Context Counts in Caring for Chemically Dependent Kids and Families

Despite feeling blindsided, many of us now know that we are living in the midst of an unprecedented drug epidemic. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, since 1999, the rate of overdose deaths including prescription pain relievers, heroin and synthetic opioids such as...

Essentials for Working with Teenagers in Groups

As we transition into a changing system of care, it is essential that we do not lose sight of fundamental practice skills such as tuning-in, engaging and contracting with teens and their families. Nowhere is this more critical than working with teens in groups. Group work cannot simply be a...

A Performance-Driven Culture in a Children’s Mental Health Agency

Developing a performance-driven culture in the children’s mental health system is a complex process that includes engaging, assessing, treatment planning, gathering data, measuring outcomes, and evaluating and continually improving care. Although evidence-based practice (EBP) has become a...

Depression, Suicide, Discrimination and Parity

In the immediate aftermath of the suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain Gov. Cuomo issued a press release about new funding to address the rising rate of suicide. He stated: “Two high-profile suicides this week put mental illness front and center, but while those names were the ones in...

Project Access: An Investigation of Access to Quality Mental Health and Addictions Care

Did you know that health insurers are mandated by government to offer panels of providers so that families can find easily accessible care for their loved ones—and not only for physical illnesses? This requirement is known as network adequacy, referring to adequate networks of care. However,...

Animal Assisted Therapy for Vulnerable Youth

For almost two decades, North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center has been utilizing Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT) in outpatient mental health work with youths and their families, working in partnership with local canine and equine organizations. An adjunct to traditional therapy, AAT relies...

Practice Principles for Group Work with Children and Adolescents in the Aftermath of Disasters and Other Traumatic Events

Following are four interrelated and overlapping practice for group work with young people impacted by disasters and other traumatic events; to help them to build coping skills and overcome isolation. These principles can be (should be) incorporated into any evidence-based practice that utilizes...

Principles for Promoting Inter-Group Relations Among Adolescents Through Group Work

Group work is a wonderful way of reducing prejudice and bigotry, promoting inter-group relations and enhancing ethnic group identity in adolescence. With its emphasis on mutual exploration and discovery, group work is very well suited to address these issues. The following are seven principles for...

Maternal Depression and Children’s Behavior in School

Care to venture a guess as to what grade level of student has the highest rate of expulsion from school because of problematic behavior? Let’s see how you did. According to a research study at Yale University, led by Dr. Walter Gilliam, the rate of expulsion in pre-kindergarten programs...

Activities in Group Work with Children and Adolescents

The use of physical, and other, activities in group work is more than a “tool,” more than programmed content, more than “canned” exercises, and more than a mechanistic means to an end. Group work scholar Ruth Middleman aptly described the “toolness of program more as putty than a hammer,...