An overview of the core competencies for the delivery of evidence-based family interventions for child and adolescent mental health issues.

It's surprisingly common for children and adolescents to play with fire and to actually set fires. A single fire has the potential to cause a cascade of serious consequences to children, families, and their community, sometimes with devastating impact. Yet, there is limited practical information and evidence-based advice available to help programs and practitioners with children and adolescents who engage in this behavior. Assessment and Intervention with Children and Adolescents Who Misuse Fire presents practical guidelines to facilitate the clinical assessment and treatment of youth firesetting. Based on nearly four decades of research and intervention experience, the treatment is directed toward reducing any inappropriate involvement in fire or related activities in order to lower the risk for property damage, personal injury, and other adverse consequences associated with these behaviors. This evidence-based intervention provides clinicians with a comprehensive program for school-aged children, early adolescents, and adolescents, and the child and his/her caregiver(s) are both important participants in treatment. The modular approach allows for therapists to be flexible in deciding which topics to cover in order to best meet the needs of children and families. This treatment model encourages more appropriate and safe behaviors in both children/adolescents and their caregivers and provides skills likely to discourage fire involvement. In addition, the materials promote controlling exposure to incendiary materials and opportunities to use fire. The intervention is provided in a single volume, encompassing a practitioner guide, parent workbook, and child/adolescent workbook, including handouts for participating clients.

This textbook explores recent theoretical models that enable occupational therapists to practice and interact with families in a more holistic and occupation-centered manner. It offers the latest information on viewing the broader contexts of environment and family in order to meet diverse occupational needs in a range of settings. The editor presents a variety of case scenarios that feature culturally diverse populations and varying diagnoses of children with occupational needs. With contributions from 11 leaders in occupational therapy, this comprehensive text is designed to increase awareness and understanding of theoretical models and their relationship to current occupational therapy practice with today's children and families. Traditional frames of reference in pediatric practice are explored, including sensory integration and neurodevelopmental treatment. Some current theoretical models discussed include the Model of Human Occupation, the Person-Environment-Occupation model, the Ecology of Human Performance model, and the Occupational Adaptation model. The new Occupational Therapy Practice Framework is incorporated throughout the text. Overall the textbook employs a practical approach to this significant aspect of pediatric practice in occupational therapy.

A valuable reference for students and clinicians, Intervention in Child Language Disorders: A Comprehensive Handbook focuses on interventions that have been shown to be effective in helping children overcome language impairments. The Handbook is comprehensive with regard to children's ages, covering language disorders in children from infancy to high school age. Addressing fundamental principles and clinical practice methods, this indispensable resource presents creative clinical ideas and treatment examples based on a firm theoretical foundation. Intervention in Child Language Disorders: A Comprehensive Handbook discusses language disorders resulting from a wide range of etiologies, including learning disabilities, mental retardation, physical impairments, autism, hearing impairments, brain injury and specific language impairments. This comprehensive and informative text will help students and speech-language pathologists provide optimal interventions for children with language disorders.

Valuable resource for professionals in fields of psychiatry, psychology, mentatal health, social work and teaching, also for concerned parents. Provides guidelines for treating the child and family and systems for prevention. Techniques of different therapies are discussed as well as procedures for reporting, investigating, and interviewing the child.

Willard W. Hartup This volume amounts to an anniversary collection: It was 50 years ago that Lois Jack (1934) published the findings from what most investigators consider to be the first intervention study in this area. The experiment (later replicated and extended by Marjorie Page, 1936, and Gertrude Chittenden, 1942) concerned ascendant behavior in preschool children, which was defined to include: (a) The pursuit of one's own purposes against interference and (b) directing the behavior of others. Individual differences in ascendance were assumed to have some stability across time and, hence, to be important in personality development. But ascendance variations were also viewed as a function of the immediate situation. Among the conditions assumed to determine ascendance were "the individual's status in the group as expressed in others' attitudes toward him, his conception of these attitudes, and his previously formed social habits" (Jack, 1934, p. 10). Dr. Jack's main interest was to show that nonascendant children, identified on the basis of observations in the laboratory with another child, were different from their more ascendant companions in one important respect: They lacked self confidence. And, having demonstrated that, Dr. Jack devised a procedure for teaching the knowledge and skill to nonascendant children that the play materials required. She guessed, correctly, that this training would bring about an increase in the ascendance scores of these children.

Play is a ubiquitous and universal aspect of early childhood. Although it may take different forms throughout development and across cultures, decades of research have found play to be related to important, positive outcomes. Play provides children with valuable cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal learning opportunities. It can act as a mode of communication for young children and allows them to practice ways of managing complex interpersonal interactions. Specific aspects of play, such as children’s creativity in pretend play, have been associated with resilience and coping. The significance of play in childhood has led to its frequent use in the assessment of child development and in the implementation of child and parent-child psychological and educational interventions. Historically, however, the validity and efficacy of these interventions have not been rigorously evaluated. Further, few assessment and intervention models have included parents, teachers, and other key caregivers, but have focused only on the child. This Research Topic will bring together the most current literature on the use of play in child assessment and intervention.