Mental Health Practice with Children and Youth: A Strengths and Well-Being Model

by Helton; Lonnie R.

• ISBN13: 9780789015754
• ISBN10: 0789015757
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781317788386
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2004-08-11
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Use a strengths perspective for working with your younger clients! Mental Health Practice with Children and Youth: A Strengths and Well-Being Model presents new insights into successfully working with children by concentrating on their capabilities and resilience. This book explores the continuum of children's needs and challenges from early childhood through adolescence. This text also supports child-centered and strengths-oriented approaches to intervention with children and introduces specific strategies for maximizing pro-social behaviors, self-concept, learning, and positive peer relationships in children at home, at school, and in the community. Mental Health Practice with Children and Youth shows how children's rights have slowly evolved over many years, from children's status as property in the 1600s to the twentieth-century innovations that give a child a specific legal status with a certain amount of freedom and self-determination. By emphasizing the self-concept and self-esteem guidelines outlined by this book, social workers, mental health specialists, and childcare professionals can help children transition into healthy adults, despite hardships, disabilities, or parent negligence. Chapters highlighting interview and assessment techniques as well as media-directed, creative child therapies will enhance your counseling and intervention practices. Mental Health Practice with Children and Youth provides you with insight on: the relationships between children and family environment--from two-parent families to foster families child socialization and peer relationships--in school and around the community adolescence--gender roles, ethnic and racial diversity, sexual orientation, and adult transitioning educational needs--teacher expectations, special education, diversity, home schooling and more! The strengths perspective is not always included in traditional child welfare and children's practice texts, and this textbook fills that gap for working with younger clients. Children in child welfare, educational, mental health, family service, and recreational settings will all benefit from the inclusion of Mental Health Practice with Children and Youth: A Strengths and Well-Being Model in your work. Augmented with case scenarios and studies, empirical findings, and questions for discussion in every chapter, this book will help child service professionals as well as university faculty and students.

Author Biography

Lonnie R. Helton is Associate Professor of Social Work in the School of Social Work at Cleveland State University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xiii
Chapter 1. The Strengths and Resilience of Children	1	(22)
The Strengths Perspective	1	(5)
The Strengths of Children	6	(1)
Defining Resiliency	6	(1)
Development of Resiliency	7	(2)
Conceptual Model of Resiliency	9	(2)
Person-Environmental Transaction for the Development of Resiliency	11	(4)
Conclusion	15	(1)
Strengths Story: Henry Lester	16	(2)
Questions for Discussion	18	(5)
Chapter 2. The Care of Children in American Society: Historical Events and Trends	23	(16)
Early Perceptions and Treatment of Children	23	(2)
Nineteenth-Century Efforts for Change	25	(2)
Twentieth-Century Innovations	27	(3)
Child Welfare Practice	30	(4)
Conclusion	34	(1)
Strengths Story: Cynthia Harper	35	(1)
Questions for Discussion	36	(3)
Chapter 3. Children and Family Relationships	39	(32)
Children in Biological Families	40	(3)
Children in Single-Parent Families	43	(1)
Children in Blended Families	44	(5)
Children in Gay and Lesbian Families	49	(4)
Children in Multigenerational Families	53	(3)
Children in Foster Families	56	(4)
Children in Adoptive Families	60	(3)
Children in Residential Settings	63	(3)
Conclusion	66	(1)
Strengths Story: Joanna Brown	67	(1)
Questions for Discussion	68	(3)
Chapter 4. Child Socialization and Peer Relationships	71	(18)
Family Influences on Socialization	75	(4)
School and Peer Relationships	79	(4)
Children in the Community	83	(1)
Conclusion	84	(1)
Strengths Story: Billy Lapahie	85	(2)
Questions for Discussion	87	(2)
Chapter 5. Children and Learning	89	(22)
Teacher Expectations and Learning	90	(1)
Elements of Learning and Achievement	91	(2)
Ethnic and Culturally Different Children	93	(5)
Children and Special Education	98	(4)
Homeschooling: An Educational Alternative	102	(3)
Conclusion	105	(1)
Strengths Story: Hannah Carter	106	(2)
Questions for Discussion	108	(3)
Chapter 6. Self-Concept and Self-Esteem	111	(14)
Self-Esteem and Well-Being	116	(2)
A Case Scenario of Resilience	118	(1)
Conclusion	119	(1)
Strengths Story: Michiko Tanaka	119	(2)
Questions for Discussion	121	(4)
Chapter 7. Adolescence	125	(28)
Adolescent Ethnic and Racial Identity	128	(4)
Gender Roles	132	(2)
Adolescents and Sexual Orientation	134	(7)
Transitions to Adulthood	141	(4)
Conclusion	145	(1)
Strengths Story: Zor Hollis	146	(2)
Questions for Discussion	148	(5)
Chapter 8. Child-Centered Practice Approaches: Emphasis on Strength and Resilience	153	(34)
Guidelines for Interviewing and Assessing Children	154	(2)
Guidelines for Interviewing and Assessing Adolescents	156	(1)
Practice with Children in Child Welfare	157	(10)
School Social Work and Counseling in School	167	(7)
Mental Health Services for Children and Adolescents	174	(6)
Conclusion	180	(2)
Strengths Story: Ina Abrams	182	(2)
Questions for Discussion	184	(3)
Chapter 9. Media-Directed, Creative Child Therapies	187	(18)
Play Therapy	187	(3)
Drawing and Art Therapy	190	(2)
Puppet Therapy	192	(1)
Clown Therapy	193	(1)
Bibliotherapy	194	(2)
Music Therapy	196	(1)
Collaboration with Parents	197	(2)
Conclusion	199	(1)
Strengths Story: Helen McGuire	199	(2)
Questions for Discussion	201	(4)
Chapter 10. Evidence-Based Practice and Research for Promoting Children's Strengths	205	(20)
Introduction	205	(1)
Resilience-Based Programs	206	(12)
Conclusion	218	(1)
Strengths Story: Charles Elliott Maples	218	(2)
Questions for Discussion	220	(5)
Chapter 11. Empowerment of Children in the Global Arena	225	(14)
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child	228	(2)
International Adoptions	230	(2)
A Case Scenario of International Adoption	232	(2)
Conclusion	234	(2)
Strengths Story: Antun (Tony) Boskovich	236	(1)
Questions for Discussion	237	(2)
Epilogue	239	(2)
Index	241