Professof/Trainer Palo Alto University/NACoA Capitola, California
Session Description: Children whose parents have substance use disorder live with deep trauma and serious chronic unmanaged stress with limited access to any help. Services are available to only a fraction of children and families in need. Identification of children is problematic due to invisible stigma, family rules about not talking about the drinking or drug use outside the home, and a child’s fear that no one will believe them or take them seriously. Substance use disorders are not confined to underprivileged families but affect people in all levels of society. Opportunities for help decrease, though, with lower socio-economic status and other significant cultural factors. These young voices need advocacy as a quietly marginalized population. Needs include a safe, predictable place to call their own with trauma-informed adults trained to accept their life experiences and provide support and relevant healing activities. There is hope with acceptance and understanding of the reality and depth of children's needs and their many resiliencies. A process for developing and conducting educational support groups for these children will be described in detail with adaptations for working with individuals. Three activities which can be used in groups and with individual clients will be demonstrated with some audience participation.
Learning Objectives:
After this activity participants should be able to
identify traumatic adverse effects of parental addiction on children's cognitive, behavioral, physical, and social-emotional development.
apply understanding of children's resiliencies to effectively guide them in developing more effective coping skills and self-understanding to assist prevention of their own use
acquire by demonstration and some participation three activities for group or individual counseling that is specific to healing children of parents with substance use disorder
