Counseling Children: A Core Issues Approach

Counseling Children: A Core Issues Approach offers a means for practitioners in community, mental health, and school settings to better assess, treat, and monitor children's underlying issues. The diagnostic framework presented in this book condenses what is currently known about best practices in counseling children, helps uncover the nature of children's core concerns and how to address the issues they are struggling with, and challenges counselors to move beyond the restraints of the DSM by thinking about alternatives to traditional diagnosis.

In Part I, the authors provide a basic orientation to the core issues approach and how to conceptualize the nature of clients' presenting problems. In Part II, they describe specific intervention modalities with children, including narrative approaches, play therapy, sand tray therapy, and expressive arts therapy. The final chapter discusses the challenges of consulting with parents, teachers, and other professionals and provides suggestions for bringing these caregivers together as a collaborative team to best meet the needs of children.