|
 |
|
Toward effective
service to persons and divorcing-family and stepfamily clients |
|
|
Four Requisites for Effective
Clinical Service
Special Clinical Skills Needed,
by
Client Type - p. 2 of 3 By
Peter K. Gerlach, MSW
Member NSRC Experts Council |
Continued
from p. 2...
 The
Web address of this three-page article is https://sfhelp.org/pro/req/skills.htm
This page continues an outline of
four requisites for
professional service to typical childhood-trauma survivors and divorcing-family and stepfamily clients:
The
prior pages outlines the special knowledge
requirements, requisite self-awareness and process
awareness, and general clinical skills required for all
of clients covered by this model. This page summarizes special clinical
skills required for each phase of the work
with these clients:
-
adjusting to divorce or mate-death,
-
pre-stepfamily courtship,
-
committed stepfamily couples denying primary-relationship problems,
-
committed stepfamily couples admitting
such problems,
-
re/divorcing stepfamilies; and...
-
families in any of these phases where at
least one adult
of childhood trauma is motivated to reduce their psychological wounds and
harmonized their personality subselves. This may be individual or family
work.
These pages offer many hyperlinks to popups and more detailed articles. To
get the most from this page, you may
want to read the whole page first without following any links, and then go
back and explore the links.
1) Clinical Skills Needed for Divorcing-biofamily Clients
For perspective on working with these needy, multi-problem client families, study this
perspective on the current US divorce
epidemic, this slide presentation
on divorce, and this worksheet on
divorce-recovery status before continuing here. The general skills on
the prior page should be adequate for most families adjusting to the death
of an adult or child.
Effective clinical work with these families requires unique clinical knowledge and these special skills in clinicians,
supervisors, consultants, and program and/or clinical directors:
-
If the couple is court-ordered to get
mediation and/or therapy, meld this
perspective with your own;
-
help
divorcing partners
and their families
to...
-
stabilize any personal and family crises,
and...
-
if appropriate, help couples evaluate whether legal divorce is their best
long-term choice, including...
-
assessing each partner's
how well each need has been filled, and what prevents filling unmet
needs; and
-
whether or not to use a qualified
marriage counseling (you?) and/or a professional
mediator.
If the decision to divorce is firm,
then...
-
Devise and implement an effective
family-reorganization plan, and (b) manage their changes cooperatively. This includes helping
divorcing parents...
-
Evolve viable, stable
co-parenting and child-custody
agreements, and possibly stabilizing and reducing the need for legal
orders of protection; and...
-
Educate parents on the special divorce
adjustment needs of their minor kids, and assess each child's current
status with them,
-
If presenting problems include one or more
children "acting out," assess how best to help each child while working
with the whole family system. This may justify finding an appropriate
co-therapist and/or clinical program and coordinating the work with
them;
-
Maintain their personal and family
through the stressful legal divorce process.
this may involve working with adversarial attorneys and a Guardian ad
Litem (children's attorney), family-court judges, mediators, and/or
court-appointed custody evaluators for many months. If your client has
been ordered by the court to "get counseling," see
this. And...
-
Evaluate and achieve
effective divorce recovery over time. Some clients may need special help to
resolve problems from marital
family violence, sexual traumas, legal and financial problems, including
bankruptcy; someone's
- including
-
(a) Acknowledge and (b) permanently
reduce significant
to cooperative child-nurturance over time.
-
Many divorcing Catholic families need
empathic, knowledgeable assistance to navigate the difficult church
annulment process, which may overlap with legal divorce and extend
beyond it.
-
Help
adults and kids to (a) acknowledge (vs. deny, repress, intellectualize,
or ignore) and grieve and adjust to
biofamily reorganization (splitting into two co-parenting homes)
following parental death or divorce, and (b) understanding and patiently
achieving genuine divorce recovery
before making stepfamily
commitments;
-
Help the client's extended-family system (a)
understand, (b) accept (vs. deny), and (c) adjust to their divorce-related losses and changes.
Think of several divorcing-family clients,
and comparing the work with them to this clinical-goal and skill summary. Clinicians will
usually not be able to cover all these goals adequately, and will
need to triage their time and efforts to achieve the best long-term systemic
changes that limits allow.
