Creative Parenting Skills
By: Jennifer L. Wilke-Deaton, MA, LPA

As a practicing clinician, I hear many complaints and experience a barrage of referrals for children with behavioral problems (many of them not clinically significant).  I often experience feelings of frustration with our mental health and educational systems (of which I am a part) on a daily basis.  We as professionals, as well as many exhausted parents, have a common core problem.  “How do we help these kids, when we feel like we have tried everything?”  So often we look to parents and teachers in these children’s lives and point the finger of blame, which leads to a great sense of disempowerment.  So, how do we help people feel desire, develop drive, and sustain effort when they simply experience failure after failure with these children? (MORE)

Scrapbooking: A Therapeutic Tool
By: Carla Waite

Scrapbooking is an activity that many children have become aware of in a positive light and often times see parents, aunts, uncles and friends enjoying.   Scrapbooking can be used as a functional tool for children who have been traumatized, often times by the court ordered removal from their parents’ home following substantiated abuse and/or neglect. (MORE)

Message from the President
By: Gillian C. Peck

This issue of Practice is being dedicated to supporting the Annual Conference.   We are excited about the training opportunities the Association has offered in 2005 and hope this pattern continues in the years ahead. 

Much of what the Association has to offer its members is due to the hard work of our volunteer board. The board is made up of representatives from Public and Private social service agencies from across the state that are dedicated to the provision of home-based family services.   The board has members that are currently in administrative positions and others that are providing the services the Association represents.

In the Spring issue of Practice, I introduced three new board members; Kim Boulier, Shelley Miller-O’Neil and Robin Johnson.   In this issue I would like to re-introduce board members who have been with the Association and have provided dedicated service for several years. (MORE)