A Treatment Manual
E-Book, Englisch, 148 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-61334-491-0
Verlag: Hogrefe Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Wasserzeichen (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
Childhood problems are often related to and worsened by the disintegration of the family structure, whether through parental separation and divorce, military service, or incarceration. Reunification therapy is a therapeutic process incorporating different empirically based methods (CBT, humanistic, and systemic) to help repair relationships between parents and children and restore not only physical contact but also meaningful social,
emotional, and interpersonal exchanges between parents and children.
This unique manual, bringing together the vast experience of the author, outlines the many situations numerous families currently face and why the need for reunification therapy exists. The therapist works firstly with the individual family members and then with all the family in conjoint sessions.
The manual expertly guides clinicians through pretreatment decisions and processes to enable them to decide where, when, and in what form reunification therapy is appropriate, taking into account ethical, legal and special family issues. Detailed chapters outline the structure and issues for the individual and conjoint sessions, as well as a step-by-step treatment plan template. Additional tools in the Appendix enable clinicians to monitor and
effectuate change.
Zielgruppe
For forensic and clinical psychologists, psychotherapists,
psychiatrists, social workers, counselors, students, and trainees working with families
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
- Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychotherapie / Klinische Psychologie Familientherapie, Paartherapie, Gruppentherapie
- Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizinische Fachgebiete Psychiatrie, Sozialpsychiatrie, Suchttherapie
- Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologische Disziplinen Kriminalpsychologie, Forensische Psychologie
- Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Arbeit/Sozialpädagogik Soziale Arbeit/Sozialpädagogik: Familie, Kinder, Jugendliche
- Rechtswissenschaften Bürgerliches Recht Familienrecht Scheidungsrecht, Unterhaltsrecht
- Rechtswissenschaften Bürgerliches Recht Familienrecht Eherecht, eheliches Güterstandsrecht
Weitere Infos & Material
|1|CHAPTER 1
Introduction to Family Structure and Fragmentation of the Family
And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love… Lin-Manuel Miranda (2016, 70th Tony Awards, New York, NY) The objective of publishing this book is to provide a blueprint for mental health professionals who are working with fragmented families of all constitutions and structures, to assist in reunifying parents and children. Family structures have changed considerably in the last 100 years, with the advancement of science and social revolution and reformation. The American landscape has been transformed with multigenerational family farming units collapsing into smaller entities and the scattering of family members across the country. Historically, farming parents bore a large number of children to assist with the servicing of the farm; however, with the invention of automated machinery, the need for multiple hands diminished. Scientific discovery, not only within the farming industry but also with respect to mass production of goods and expeditious transportation, has heightened human mobility. These changes have contributed to the dispersion of extended families such that there no longer remains a need for relatives to live in proximity to the nuclear family. Additionally, the women’s movement has contributed to increased numbers of women in the work place, affording women greater self-sufficiency, which has had a cascading effect on divorce rates. No longer do women have to remain married for reasons of economic security; in fact, woman have chosen to marry less frequently in recent years and to have children out of wedlock in increasing numbers, such that since 1960, the number of live births to unmarried women has increased from 5.3?% to 40.3?% (Child Trends Data Bank, 2015). The impact of the women’s movement coupled with the sexual revolution has assisted with the destigmatizing of divorce. Economic changes have also episodically impacted the family structure, including adult children returning to their parents’ home to reside, and adult children caring for their elderly parents in their own homes or those of their parents. Additionally, the notable increase in substance abuse and addiction in recent decades has contributed to children being raised by grandparents, other relatives, and non–biologically related caregivers. Similarly, there is an observed downward effect of substance abusing parents on child maltreatment; hence, in a cohort of abuse cases, substance use and abuse are factors detected in the family systems of abused children (Barth, Gibbons, & Guo, 2006). In fact, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (1996) identified parents with a substance use disorder were 3 times more likely to engage in child maltreatment than those without a substance use disorder. Family composition has also been impacted by modern war such that between 2001 and 2013, 2 million children experienced a military deployment of a parent at least once (Clever & Segal, 2013). Other noted changes in the military family structure, in recent history, are observed in the fact that many more women are entering the military than previously, and concomitant with this change, many households are headed by two military parents. In 2014, the Department of Defense stated that 11.7?