STAFF RESOURCES

STAFF RESOURCES

Scheduling:

  • Video chats work better for some clients rather than a phone call
  • Call younger clients 3 times a week for 20 minutes each time
    • Older youth can be twice a week for 30 minutes
  • Keep the same schedule week to week
  • 12-18 year olds; let them pick the time for your sessions
  • Try to reach older youth before 4:00 pm
  • Group text with client and parent as a reminder of the upcoming session has been successful

Sessions:

  • Engage the parent
    • Call can be half with the client and half with the parent
  • Structure your sessions with a check list
    • Check-in
    • Activity (interactive, tactile)
    • Make sure they’re getting exercise
    • Intervention, guiding conversations
  • Check-ins could always start with asking about school work/distance learning and then their relationship with their parent(s) that week. Identify feelings, routines.
  • K-4th grade tactile activities are successful
  • Physical activity for younger kids before calming down – you could start with them going outside to do push ups, jumping jacks, high knees,  some type of circuit, and then start your session
  • Use workbooks, mindfulness cards, coloring books
  1. Fortune teller (with coping skills or anger management strategies)
  2. Hangman (positive affirmations, theme of session)
  3. Scavenger Hunt (example: go to and describe the calmest space in your home, or strike a yoga pose in your kitchen)
  4. 5-4-3-2-1 grounding activity
  5. Journaling
  6. Poetry
  7. Draw self portrait and discuss
  8. Draw how you are feeling
  9. Read together
  10. Use check-in scales
  11. Feeling charades
  12. Clients can talk to pets
  13. I-statement practice (I feel [blank] when [blank] because [blank])
  14. Identify button pushers using scales
  15. Guided mini meditation or body scan
  16. Thoughts, feelings, body sensation and energy level check-in
  17. Time for mindfulness coloring
  18. Check in - one word to describe how you are feeling right now and one thing you are grateful for
  19. Go to http://www.lianalowenstein.com/e-booklet.pdf for an entire book of creative interventions
  20. Color-your-life: matching colors with feeling states (use crayons if they have)
  21. Beat the clock: build (if they have blocks), color, or draw for a designated amount of time (age and what they can currently handle) where they work on this independently without looking at you, making comments or asking questions- after just a couple minutes you attempt to distract them (they will fail initially but then can be challenge you bring into routines)
  22. Slow motion game, red light green light, simon says
  23. Blowing bubbles (if they have any) to practice breathing
  24. What animal/character am I most like (or match to emotion)- see if they have toys they can pull out you can use or have them draw these.
  25. Broadcast news: starring you and the client as the “expert”; you report the news as it relates to the treatment goal for the day and then you pretend to be a caller to ask  questions of the expert (i.e.- what would you tell someone struggling to listen to their parent)
  26. The Spy & the Sneak: great for parent attunement and improving parent/child relationships; meet with client first to give them the task of being  the “sneaK” and help them identify 3-5 positive behaviors related to treatment goals they can be sneaky about doing over the next week (or until next session); then talk to parent about being the spy and writing down any sneaky positive behaviors they notice their child doing; discuss findings together at your next  session.
  27. Second story technique: have clients write down the story of the coronavirus (telling the big trauma story what they know about it and what is happening in society); and  then they write down the second story which is how they have shown strength, bravery, etc. as a result (i.e.- by staying  home  I am helping out my community)