PATHWAYS TO CHANGE:

COLLABORATIVE STRENGTHS-BASED THERAPY WITH DIFFICULT CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS/

Children and adolescents presenting with severe behavioral difficulties often have had extensive involvement in the past with mental health and other larger systems helping professionals. Many of these children, youth, and their parents are demoralized, are experiencing hopelessness and despair, feel quite overwhelmed with their multitude of problems, and have felt mismanaged by former therapists and treatment program staff. These children, adolescents, and their parents are often given the worse DSM IV labels and their former therapists and treatment program staff described them as lacking any motivation or investment in the change process, unable to articulate their treatment goals, and not complying with their treatment recommendations for them.

In this hands-on practice-oriented two-day workshop, participants will learn a collaborative strengths-based therapy approach that rapidly fosters cooperative relationships and instills hope and optimism with difficult adolescents and their parents beginning with the initial telephone conversation. We will discuss specific strategies for therapeutic alliance-building, creating a climate ripe for change in the very first family session, engaging reluctant family members and significant others involved with their problems, and effective retention strategies to prevent premature client drop-out situations from occurring. Several therapeutic questions and experiments will be presented that tap clients’ inventiveness and expertise to help co-create with them compelling future realities. A special emphasis will be placed on the therapist’s creative use of self outside the comfort zone with challenging families.

Day 1
9:00 AM	Jump-starting client changes at intake: Effective therapeutic strategies on the telephone Co-creating a therapeutic climate ripe for change: Therapeutic alliance-building strategies that foster cooperative relationships Mastering client noncompliance and resistance: Guidelines for optimizing for treatment adherence Adolescent self-harm: A symptom of our times Guidelines for differentiating self-harming from true suicidal behavior The Self-Harming Adolescents Expert Consultants’ Project Collaborative Strength-Based Therapy: An overview
10:30 AM	Coffee Break
10:45 AM	Practicing on the creative edge: Therapeutic improvising outside the comfort zone Interviewing for possibilities: Selecting and crafting therapeutic questions that tap clients’ inventiveness and expertise Establishing well-formulated treatment goals to maximize for client success
12 Noon:	Lunch
1:00 PM	Effective engagement strategies with tough adolescents and reluctant family members not participating in sessions Quieting the mind and centering oneself: Effective mindfulness meditation, visualization, and distress management strategies The Chilling Out Room: A multi-sensory family decompression strategy
2:30 PM	Coffee Break
2:45 PM	Guidelines for engaging and fostering cooperative relationships with angry, highly pessimistic, laissez-faire, and mental health and substance-impaired parents Finding fit: Selecting, tailor-making, and matching therapeutic experiments and family connection-building rituals
4:00 PM	Adjourn
Day 2
9:00 AM	Co-constructing change: Establishing successful collaborative relationships with helping allies from larger systems and key members from the child or adolescent’s social network Riding the waves of change: Guidelines for second and future sessions
10:30 AM	Coffee Break
10:45 AM	Effective goal-maintenance strategies: Guidelines for helping clients stay on track and constructively manage inevitable slips
12 Noon:	Lunch
1:00 PM	Creative use of consultation teams with difficult and entrenched families Trouble-shooting guidelines for getting unstuck
2:30 PM	Coffee Break
2:45 PM	Applications of collaborative strengths-based therapy to group therapy with children, adolescents, and their parents The Stress-Busters’ Leadership Training Group The Solution-Oriented Parenting Group
4:00 PM	Adjourn

Learning Objectives:

1. Use therapeutic tools and strategies on the telephone to elicit and amplify client-generated pretreatment changes
2. Create a climate ripe for future client changes and satisfaction in and out of the office
3. Select and craft therapeutic questions that tap client inventiveness and elicit their expertise
4. Foster cooperative relationships with angry, highly pessimistic, laissez-faire, mental health and/or substance impaired parents
5. Engage reluctant non-participating family and extra-familial members that are very much a part of the client problem system