Child advocates are becoming increasingly alarmed by the severity of abuse and neglect aimed toward children. Practical suggestions for professionals or others who guide, work with, or treat traumatized children are offered in this handbook. Drawn in part from interviews, the information here serves as a reference and guide and should help counselors, social workers, psychologists, teachers, foster parents, and other child advocates to understand how traumatic experiences affect children and what caregivers can do to foster the healing process. It also explains relevant treatment issues by describing the stages to recovery from trauma, panic attack intervention, and metaphorical storytelling. Some of the major resilience traits exhibited by children are likewise discussed. Some of the specific topics addressed include trauma and its impact on society, recognizing posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, the recovery process, healing interventions, and other helping strategies. The fact that many adults have also been traumatized as children is recognized and a chapter is devoted to this condition which presents the strengths and liabilities evident in caregivers who were traumatized as children. This chapter also offers suggestions for the self-care of child advocates. Citations and references for each chapter are included. (RJM)

Presenting crucial knowledge and state-of-the-art treatment approaches for working with young children affected by trauma, this book is an essential resource for mental health professionals and child welfare advocates. Readers gain an understanding of how trauma affects the developing brain, the impact on attachment processes, and how to provide effective help to young children and their families from diverse backgrounds. Top experts in the field cover key evidence-based treatments--including child-parent psychotherapy, attachment-based treatments, and relational interventions--as well as interventions in pediatric, legal, and community settings. Special sections give in-depth attention to deployment-related trauma in military families and the needs of children of substance-abusing parents.

A structured, sequential, and evidence-based approach for the treatment of children and adolescents experiencing trauma or grief Working With Grieving and Traumatized Children and Adolescents features the Structured Sensory Interventions for Traumatized Children, Adolescents and Parents (SITCAP) intervention model, proven in successfully addressing violent situations such as murder, domestic violence, and physical abuse, as well as non-violent grief- and trauma-inducing situations including divorce, critical injuries, car fatalities, terminal illness, and environmental disasters. Filled with practical and proven activities for use with children and adolescents experiencing trauma and grief, this resource is based on the authors' experience working with all types of traumatic events in school-, agency-, and community-based programs across the country.

A trusted, bestselling resource, this volume demonstrates a range of creative approaches for facilitating children's emotional reparation and recovery from trauma. Experts in play, art, music, movement, and drama therapy, as well as bibliotherapy, describe step-by-step strategies for working with children, families, and groups. Rich with case material and artwork, the book is both practical and user-friendly. Specific types of stressful experiences include parental loss, child abuse, family violence, bullying, and mass trauma. Important developments in neurobiology, self-regulation, and resilience and posttraumatic growth are highlighted in this substantial revision. New to This Edition: *Chapters on art therapy and EMDR, body maps and dissociation, sandtray play, resiliency-based movement therapy, work with clay, mindfulness, and stress reduction with music therapy. *Updated and expanded discussions of trauma-informed therapy and the neurobiological basis for creative interventions. *The chapter on mass violence has been extensively rewritten with new case material on the Sandy Hook school shooting.

Featuring in-depth case presentations from master clinicians, this volume highlights the remarkable capacity of traumatized children to guide their own healing process. The book describes what posttraumatic play looks like and how it can foster resilience and coping. Demonstrated are applications of play, art, and other expressive therapies with children who have faced such overwhelming experiences as sexual abuse or chronic neglect. The contributors discuss ways to facilitate forms of expression that promote mastery and growth, as well as how to intervene when play becomes stuck in destructive patterns. They share effective strategies for engaging hard-to-reach children and building trusting therapeutic relationships. This book will be invaluable to mental health professionals working with children, including child psychologists, social workers, play and art therapists, counselors, family therapists, and psychiatrists. It will also˜serve as a supplemental text in clinically oriented graduate-level courses.

Helping Children Cope with Trauma bridges theory and practice in examining emerging approaches to enhancing resilience and treating traumatised children. Adopting a child-centred perspective, it highlights the importance of the synergy between individual, family, community and social interventions for recovery from post-traumatic stress. Consisting of chapters by an international range of contributors, the book is presented in three sections, reflecting the ecological circles of support that facilitate healthy development in the face of traumatic circumstances. Section 1, Individual, addresses the impact of exposure to trauma and loss on post-traumatic adaptation, focusing on biological aspects, attachment patterns, emotion regulation and aggressive behaviour in children. Section 2, Family, looks at the concept of family resilience, the impact of trauma on playfulness in toddlers and parents, innovative models for working with children traumatised by war, domestic violence and poverty and describes the challenges faced by refugee families in the light of intergenerational transmission of trauma. Section 3, Community, broadly explores the concept of community resilience and preparedness, the centrality of the school in the community during times of war and conflict, post-traumatic distress and resilience in diverse cultural contexts and the impact of trauma work on mental health professionals who live and work in shared traumatic realities. The book concludes with a theoretical discussion of the concept of Survival Mode as an organisng principle for understanding post-traumatic phenomena. Helping Children Cope with Trauma will provide mental health professionals, child welfare workers, educators, child development experts and researchers with a thorough understanding of the needs of children after trauma and how those needs may best be met.

