TF-CBT strategy #2: Enhancing parental engagement
As with any effective trauma treatment model, engagement is a critical part of TF-CBT (Cohen et al., 2006, pp. 35–43) since betrayal of trust is a core issue for traumatized individuals that successful therapy must address. Parents who have remained with abusive partners, have repeatedly returned to these partners, or who have gotten into repeated abusive relationships often believe that in these situations, there is more danger in leaving the perpetrator than in remaining. Therapists can successfully engage parents in these situations by simultaneously validating the parent’s desire to protect their children from violence, and the parent’s fear that the perpetrator will become more dangerous if they left. Providing psychoeducation that demonstrates the therapist’s insight into the parent’s present quandary may be a helpful initial engagement strategy. For example, explaining that most battered women leave multiple times before leaving permanently; and validating that the risk of violence often increases at the time the battered woman leaves, often helps mothers trust that their therapist understands the complexity of their situation without seeming judgmental. Engagement is also an important strategy for parents who are inadvertently reinforcing their youth’s negative behaviors due to the parent’s personal trauma issues. This seems to occur in situations in which the youth’s trauma-related behavioral or emotional problems serve as personal trauma reminders for the parent. TF-CBT psychoeducation and other TF-CBT coping skills are unlikely to be useful for these parents and youth unless therapists have first effectively engaged the parent. Working with chronic victims of interpersonal violence can be frustrating for child therapists may not optimally engage parents whom they view as having failed to protect youth. In these situations, therapists must remain sensitive to the child’s attachment to and dependence on the non-offending parent, and possibly even the offending caregiver. Such therapists must ask themselves what is best for the child; unless the therapist can maintain effective engagement with the parent, while also taking the appropriate steps to assure youth safety (e.g., making mandated reports to Child Protection), this will ultimately interfere with effective treatment. Some therapists resolve this conflict by not reporting disclosures of child maltreatment, justifying this by telling themselves that doing so will fatally compromise the therapeutic relationship. However, the fact is that youth trusted the therapist to make the disclosure, hoping not only for an empathic response, but also for an end to violence. Therapists who fail to report such abuse not only break the law, they violate the trust that their clients place in them. The following case example illustrates how a therapist maintained engagement while reporting a disclosure of abuse.
Case example: Lori was providing TF-CBT to Naomi and her 6-year-old son Peter. During treatment Peter described an episode during which Naomi’s boyfriend Jack beat him with a belt. Peter showed Lori a mark on his leg from the beating. Lori told Peter that as she had said at the start of treatment, she would need to talk to someone whose job it was to keep children safe from abuse, and that she would also talk to mother about this. Peter was worried that mother would get angry at him for “telling on Jack.” Lori reassured Peter that he had done the right thing and met alone with Naomi. Naomi was angry when Lori told her about Peter’s disclosure and accused Lori of “putting ideas into Peter’s head.”