Main description:

This book is an essential clinician's guide to understanding, unpacking, treating, and healing individual, familial, and communal wounds associated with parental incarceration. Readers gain familiarity with integrative micro and macro healing techniques and modalities that are currently being utilized as anti-racist, anti-oppressive, and innovative practices. They also develop an understanding of and deeper unpacking of their own biases within the therapeutic relationship.
The book offers an extensive overview of clinical practice models such as trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, narrative therapy, and relational and attachment-based therapy for treating trauma symptoms associated with children of incarcerated parents, their families, and their surrounding communities. The author provides guidance on healing complex trauma through phase-oriented, multimodal, and skill-focused treatment approaches, with emphasis on strengthening one's own narrative of power and pain while building community in supportive spaces. Among the topics covered:

Why Criminal Justice Is Relevant to All Clinical Practitioners
Impact of Secondary Incarceration: Collateral Consequences for Children and Families
Psychosocial Stressors for Children of Incarcerated Parents: Conspiracy of Silence and Ambiguous Loss
Supervision and the Therapeutic Alliance: Critical Consciousness and Anti-racist Clinical Training and Undoing
Clinical Partnership: Application of Dismantling Anti-Blackness Through Anti-oppressive Practice and Critical Consciousness

An Integrative Approach to Clinical Social Work Practice with Children of Incarcerated Parents enhances therapeutic relationships for social workers, teaches innovative clinical practices most effective for this population, and offers a comprehensive discussion and understanding of the complex traumas faced both historically and presently by children and families impacted by the criminal justice system. Although designed to inspire and train social workers, the guide has significantly wide-ranging application for mental health and medical providers and other clinicians interested in enhancing their work with children and families impacted by the criminal justice system in diverse clinical practice settings. Lay practitioners and policymakers within government and not-for-profit settings also will find the book of interest.

Contents:

Preface

Part I: Intersectionality of Social Work Practice and Mass Incarceration

Chapter 1: Why Criminal Justice Is Relevant to All Clinical Practitioners

Historical and Present Federal Policy Implications for Clinical Practice and Education for Children of Incarcerated Parents

Absence of Criminal Injustice Courses in Graduate Education

Federal Legislation and Policy Reform Consequences for Children of Incarcerated Parents

The Interface of Social Policy and Clinical Practice

Case Illustration: Chris

Chapter 2: Impact of Secondary Incarceration: Collateral Consequences for Children and Families

Identifying Parental Incarceration as a Primary Trauma

Secondary Incarceration

Secondary Prisonization

Parental Loss and Traumatic Stress within Child Development

Chapter 3: Psychosocial Stressors for Children of Incarcerated Parents: Conspiracy of Silence and Ambiguous Loss

Conspiracy of Silence: Amplifying Collective Healing for Children of Incarcerated Parents

Ambiguous Loss: "My Dad Is Here but He's Not Here"

Symbolic Loss

Disenfranchised Grief

Case Study: Lifting the Conspiracy of Silence and Making Meaning with Ambiguous Loss

Part II: Clinical Applications Grounded in Cultural Responsiveness

Chapter 4: Narrative Therapy

Application of Narrative Therapy in Treatment for Children of Incarcerated Parents

Group Narrative Therapy Case Illustration: Teen Trauma-based Healing Group

Case Illustration: Dylan's Story

Chapter 5: Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Therapeutically Addressing Parental Incarceration with TF-CBT

TF-CBT Background

Advantages of TF-CBT Applications

Case Example of TF-CBT Treatment for Children Traumatized by Parental Incarceration

Case Discussion

Chapter 6: Prolonged Exposure Therapy for PTSD

Addressing Trauma Symptoms with Prolonged Exposure Therapy

Case Illustration: Trayvon

Conclusion

Chapter 7: Attachment Theory and Relational Therapy

Application of Relational-Cultural Theory in Treatment for Children of Incarcerated Parents

Application of Attachment Theory in Treatment for Children of Incarcerated Parents

Clinical Employment of Attachment-based Practice with Children of Incarcerated Parents

Addressing Necessary Modifications to Relational-Cultural and Attachment Theory Implementation

Advantages of Relational-Cultural and Attachment Theory Applications for Clinicians

Chapter 8: Mitigation and Advocacy

Alternatives to Incarceration

Psychosocial Assessments

Mitigation Partnerships and Advocacy

Mitigation Illustration: Rhonda's Story

Part III: Enhancing Practice Through Supervision and Training

Chapter 9: Supervision and the Therapeutic Alliance: Critical Consciousness and Anti-racist Clinical Training and Undoing

An Anti-racist Continuing Education Clinical Training Program

Culture-based Countertransference Defined

Culture-based Countertransference: Utilizing Critical Consciousness in Clinical Supervision

Discussing Race in Clinical Practice

Critical Consciousness and Culture-based Countertransference in Supervision

Racial Trauma and Children of Incarcerated Parents

Case Illustration of CC and CBC in Application

Chapter 10: Clinical Partnership: Application of Dismantling Anti-Blackness Through Anti-oppressive Practice and Critical Consciousness

Establishing Parental Incarceration as a Primary Trauma

Racial Policing that Targets Families of Color

The Cultural Challenge of Cultural Competence

Present Applications of Anti-oppressive Practice in Clinical Practice

Critical Consciousness Framework in Clinical Practice

Anti-Blackness Defined

Addressing Anti-Blackness in Anti-oppressive Clinical Practice

Employing Cultural Humility and Critical Consciousness with Children of Incarcerated Parents

Chapter 11: An Integrative Model to Transform Clinical Practice

Children of Promise, NYC: An Anti-racist Clinical Healing Community for Children of Incarcerated Parents

Mentoring Program

Re-entry Services

Parent-centered Programming

Group Psychotherapy

Child-centered Mental Health Programming

Chapter 12: Conclusion