Typical stressed divorcing-family
clients will probably focus short-term relief (surface-problem reduction),
and will not be able to focus on a long-term systemic goals. In such cases,
a special clinical skill is weaving long-term suggestions into short-term
work. ("For your kids' sakes, you'll probably want to improve your adult
communication and problem-solving skills over time, won't you?")
|
In my experience, almost all
divorcing families are headed by survivors of childhood trauma -
(GWCs). Few (no?) such adults are aware of the [wounds + unawareness]
that promoted their and their kids' psychological
Unless divorcing adults are middle-aged and have clearly hit
it's usually premature to suggest they commit to personal
while they grieve and adapt to divorce-related losses and changes. It
is appropriate to plant
seeds (comments, handouts, etc.) about the cycle's toxic
and eventual personal wound-recovery. If one or both divorcing adults are
ready to commit to wound recovery, see
this. |
The more knowledgeable and skilled a clinician is at facilitating client
progress on this mosaic of systemic goals, the higher the odds of avoiding
and minimizing future stepfamily stresses.
2) Extra Skills Needed
for Courting-couple Clients
The most fruitful time to
help prevent major stepfamily stress and probable re/di-vorce is during a
couple's courtship - when they are least likely to seek professional help.
This is why informed
clergy asked to officiate at a
re/marriage have an unparalleled chance to assess and alert couples
to whether they're making wise
or not. The minority of couples who seek pre-re/marital counseling are usually less
wounded than those who don't.
This means that clinicians and social-service organizations working with
divorcing families and stepfamilies should value divorce
prevention, and proactively offer
pre-re/marital education to their community via seminars, classes, Web sites
and referrals, and printed materials.
This unique
guidebook for courting couples integrates key Web materials from
this nonprofit, ad-free site.
|
With courting couples, effective clinical work can be
defined as "motivating both partners to (a) assess for psychological wounds , and (b) commit to learning stepfamily
facts,
realities,
and
in order to (c) honestly assess whether they should co-commit to
forming or joining a stepfamily at this time. Achieving this
requires special clinical knowledge, traits, and skills -
particularly with wounded suitors.
|
Among the range of extra skills needed, these are key: clinicians need
to be able to...
-
Prepare the couple to participate
patiently in a thorough pre-commitment assessment (below);
-
Assess (a) each partner and each co-parenting ex mate for
significant psychological wounds, (b) whether the couple is
aware of any wounds, and what they
and (c) whether any co-parents are now in meaningful personal
or not;
-
Assess the degree of
divorce-recovery in
each family of divorcing adults children;
-
Assess (a) the couple's degree of
motivation to learn the stepfamily factors above, and (b)
their level of current knowledge about each of them;
-
Assess whether the couple
themselves and their kids and other co-parents as a stepfamily
now, and
in their stepfamily.
-
Assess each mate's attitudes about
these
key topics, and suggest
changing any that degrade their stepfamily's relationships and
-
Assess (a) the couple's current knowledge of
effective communication basics and
and (b) the compatibility of their styles of
problem-solving;
-
Assess the couple's (a) knowledge of
grief basics, (b) current
and (c) each partner's status in grieving their respective major
childhood and prior-relationship losses (broken bonds). Also (d)
assess their respective kids
for
of incomplete or blocked grief, and whether the couple is
alert to this - and knows what to do about it or not.
-
Assess the specific personal
that each partner expects to fill by committing to their partner, and how
realistic these expectations may be;
-
Assess each partner's current life
and whether s/he is genuinely prepared to put personal health and
integrity first, their primary relationship second, and all else -
including kids' local needs - third, except in emergencies. If
either partner believes "In family conflicts, the kids' needs
should always come first," RED LIGHT!
-
Assess the couple's willingness to
honestly (a) evaluate and discuss whether any of these
apply to their psychological stepfamily now, and then to (b)
fill out this multi-part pre-commitment
questionnaire and discuss their
findings thoroughly.
Option - go through this questionnaire with the couple, over
several sessions.
-
(a) Explain your conclusions from all these assessments,
in terms of the couple's degree of readiness to co-commit now; and
(b) know how to anticipate and respond to any questions and/or
objections. Significantly-wounded couples (Grown Wounded Children in
denial) are apt to c/overtly ignore or reject any conclusions that
they're not fully ready to co-commit.
-
Assess the courting couple's motivation to commit to work together
on these self-improvement
before
co-committing. Option suggest they use this Web site,
and/or the related guidebook
above.
-
(a) Motivate the couple to learn more
about any of these topics they need to, and (b) facilitate their
learning as appropriate.
-
Refer the couple to useful sources of
knowledge and
support as they prepare to make
wise commitment decisions for themselves and their
descendents.
Note
that there are at least three current national and many local programs
offering to help couples evaluate their pre-re/marital readiness and
compatibility:
Prepare/Enrich-MC,
FOCCUS, and
RELATE-remarriage. As far
as I know, none of these currently include the full array of assessments
above. Though incomplete, they are still useful. Alert couples who use
any of these that if they conclude they're ready to re/marry, they're
still at major risk of redivorce because of these combined
Option - search the Web on "remarriage preparation" or similar to
learn about current programs and resources. A helpful related link
(11/06) is About.com's
article on marriage-preparation options.
