June 26, 2025, Venango County via Zoom Webconference
8:25am-10:30am, 10:40am-12:35pm
In family treatment approaches, such as ESFT, efforts to help children with serious emotional problems mostly flow through the caregivers. Therefore, a critical task in the first stage of treatment is engaging caregivers and building a strong therapeutic alliance. Even in the best of times, this can be challenging for therapists working with disadvantaged, multi-stressed families, where caregivers often have a history of traumatic stress. Many caregivers of the children treated in community-based services are distrusting of mental health professionals and are reluctant to participate or engage in family sessions. They tend to see problems and solutions behaviorally, existing separately from themselves and family relationships. Common barriers to caregiver participation and engagement are identified and explored within the social context of the family, community, and referring agencies. The Stages of Change model is introduced to guide therapists’ conceptualization and approach to addressing caregiver treatment-hesitancy. Videos are utilized to demonstrates how to provide emotional support to strengthening trust and move caregivers toward greater engagement in family treatment and a relational focus.
Objectives
As a result of participating in this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Explain the rationale for family therapy and the focus on caregivers in ESFT.
- Recognize the difference between caregiver involvement and caregiver engagement.
- Identify the most common reasons caregivers are reluctant to participate and fully engage in family treatment
- Describe six strategies for engaging caregivers in treatment.
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