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Treatment Services Treatment and support is critical to the child and family's healing. Children and their caregivers find the services they need at DNLCC or are referred to programs available elsewhere in the community. Individual therapy, family therapy and group therapy are some of the treatment services provided at DNLCC. Dedicated to ensuring that each child and family receives the right evidence supported service at the right time, DNLCC has created working partnerships with numerous service-providing programs and agencies in our community. DNLCC works to strengthen the non-offending caregiver, because children deserve to be safe in their own family. Reducing the effects of trauma on the child and family is another important objective.
Individual Evidence Supported Treatment A trained therapist provides therapy as appropriate to individual victims and family members. Most evidence supported treatments involve the child’s caregiver as a result of research that identified that the outcome for the child is related to how well their caregiver(s) manages their response to the child’s abuse. It is our experience that individual family members often require therapy as they manage their response to a disclosure of abuse.The goal of individual therapy is to ameliorate any negative outcomes from the abuse and from the disclosure. Individual therapy may also be necessary before bringing the adult(s) and children together in family therapy.
Family Treatment Child protection is a precondition to family preservation. Many families need help in developing new and appropriate family boundaries, privacy rules and protection plans. Family therapy provides interventions to strengthen the adult(s) in the family to allow them to be a protective resource to their children.
Caregiver Education/Support As we treat adults whose children have been victimized, especially if the abuse has been within the family, we provide information about what to do and what not to do as a caregiver. It is important to provide child management and caregiver training information to help cargivers know what to do instead of the abuse. We have also found that caregivers can benefit significantly from support from other caregivers who have experienced the abuse of a child. The DNLCC caregivers group is open-ended.
Victim Group Treatment There are insufficient community treatment resources to meet the needs of these children and their families. In efforts to provide appropriate treatment resources, DNLCC provides evidence supported group therapy. Groups have been developed for pre-school, school-age and adolescent males and females, mothers of abuse victims, adult male survivors and parents of victims who themselves have been victimized.
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