This handbook presents the current evidence-based psychological treatments for trauma related disorders in childhood and adolescence and in addition provides clearly structured, up-to-date information on the basic principles of traumatic stress research and practice in that age group, covering epidemiology, developmental issues, pathogenetic models, diagnostics, and assessment. Each of the chapters on treatment, which form the core of the book, begins with a summary of the theoretical underpinnings of the approach, followed by a case presentation illustrating the treatment protocol session by session, an analysis of special challenges typically encountered in implementing this treatment, and an overview of the current evidence base for the treatment approach. A special section considers modern treatments in particular settings, such as schools, hospitals, and juvenile justice systems, and the concluding chapters provide an integrative discussion on how to treat traumatized children and adolescents and an outlook. The book will be invaluable for clinical child and adolescent psychologists, child and adolescent psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and other mental health professionals working with traumatized children and adolescents.

Presenting crucial knowledge and state-of-the-art treatment approaches for working with young children affected by trauma, this book is an essential resource for mental health professionals and child welfare advocates. Readers gain an understanding of how trauma affects the developing brain, the impact on attachment processes, and how to provide effective help to young children and their families from diverse backgrounds. Top experts in the field cover key evidence-based treatments -- including child -- parent psychotherapy, attachment-based treatments, and relational interventions -- as well as interventions in pediatric, legal, and community settings. Special sections give in-depth attention to deployment-related trauma in military families and the needs of children of substance-abusing parents.

Learn to build the trust you need to help children in crisis! Rebuilding Attachments with Traumatized Children: Healing from Losses, Violence, Abuse, and Neglect is a therapeutic guide to helping troubled children move beyond the traumatic experiences that haunt them. Author Dr. Richard Kagan, Director of Psychological Services for Parsons Child and Family Center in Albany, New York, presents comprehensive information on how to understand—and surmount—the impact of loss, neglect, separation, and violence on children’s development, how to discover and foster strengths in children and their families, and how to rebuild connections and hope for children who are at risk of harm to themselves and others. This unique book is designed to be used in tandem with Real Life Heroes: A Life Storybook for Children (Haworth), an innovative workbook that helps children develop the self-esteem they need to overcome the worries and fears of their past through a creative arts approach that fosters positive values and a sense of pride. Rebuilding Attachments with Traumatized Children helps children move from negative or suppressed memories to a more positive perspective, not by denying hardships, but by drawing strength from the supportive people in their lives. Practitioners can use the book as a framework and detailed guide to assessment, engagement, development of service plans, and implementation of attachment and trauma therapy. The book is a comprehensive model for working to build the trust necessary before other trauma therapy approaches can be successfully initiated. Topics examined in Rebuilding Attachments with Traumatized Children include: attachment theory and research types of attachment problems PTSD behaviors permanency work with children in placement ADHD, bipolar, and RAD cognitive behavioral therapies storytelling therapies the myth of perfection neuropsychological patterns and much more! Rebuilding Attachments with Traumatized Children is a rich resource for practitioners, academics, parents, adoptive parents, foster parents, grandparents, and anyone working to show troubled children how to learn from the past, resolve problems in the present, and build a better future.

Trauma-Informed Practices With Children and Adolescents is a sourcebook of practical approaches to working with children and adolescents that synthesizes research from leading trauma specialists and translates it into easy-to-implement techniques. The approaches laid out address the sensory and somatic experiences of trauma within structured formats that meet the "best practices" criteria for trauma-informed care: safety, self-regulation, trauma integration, healthy relationships, and healthy environments. Each chapter contains short excerpts, case examples, and commentary relevant to the chapter topic from recognized leaders in the field of trauma intervention with children and adolescents. In addition to this, readers will find chapters filled with easily applied activities, methods, and approaches to assessment, self-regulation, trauma integration, and resilience-building. The book's structured yet comprehensive approach provides professionals with the resources they need to help trauma victims not just survive but thrive and move from victim thinking to survivor thinking using the current best practices in the field.