Elements of the Helping Process: A Guide for Clinicians

Bridge the gulf between theoretical science and clinical application!This new edition of Elements of the Helping Process is a practical guide filled with novel ideas and innovative methods for tailoring the helping process to meet clients’special needs. Every chapter of the original edition has been updated, and new chapters in this edition discuss resiliency and its clinical enhancement; trauma and its impact on both clients and clinicians; and practice evaluation processes. The down-to-earth advice in this book draws upon both theoretical foundations and practical techniques and integrates individual and family approaches to assessment and intervention. With common sense and minimal professional jargon, this book will show you how to customize social work to the needs of the client, highlighting components such as writing, developing family trees, and creating logs and profiles. Elements of the Helping Process, Second Edition, provides practical guidelines, systematic directions, and suggestions for actively responding to clients and their needs. Here you'll find detailed descriptions of steps to follow for each phase of the helping process. Use this invaluable synthesis of theories, strategies, and techniques to create a climate of trust and to match assessment and intervention with the unique goals of your clients.This valuable book contains thoughtful, insightful discussions of:

• a paradigm that emphasizes the health and strengths of the client
• attachment behavior and empathy
• creating a safehouse
• seven levels of helping relationships
• what to expect from clients at first contact (with a helpful checklist to guide you in assessing first contacts)
• the importance and process of assessment
• clients, goals, and contracting
• guidelines for discovering and capturing a client's life story
• the benefits of logging and guidelines for using a log
• the power of metaphor
• the process of termination; how to know when a client is ready
• and much, much more!

In contrast to guides based strictly on orthodox theory, this user-friendly book bridges the gap between scientific theories and the day-to-day decisions facing clinicians, making it easy for professionals to apply these strategies to individual practices.

• Part I. Establishing the Foundation for Effective Intervention
• Chapter 1. To Do Our Work
• What This Book Has to Offer?
• General Outline
• A Paradigm Emphasizing Client Health and Strengths
• A Note About Theory, Client and You
• Clinicians' Tasks in Phases of Clinical Work
• Chapter 2. Creating a Safe House
• The Safe House of the Helping Process
• A View of Home
• Attachment Behavior and Empathy
• How to Build a Safe House
• Four Paradoxes
• Chapter 3. The Helping Relationship
• The Development of the Helping Relationship
• Theories of the Helping Relationship
• Self-Awareness
• Seven Levels of the Relationship
• Relationship: Keystone of Helping
• Chapter 4. When You Begin, Begin at the Beginning
• Preparing for First Contacts
• What You Can Expect from Clients in the First Contact
• What Clients Expect from You
• How to Approach the Initial Phase
• When a Referral is Needed
• A Checklist to Guide You in Assessing First Contacts
• Part II. Configuring a Plan to Guide the Process
• Chapter 5. Contracting Through Goal Setting
• Collaborative Contracts
• Basic Assumptions About Clients, Goals, and Contracting
• Why Goals?
• Procedure for Contracting
• Outline for the Goal-Oriented Contract
• Progressive Steps in the Contracting Process
• Life-Preserving Contracts
• Written or Oral Contracts
• Barriers to Contracting
• Advantages and Limitations of Contracting
• Disadvantages of Contracting
• A Final Note About Contracting
• Chapter 6. Evaluating Client and Clinician Progress
• Clinical Evaluation
• Forms of Clinical Evaluation
• Objective Designs for Client Evaluation
• Subjective Designs for Self-Evaluation
• Framework for Self Evaluation
• Ways to Use Self-Evaluation
• Chapter 7. Assessment: Learning from a Jigsaw Puzzle
• Why Is Assessment Important?
• What Assessment Is Not
• Doing the Jigsaw Puzzle
• The General Process of Assessment
• What's in a Label?
• The Standpoint of Strengths
• Chapter 8. Resiliency: “Who Says I Can't?”
• Sylvia's Story
• Resiliency: Theory and Research
• The First Chapters of Sylvia's Story
• The End of Sylvia's Story
• Reflections
• Telling the World
• Part III. Crafting the Structure for Strength and Support
• Chapter 9. Models of Helping: Working with an Individual
• Elaine's Story
• The Psychodynamic Model of Individual Assessment and Intervention
• The Existential Model of Individual Assessment and Intervention
• The Behavior Model of Individual Assessment and Intervention
• The DSM-IV and Individual Assessment
• Other Dimensions in Assessment
• An Integrated Approach
• Is Anyone Healthy?
• Chapter 10. Models of Helping: Working with a Family
• Elaine's Family
• Three Theoretical Contributions
• The Psychoanalytic Perspective on the Family
• The Structural Perspective on the Family
• The Intergenerational Perspective on the Family
• Common Elements in Family Approaches
• An Integrated Perspective on Elaine's Family
• Ten Key Factors in Integrated Family Assessment and Intervention
• Family Health
• Chapter 11. Clients Recommend Effective Ways to Treat Trauma
• Understanding the Seeds of Unsuccessful Therapy
• Four Traumatized Men
• Reconnection
• Other Survivors' Viewpoints
• The Kernels of Successful Treatment
• Part IV. Customizing and Culminating the Configuration for Stability and Growth
• Chapter 12. Creative Ways of Capturing the Life Story
• The Life Story
• Guidelines for Discovering the Life Story
• Two Creative Methods for Capturing the Life Story
• Chapter 13. The Written Word: Enriching Your Work
• Client Writing
• Benefits of Logging
• Guidelines for Using a Log
• An Expanded Dimension of Client Writing
• Your Own Writing
• About Writ