Setting the Stage for Change A Guidebook for Practitioners Treating Children and Adolescents With Severe Emotional and Behavioral Problems: In-Home Family Based Treatment

This practice based book provides a detailed road map for applying an integrative family therapy approach in the community to help children and adolescents showing complex and severe emotional problems. Designed as an easy-to-use treatment manual that operationalizes a clinical model that is trauma-informed, developmental, attachment-focused, and ecosystemic, it is written in a clear, down-to-earth style, organized around common questions therapists and their supervisors pose about the how and the why of interventions. Primary focus is given to the critical operations involved in the first 30 days of treatment that can determine whether families are able to engage and make changes. These operations include creating the therapeutic system, establishing a treatment structure, stabilizing children and families in crisis, and establishing a meaningful treatment focus. The book is replete with case studies reflecting the realities of day-to-day clinical practice and includes reproducible clinical tools such as an assessment protocol, a format for developing a relational treatment plan, and a treatment adherence measure.