This therapeutic model is based on an understanding of the child as inextricably linked to family, community, and school. Children who have been abused often display a broad range of emotions and behaviors including fear, aggression and dissociation. An initial goal of treatment is to create calm and stability and to help build cognitive structures in the traumatized child that help him place discriminating thought between a stimulus and his response to it. This is accomplished by helping a child first become aware of his feelings, then label his feelings and finally, develop strategies that regulate feelings once they are labeled. By developing these cognitive supports, children come to learn that they have new, more positive choices in their behavior.
Interventions target specific and well-defined issues.
Everyone involved becomes aware of the specific problems and their roles in perpetuating or solving them. An understanding develops about the sequences of behavior among the various systems in the child's life, e.g. how an intrusive symptom of the trauma can impact on school issues that can then influence a specific family response to the child. The interventions eventually promote responsible and therapeutically appropriate behavior and decrease irresponsible behaviors in all these settings. Youth entering the study met the criteria for severe emotional disturbance, and utilized multiple service agencies, including mental health, juvenile justice and social services. The results were stunning.