NCJ Number
145970
Date Published
1994
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This paper describes lessons learned from interventions with parents who are raising children in violent communities; the interventions were performed by the Child Witness to Violence Project (CWVP).
Abstract
The CWVP was founded in 1992 as a response to the epidemic of violence. The CWVP mandate is to identify children who have been exposed to violence and provide intervention to the child and family to relieve the negative effects of such exposure. The CWVP has learned that the key to helping children who are affected by violence is to support the adults who are most important to the children. In two intervention case studies presented in this paper, the CWVP therapist strengthened child-care providers' capacities to respond effectively to two traumatized children. The first meeting gave child-care center staff permission to face their own horror and grief about the situation without having to consider the children's needs. In the second meeting, the therapist provided practical information and helped the staff formulate a strategy for working with this issue in the center. Staff reported that this planning helped alleviate their anxiety about the children's return to the center. In another case, the therapist made use of the existing therapeutic relationship between the mother and the teen counselor. The guidance focused on the counselor's management of her feelings of horror about the child's situation and her knowledge about posttraumatic stress reactions in children.