Category Archives: Witness to Violence

Strengthening Multi-Ethnic Families and Communities

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Strengthening Multi-Ethnic Families and Communities Program is a unique integration of various prevention/intervention strategies geared toward reducing violence against self, the family, and the community. The program targets ethnic and culturally diverse parents, of children aged 3-18 years, who are interested in raising children with a commitment to leading a violence-free, healthy lifestyle.

Ethnically and culturally diverse parents of kids aged 3-18 years old, parents available to meet the extreme time commitment needed to complete program.

Seeking Safety

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The Seeking Safety model, developed by Lisa M Najavits, Ph.D., at Harvard Medical/McLean Hospital, is a manualized, 25-topic, flexible integrated treatment that offers coping skills to help clients attain greater safety in their lives. It is present focused and designed to be inspiring and hopeful. Originally designed to address PTSD and substance abuse, it since has been implemented with diverse traumatized clients who may not necessarily meet criteria for these disorders. Used widely with adults, it has been implemented with adolescents (both boys and girls), and a published randomized controlled trial is available on adolescent girls.

Dual diagnosis of substance abuse and trauma/ PTSD, group and individual, male and female, outpatient and inpatient residential.

Risking Connection

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Risking Connection® teaches a relational framework and skills for working with survivors of traumatic experiences. The focus is on relationship as healing, and on self-care for service providers. It provides a comprehensive training curriculum for working with survivors of childhood abuse specially designed for staff in all mental health settings, including public systems. Risking Connection® emphasizes the concepts of empowerment and collaboration, three major goals serve as the main focus: (1) a theoretical framework to guide work with survivors of traumatic abuse, (2) specific intervention techniques to use with survivor clients, and (3) attention to the internal needs of trauma workers as well as clients. In addition, common concerns and skepticism about trauma treatment are addressed. Interspersed in this curriculum are client/clinician worksheets as well as assessment, self-reflection, group discussion, and clinical practice exercises.

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Real Life Heroes

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Real Life Heroes was especially designed for children in child and family service programs who frequently lack safe, nurturing homes and secure relationships with caring and committed adults. The model can be used by programs and agencies as a prescriptive methodology to address primary goals including preventing placements, reuniting families, or finding alternate permanent homes for children who cannot return to biological parents.

Real Life Heroes (RLH) is based on cognitive behavioral therapy models for treating post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in school-aged youth. Designed for use in child and family agencies, RLH can be used to treat attachment, loss, and trauma issues resulting from family violence, disasters, severe and chronic neglect, physical and sexual abuse, repeated traumas, and post traumatic developmental disorder. RLH focuses on rebuilding attachments, building the skills and interpersonal resources needed to reintegrate painful memories, fostering healing, and restoring hope. These goals are accomplished using nonverbal creative arts, narrative interventions, and gradual exposure to help children process their traumatic memories and bolster their adaptive coping strategies.

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Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT)

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PCIT is effective with single parents, cognitively limited parents, court-ordered parents, two-parent families, and foster parents. Cultural adaptations have been effective with Latino/Hispanic families, African American Families, and Native American families. PCIT has been disseminated internationally (e.g. Hong Kong, Norway, The Netherlands) and has been translated into different languages (e.g. Spanish and Mandarin). PCIT has been adapted for: Head Start classrooms;Group treatment; Home rather than office based sessions; Domestic violence shelters; Residential treatment centers.

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Alternatives to Seclusion and Restraint

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Seclusion and restraint were once perceived as therapeutic practices in the treatment of people with mental and/or substance use disorders. Today, these methods are viewed as traumatizing practices and are only to be used as a last resort when less-restrictive measures have failed and safety is at severe risk.

For more information on alternatives to seclusion and restraint:

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Managing Traumatic Stress Through Art

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Three art therapists have collaborated to produce this unique workbook. Designed especially for trauma survivors, Managing Traumatic Stress Through Art introduces inventive ways to understand, manage, and transform the after effects of trauma. This dynamic workbook consists of carefully structured step-by-step art projects, augmented by tear out images, and writing experiences. The book’s first section, Developing Basic Tools For Managing Stress, is devoted to establishing a safe framework for trauma resolution. The second section, Acknowledging and Regulating Your Emotions, helps the trauma survivor to make sense of overwhelming emotional experiences. The final section, Being and Functioning in the World, focuses on self and relational development, leading into the future.

No specific age/population. Can be used in individual or group therapy. The art experiences are broad enough to be of value to survivors of a wide variety of traumatic experiences, ranging from childhood abuse to accidents to disabling mental illness.

Managing-Traumatic-Stress-Through-Art

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International Family Adult and Child Enhancement Services (FACES)

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International Family, Adult, and Child Enhancement Services (FACES) provides comprehensive, community-based mental health services for refugee, asylee and asylum-seeking children, adults, and families suffering from trauma or emotional disorders. Services include individual and family counseling, assistance accessing benefits and entitlements, expressive therapies, linkages to primary and dental health care, and case management. International FACES staff respect each culture’s definition of family roles and recognize the importance of working with and strengthening the family structure. Services are offered in a linguistically and culturally appropriate manner, often conducted by staff from the same culture as the family or with trained interpreters. Outreach and engagement strategies help educate participants about the value of mental health services, as well as providing linkages to other specialized services.

Used often with refugee families.

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Helping Women Recover

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Since it was first published in 1999, Helping Women Recover has set the standard for best practice in the field of women’s treatment. Helping Women Recover is based on Dr. Covington’s Women’s Integrated Treatment (WIT) model. It offers a program specifically designed to meet the unique needs of women who are addicted to alcohol and other drugs or have co-occurring disorders. The Helping Women Recover program offers counselors, mental health professionals, and program administrators the tools they need to implement a gender-responsive, trauma-informed treatment program in group therapy settings or with individual clients.

Women, addiction, can also be used in jails, developing a model to be used with adolescent girls.

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Growing Beyond Survival: A Self Help Toolkit for Managing Traumatic Stress

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Growing Beyond Survival is a self-management workbook, which teaches skills that empower survivors to take control of and de-escalate their most distressing trauma related symptoms. This versatile workbook can be used as an independent self-help program, in the context of individual therapy, or in a group setting. It teaches trauma survivors to recognize, contextualize, and understand distressing dissociative and posttraumatic reactions. It also creates a structure in which to learn and practice skills for self-regulation of the troublesome thoughts, feelings, and impulses related to traumatic experiences. Rather than simply offering “band aid”-type crisis intervention, this self-paced program empowers survivors with an understanding of where the symptoms come from and why. By learning a variety of interventions, skills, and techniques, survivors are able to select and make use of different “tools” for different self-regulation purposes.

Men and women with trauma histories; mental health, correctional facilities, domestic violence shelters/services.

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