of major contemporary challenges to board functioning. This innovative book offers an unusually diverse collection of contributors, including board members, executive staff, and academics. The resulting diversity of viewpoint produces a satisfying range of theoretical conversation and detailed description of actual practice. The New Board explores all the issues that affect boards in these days of rapid change: variations of board structures the pressures of managed care the increased complexity of service reduced board member availability the challenge of fund raising by modern boards contemporary considerations of legal liability of nonprofit boards The innovative ideas found in The New Board will help you and your nonprofit organization face the changes and challenges of the world of managed care. It is an essential resource for anyone interested in nonprofit organizations: CEOs and executive staff, academics and students in the field of nonprofit management, and board members themselves.

Adopt a more effective approach to temporary and long-term residential care! Presenting the voices of staff, parents, and residents, Family-Centered Services in Residential Treatment: New Approaches for Group Care examines the changes and challenges of residential care from the old-fashioned orphanage to the modern group-care home. These thoughtful essays offer suggestions and methods to provide more effective services in temporary and long-term settings. Containing case studies, personal experiences, and professional insights about the potentials and limitations of residential care, this reliable resource will help you develop improved services for youths and their families. Family-Centered Services in Residential Treatment presents fresh evaluations of new and old techniques as well as ideas for meeting individual needs. By building connections among parents, youths, and staff, you can develop more successful treatment programs and encourage stronger family ties even when children are best served by long-term residential care. Family-Centered Services in Residential Treatment addresses the crucial questions of residential care, including: how can staff ease children's transitions into and out of residential care? what do parents of emotionally disturbed youth need from the staff and professionals in a residential care setting? what was right--and wrong--about the old-fashioned orphanage? Could such an institution work today? how does the transition to the teamwork approach affect staff members? when is residential care most beneficial to children? what kind of care is appropriate for AIDS orphans? Family-Centered Services in Residential Treatment will help psychologists, therapists, and social workers unite theory and practice to create a family-oriented environment for troubled clients.

This book seeks to answer the question of how providers of residential treatment services can improve the transition process when children in their care are transferred to less restrictive situations. It looks at working with sexually aggressive youth, adolescents with behavioral or conduct disorders and the families of young people in residential care facilities as well as model transitional living programs, ways to integrate family work into residential care and programs that focus on social/life skills training.

Adoption is a transformational process bringing parenthood to those who long for but cannot bear children and giving stranded children home, family, and their place in the world. But every adoption is preceded and followed by its story and when these stories are told in the offices of psychotherapists we begin to understand the impact of adoption in all its complexity. We learn from parents how their quest to have and raise a child has played out in real life, and what shadows might have fallen between the dream and the reality. And we learn from the children the many ways that being adopted shaped their development, their sense of identity; what went wrong along the way and how we may help. Clinical work with parents and children as well as with adults who were adopted is the focus of Understanding Adoption. Because adoption has become widely practiced, accepted, and accessible, and because it has greatly changed the composition of families, it is a timely subject for study. The authors of this book undertake exploration of this important terrain of loss and connection, and of the fragility and resilience of human bonds.

Integrate psychotherapy with residential treatment to achieve positive results for patients in group care! This book addresses the complex issues that arise in the effort to provide individual therapy in group care settings. It reviews classical case material, presents contemporary case studies, and examines practical and theoretical issues important to the effective delivery of treatment to individuals living in residential care. Noted experts who have been associated with The Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago and the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, share knowledge garnered from years of real-world experience to help you stay at the leading edge of the field and provide effective individual treatment to your clients in long- and short-term residential care. Psychotherapy in Group Care: Making Life Good Enough includes practical and theoretical chapters exploring important aspects of the group care paradigm. The book: presents a case study that describes vital aspects of the analytic process that emerged in work with an adolescent boy in a group home who felt as though he was a psychological orphan illustrates the role of play as a continuous and basic function in therapy and presents play-themed vignettes from analytic work with two young people in residential care revisits “Joey: A Mechanical Boy” and “Tommy the Space Child”—classic case studies from Bruno Bettelheim and Rudolph Ekstien—and explores the implications of contemporary relational theory for using the meaning and metaphor of behaviors and communications addresses issues of transference and counter-transference in the psychodynamic psychotherapy of a young girl in residential care—with a discussion of unrecognized rescue fantasies and projective identification, and of the need for residential childcare workers to recognize and work through the difficult feelings evoked in the process of working with seriously disturbed young people examines the structural basis for the integration of psychotherapy and residential treatment, considering the meaning of integration, variables that affect the manner and degree to which integration can be accomplished, and changes in the psychotherapists' roles that can maximize the potential of each variable explores three sets of theoretical issues facing clinicians as they play multiple roles in short-term residential treatment, discussing how conflicts in the roles of therapists and team leaders can be resolved, the implications of such a resolution in terms of confidentiality, and ways in which major approaches to psychotherapy can be adapted to new conditions considers the role of the primary clinician in relation to the residential team and explores the ways in which integration of psychotherapy and residential treatment can be implemented in the early phase of the treatment process