Building Strengths and Skills: A Collaborative Approach to Working with Clients

This is a much-needed practice book that demonstrates how helping professionals can emphasize their clients' resilience, strength, and capacities, rather than focusing on pathology or deficits. It offers an integrative practice model for both assessment and intervention that interweaves strengths-based (specifically solution-focused therapy and motivational interviewing) and skills-building (cognitive-behavioral) approaches. In the strengths-and-skills-based model, helping professionals assume that clients possess the necessary capacities to solve their own problems, transforming the therapeutic relationship into a collaboration focused on bolstering motivation and resources for change. When these resources are exhausted or when deficits become a substantial barrier, then practitioner and client work to develop an individualized skills-building plan. A wide range of examples, written by Jacqueline Corcoran with experts from different fields of practice, clearly demonstrate how the model can be applied to individuals and families struggling with behavior problems, depression, substance abuse, anxiety, violence, and abuse, so that both strengths and skills maximize the client's success. This innovative, dynamic resource is a must have for practitioners across the helping, social service, and mental health professions.

Table of Contents:
Contents Part I: Introduction of the Strengths-and Skills-Based Model Preface Chapter 1: Solution-focused Therapy Chapter 2: Motivational Interviewing Chapter 3: Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy by Jacqueline Corcoran & Joe Walsh Chapter 4: Assumptions of the Strengths-and Skills-Based Model Chapter 5: The Helping Process of the Strengths-and Skills-Based Model Chapter 6: Learning the Model: Applications to a Hospital Setting Part II: Application to Disorders Chapter 7: Working with Adolescent Conduct Problems by Jacqueline Corcoran and David Springer Chapter 8: Depression by Jacqueline Corcoran and Jane Hanvey Phillips Chapter 9: Substance Abuse by Holly Matto Chapter 10: An Older Couple with Anxiety by Carrie Becker, Jacqueline Corcoran, and Kristin Garell Part IV: Application to Family Violence Chapter 11: Domestic Violence by Jacqueline Corcoran and Holly Bell Chapter 12: Working with Parents in the Child Welfare System with Substance Abuse by Melinda Hohman, Christine Kleinpeter, and Hilda Loughran Chapter 13: Working with Physical Abuse and Neglect by Jacqueline Corcoran, Audrey Jones, and Christine Anksvard Chapter 14: Working with Parents of Sexual Abuse Victims by Jacqueline Corcoran, Dianna Hart, Kristin Garell, and Janice Berry-Edwards Measurement Chapter 15: Strengths-Based Measures by Theresa Early & Sean Newsome

Review :
"The greatest strength of Corcoran's work is its potential to help those who are in the position of having a brief period of time to intervene with clients who may not have voluntarily sought assistance and may even be opposed to it." PsycCRITIQUES "An important piece of work that positively breaks from the norm." -Edward C. Chang, University of Michigan "If you have been waiting for a book that actually brings positive psychology to life, this is it." -C.R. Snyder, coeditor, Handbook of Positive Psychology "A readable and practical guide, complete with interview transcripts." -Wallace Gingerich, Case Western Reserve University "This innovative, dynamic resource offers an assessment and intervention model for practitioners in the helping, social service, and mental health professions."--ADOLESCENCE "The greatest strength of Corcoran's work is its potential to help those who are in the position of having a brief period of time to intervene with clients who may not have voluntarily sought assistance and may even be opposed to it." PsycCRITIQUES "A readable and practical guide, complete with interview transcripts." -Wallace Gingerich, Case Western Reserve University "Building Strengths and Skills covers ground left largely unexplored in previous positive psychology books-how to foster the best in our clients. --C. R. Snyder, Wright Co-editor, Handbook of Positive Psychology "An important piece of work that positively breaks from the norm." -Edward C. Chang, University of Michigan "If you have been waiting for a book that actually brings positive psychology to life, this is it." -C.R. Snyder, coeditor, Handbook of Positive Psychology