School-Based Family Counseling: Overview, trends, and recommendations for future research (original) (raw)
Related papers
Adolescents at Risk: Home-Based Family Therapy and School-Based Intervention
Child & Family Behavior Therapy, 2020
Jersey, is a much-awarded family therapist as well as the author or coauthor of numerous articles and books on understanding and working with Black families in therapy. She is joined by Brenna Hafer Bry, Professor Emerita at GSAPP, where she served as department chair and director of clinical training. Hafer Bry's focus has been on risk factors that predict conduct problems in teens. Hafer Bry received the Prevention Science Award from the Prevention Research Society for her work on the relationship between the probability of youth behavior problems and the number of risk factors in their history and the fact that reducing risk factors is associated with decreased probability of future problems. For almost the last 20 years, Boyd-Franklin and Hafer Bry have focused on outreach programs for troubled youths, utilizing home, school, and community resources. Rather than making this book the second edition of their book, Reaching Out in Family Therapy: Home-Based School and Community Interventions, (2000), they realized that the field has grown, and their conceptualization has likewise expanded. They believed that, given the evolution of their thinking, a new and fresh look at this challenging field was in order. This book adds 11 new chapters to their earlier work and represents a significant expansion of many of the chapters of their earlier book, which still served as a guidepost for this present endeavor. They organize this book into an introduction and overview, followed by four separate parts: Part I-at-risk adolescents and their families, Part II-the multisystems model of home-based family therapy, Part III-achievement mentoring: an evidence-based, school-based intervention, and Part IV-research. The book concludes with references and both an author and subject index. Boyd-Franklin and Hafer Bry have more than 40 years of combined clinical work, supervision and program development targeting at-risk adolescent populations. They sadly note that the number of at-risk minority adolescents continues to rise. This population is at risk for school failure, school dropout, and associated conduct problems and violence, drug involvement, gang involvement, drug and alcohol use and abuse and, ultimately, incarceration. Family conflict is often present, and the risk of abuse and neglect in this population is also high. Teenage pregnancy and heightened risk of mental illness likewise is associated with this at-risk population. The multisystems model developed by Boyd-Franklin and Hafer Bry assists adolescents and their families focus upon and prioritize issues such that the potency of interventions can be maximized. This model was first introduced by Boyd-Franklin over 20 years ago and involved not only the family but extended family, significant others involved with the family, close friends, and supporting community groups including church and other outside systems. This at-risk population often has a multitude of challenges to deal with and are involved with many agencies, systems, and helping organizations and institutions. In addition to their multisystems model, they also discuss multisystemic therapy (MST; Henggeler et al., 2009; Henggeler & Sheidow, 2012) and additional home-based, evidence-based multisystemic interventions, believing that
Family Intervention Sessions: One Useful Way to Improve Schoolchildren's Mental Health
Journal of Family Nursing, 2008
This study examines the effectiveness of therapeutic conversations with families (through family sessions) in alleviating health complaints among adolescent girls in a school setting. Four girls with recurrent, subjective health complaints and their families were included in the study. Three sessions were held with each family, using genograms, ecomaps, interventive questions, and other family nursing interventions; practicing school nurses were also present. A therapeutic letter was sent to each family at the end of the sessions. The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire was used as a pre-and posttest measure. Evaluative interviews were carried out with the families and with school nurses. The families reported feeling relief and described positive affective, behavioral, and cognitive changes as a consequence of the interventions. The school nurses experienced the family sessions as time-saving and easy-to-use tools in their work. Involving the family when schoolchildren's recurrent mental health problems are addressed may reduce future suffering.
The Family and School Partnership Program: A Framework for Professional Development
One of the persistent and pressing challenges in school social work involves how the field can best provide postmaster’s support and training to school social workers. Numerous scholars have noted the need for context-specific and relevant training for school social workers (Astor, Behre, Wallace, & Fravil, 1998; Franklin, 2001). Recent survey research indicates that school social workers are often pulled away from their desire to be more involved in prevention and leadership work in their schools due to large caseloads, crisis intervention demands, and heavy paperwork (Kelly, Raines, Stone, & Frey, 2010). Finally, despite the recognition that these practitioners want and need to become more evidence informed in their selection and implementation of interventions, little support and few practical tools exist to aid school social workers in their quest to become more versed in the basic tenets of evidence-based practice (EBP) (Kelly, 2008). This article offers a description of how a program founded in Chicago by school social work practitioners in the 1990s has evolved over the years in an attempt to address these gaps in postmaster’s training for school-based mental health professionals (SBMHPs).
Systemic strategies for dealing with problem children in institutional settings
Contemporary Family Therapy, 1986
Family therapy when a problem child enters residential treatment is complicated and treacherous because of the need to coordinate what may often be competing hierarchies (parental, residential, school). If the goal of residential treatment truly is one of deinstitutionalization, of reintegrating the child into his/her home, school, and community, the family therapist must see to it that the parental hierarchy is the primary one and that all institutional hierarchies are kept secondary. This paper presents, through a discussion of the forces that operate as institutionalization of children progresses and through case illustrations, a framework in which family therapy can be conducted within a residential treatment setting. DiCocco and Lott (1982), in an article entitled "Family/School Strategies in Dealing with the Troubled Child," have described ways in which a family/systems approach can be utilized in dealing with a child exhibiting school problems. They suggest in particular that a therapist has enhanced maneuverability when he or she is able to coordinate the energies of both the child's parents as well as the child's teachers (and other school personnel) and thereby to serve as a catalyst in effecting a more potent and efficient connection between the home and school hierarchies. Those authors also suggest that an interven
Family-based therapy protocols, supported by a growing body of empirical evidence, have been developed for a range of adolescent problems. These include Functional Family Therapy (FFT), Multisystemic Therapy (MST) and Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MDTFC) for conduct disorder; Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT) and Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT) for drug abuse; family focused cognitive behavior therapy for anxiety disorders and depression; Attachment- Based Family Therapy (ABFT) for depression; family focused therapy as an adjunct to pharmacological therapy for bipolar disorder; dialectical behavior (DBT) combined with multifamily therapy for self- harm; and the Maudsley Model of family therapy for anorexia and bulimia nervosa. All of these family- based therapy protocols aim to reduce individual and familial risk factors which exacerbate adolescent problems, and enhance protective factors which promote resilience and recovery from psychological difficulties. While much has been achieved in this field, there is a need for continued research to refine treatment protocols, evaluate their transportability community settings, and deepen our understandings of the processes that underpin their effectiveness. There is also a need for wider dissemination of these evidence-based practices.
The School, Family, and Community Partnership Program: Initial Findings
1999
The School, Family, and Community Partnership Program is an integrated, school-based intervention for improving the outcomes of students served in classrooms for children who have emotional and behavioral disabilities. This report briefly describes the intervention, the characteristics of the children, and initial results of measuring fidelity to the intervention model. To test the effectiveness of the Partnership Program, outcomes for the 23 children (ages 11-13) participating at the school where the project was implemented were compared to 24 children at a school where the intervention was not initiated. The study employs a quasi-experimental longitudinal design with data collected on the youth at the beginning of the study, as well as 12 and 18 months after the study was initiated. Initial results from the study indicate no significant differences between the experimental and control site at the point of baseline data collection and that descriptive characteristics of the children were similar to those found in national studies of children who have emotional and behavioral disabilities. The project has demonstrated that it is possible to bring together families, school staff, and community agencies to develop a comprehensive plan to help children who have emotional disturbances. (Contains 13 references.) (CR)