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

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.

Pt. I	Little kids' (LK) manual
LK Sess. 1	Saying hello and making me feel safe in group	29
LK Sess. 2	How I am feeling : same and different	34
LK Sess. 3	Feeling words and faces : who I am	39
LK Sess. 4	Exploring levels of feeling	44
LK Sess. 5	Managing my good and bad feelings at one time	51
LK Sess. 6	Feeling and being me : separate and together	56
LK Sess. 7	It's okay to be different	60
LK Sess. 8	Going back and forth : managing transitions and change	65
LK Sess. 9	Managing when parents fight	70
LK Sess. 10	Safety planning and ways of coping	74
LK Sess. 11	Masking feelings : my inside and outside self	78
LK Sess. 12	Remembering and saying good-bye	85
	LK session tips and guidelines	90
Pt. II	Big kids' (BK) manual
BK Sess. 1	Saying hello and making a safe place to work together	101
BK Sess. 2	Exploring levels of feelings, actions, and points of view	110
BK Sess. 3	Making a safe inside place and learning the rules of role-play	119
BK Sess. 4	Exploring a safe inside place and back to reality	128
BK Sess. 5	Defining wishes for yourself and rules that work for your family and relationships	134
BK Sess. 6	Exploring the mirror : who you are and how you show your feelings	142
BK Sess. 7	Exploring your inside self and your outside self	147
BK Sess. 8	Making a family sculpture : who we are and who we could be	156
BK Sess. 9	Becoming the experts on living with change, loss, and conflict	166
BK Sess. 10	Telling your story so far, thinking about who you want to be in the future, and saying good-bye	174
Pt. III	Appendixes
App. A	Troubleshooting for both LK and BK groups	189
App. B	Psychoeducational groups for parents	197
App. C	An evaluation study of the group model	201