% of all active duty personnel included both married partners, with 19.3?% of all active duty Air Force personnel in dual military marriages (Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Department of Defense, 2014). Not only have military parents recognized the need to reconfigure family processes, structure, and operations given their impending absence from their children’s lives, but courts have also recognized the need for adjudicating guardianships for children in these families when both parents are deployed simultaneously or when deployments overlap with each other. The federal government has sought to protect the child’s interests in this regard (Burelli & Miller, 2013), and the majority of states have followed with similar laws as a result of the federal statutes. Currently, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (2014) is the only |2|federal statute designed to protect single-parent service members. The parent’s military deployment cannot be used as grounds for a change in custody, including time-sharing or modification of an existing parenting plan (e.g., Cal. Family Code §?3047, 2011, Division 8: Custody of Children, Chapter 2: Matters to Be Considered in Granting Custody; Temporary Time-Sharing Modification and Child Support Modification Due to Military Service, 2016; Modification of Order Based on Military Duty, 2009; Definitions, 2009). In fact, in some states, there are provisions for the deploying parent to appoint someone in their absence to stand-in for their time-sharing and parental decision making (e.g., Temporary Time-Sharing Modification and Child Support Modification Due to Military Service, 2016). With respect to marital or partner dissolution and family court, the judicial climate has changed dramatically over the years regarding coparenting of children. For example, in 1996, researchers discovered that southeastern US judges’ preferred time-sharing plan was for children to reside for the school year with one parent and the summer with the other parent, followed by the sole custody of one parent (Stamps, Kunen, & Lawyer, 1996). They also found that for visitation and time-sharing schedules, judges’ preferred schedules were every other weekend as the most popular, followed in descending order of popularity by every weekend, more often than every weekend, one weekend per month, and less than one weekend per month. These 20-year-old findings contrast with the more recent statutory abolition of any demarcation of custodial or residential parent, and the current pending legislation in Florida of a presumption of 50/50 time-sharing (FLS SB?668, 2016). These statutory events highlight the dramatic changes in the views of the bench regarding time-sharing. Despite a more restricted judicial perspective of time-sharing in the past, judges historically rated the parent–child relationship and the family unit as the most important factors in deciding time-sharing and access in divorce cases (Stamps et?al., 1996). The focus on the parent–child relationship and the family as essential in considering a variety of parenting plans continues to be primary in judicial determination of parent–child time-sharing. In fact, most states employ “the child’s best interests” standard when considering parent access to children. These best interests examine, in part, whether or not the parents can facilitate and encourage a close and continuing parent–child relationship. Some states expand upon this premise adding that the parents are required to honor the time-sharing schedule and to be reasonable when changes are required. Finally, a more unusual need for reunification therapy can be discerned in the shifting age demographic as baby boomers age and are living longer than in previous decades. This, coupled with young-adult children returning home after college graduation or not leaving home as expeditiously as in earlier years, has created greater frequency of contact between adult children and their parents, as well as heightened reciprocal support-seeking relationships. Ultimately this change in family structure can create problematic interpersonal relationships leading to severed parent and adult-child relationships. This treatment manual provides the therapist with a guide to assist the dissolving family unit which has been ruptured via several different mechanisms involving unified family law litigation, including marital or partner dissolution, paternity, dependency, domestic violence, and juvenile delinquency, as well as those families involved in military deployment and institutionalization (incarceration or hospitalization) and adult-child–parent relationship difficulties. It should be emphasized that the content of this manual is based on the available scientific literature, including evidence-based practices and other empirical research, and well-established theories in the psychology literature, as well as observations gleaned in clinical practice. It also should be noted that the information imparted through this book and the example treatment template at the close of this book consider these scientifically derived sources of information, while noting that each individual and specific family is unique. The treatment utilized for each family is likely to vary to some degree from that which is imparted in this book. This treatment variance may be due to individual nuances of the problem areas leading to...