The third of these
is probably the most common: one co-parent or
a couple seeking to resolve non-remarital stepfamily stressors. Special clinical skills needed to to help such stepfamilies effectively are
summarized in the next section.
3) Extra
Clinical Skills Needed for
Stepfamily Mates in Denial
|
With these client families, effective clinical work can be defined as (a)
assessing accurately for marital problems and likely psychological wounds (in
addition to the assessments above), (b)
helping couples break their denials of significant relationship problems and
(c) motivating them to start reducing them together, while (d) helping
co-parents reduce other family stressors. Clinicians get "extra
points" if they can also interest one or both partners in learning about
their subselves, and perhaps try parts work as part of improving their
relationship. The alternative is to "plant seeds" about wounds and recovery,
and let go. |
In addition to the general and courting-couple skills
above, clinicians working
with these clients need abilities to...
-
Select among options like
these if the family is
court-ordered to seek clinical help;
-
Consider these
options if the client is limited
in the number of sessions they can afford;
-
Explain that typical multi-home stepfamilies
are usually confronted by many concurrent problems at once, so
co-parents need to be able to (a) clearly
and (b) rank-order their set of
(unmet needs) in order to (c)
together, over time.
-
Assess whether each co-parent genuinely
accepts their
as a stepfamily, and understands what that
If not, use Project-3 and
4 interventions as appropriate.
-
(a) Assess whether either mate made up to
three unwise courtship decisions, and if so, (b) empathically confront
them about what this may mean. Use Project-7
interventions if/as appropriate.
-
Assess the couple's recent actual (vs.
intellectual) life
priorities. If their relationship is not firmly second in
non-emergency family conflicts, confront the couple that this probably
means: (a) one or both are probably ruled by a false self, (b) their
relationship will probably decay, (c) their stepfamily
will
inexorably decline, and (d) unless they change their priorities, they
and their dependent kids are at major risk of future re/divorce trauma.
-
Assess the couple's knowledge of
communication basics and
and their style of problem-solving.
In particular, assess how the couple usually copes with values and
loyalty conflicts, and associated relationship triangles. Facilitate
effective couple and family communication as needed with appropriate
Lesson-2 interventions.
-
Assess each partner for (a) knowledge of
healthy-grieving basics, and (b)
incomplete or
of childhood and prior-family losses. Then (c) use
Lesson-3 interventions as appropriate;
-
Assess the stepfamily system for past and
current
and how family adults and kids are coping with any you find. If anyone
seems to be addicted, see this
and this for options.
-
Assess the client-family's status in merging
their several biofamilies, and use Project-9
interventions as appropriate;
-
Assess for significant
to co-parental teamwork with stepkids' other co-parents (ex mates and
any stepparents). Facilitate ranking and reducing any you find, within
situational limits. Ideally, this requires motivating the other
co-parents and any key relatives to join the work.
-
Assess each stepchild's reported status on
(a) filling their age-appropriate
developmental needs, and (b) their progress on filling their set of
family adjustment needs. Assess
co-parents' knowledge of these and
effective-parenting basics, and how family co-parents are trying to
fill each child's needs. Ideally, do this in several family sessions
with kids present.
-
Assess the multi-home nuclear stepfamily's
structure for significant problems,
and discuss and decide what to do about any you find;
-
Assess and discuss the client family's
strengths, using some version of this
inventory;
-
Assess the couple's personal, marital, and
family support systems, and promote any needed improvements with
appropriate Lesson-11 interventions.
This includes assessing the nurturance
level of the
the client family is part of.
-
After all these assessments, judge if and when to empathically confront
the couple that they are denying or minimizing serious
relationship problems (unmet needs), and what that probably means:
-
they may have made unwise courtship
decisions, which cannot be reversed;
-
one or both partners is probably a
in protective
and needs to (a) hit
and (b) commit to long-term personal recovery for their and any kids'
sakes;
-
focusing on reducing other presenting
stepfamily stressors will probably not fill unmet
long term.
If the couple is willing to shift to focusing on relationship work,
their stepfamily becomes a "type-4" client. See the next page for special
skills needed to work effectively with them. If the couple is not ready
to break protective denials, then work to facilitate their improving
their presenting (surface) problems, and seed Project 8 (re/marital) interventions as you do.
 Continue
with special skills needed for effective work with three more types of
clients.
+ + +
<<
Prior page /
Add to favorites
/
Print page
/
Email this page's address
>>
site intro / course outline / site search / definitions / chat / contact
Updated
September 30, 2015
|