ATTACHMENT AND TRAUMA SPECIALISTS
8011 118th Ave. NE
Kirkland, WA 98033
ph: (425) 889-8524
fax: (425) 576-8274
Services
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About Traditional Treatment
The children we see may have been involved in numerous foster care placements or have been institutionalized in an orphanage, or residential treatment facilities. Challenging adjustments to life—most often moving from one living arrangement to another—and the behavioral issues that result, are at the top of the therapeutic "to do" list. For that reason, traditional therapies are usually unable to successfully treat a child with an attachment disorder. They are unable to address the underlying grief, loss, and trauma their young client has experienced.
In addition, traditional therapy with younger children often uses play—toys, puppets, stories, games—to illuminate themes in a troubled child's life and help the child resolve an identified problem. Play therapy is designed for children with the ability to respond to its healing potential. Children with attachment disorders usually cannot find a theme to play out. And since parents are usually not involved in play therapy, the child may use the opportunity to try to disrupt any alliance and trust between the therapist and his parents.
Assessing child and family needs
Every person's ability to trust and attach to important others is on a continuum. Healthy attachment is at one end, and insecure, disorganized attachment is at the other. So treatment of attachment disorder is highly variable depending on the needs of each child or teen and his family. Treatment at ATS takes each child or teen and his family as they are, with their own constellation of strengths and challenges.
We base our treatment plan and protocols on extensive family materials and a number of diagnostic tools. The following tools help us identify and understand important information about each child:
Current behaviors
Level of functioning
Current and past school issues
Medical history
Current providers, caseworkers, etc.
Psychotherapy and medications
Testing results and recommendations such as neurological, psychological, speech, and hearing
Infancy experiences and biological mother's pregnancy and birth history
Previous counseling
Potential abuse
Change of caretakers
Parent(s)'s chief complaints
Our testing and intake documents
Treatment goals
Safety
Our touchstone principle " … do no harm."
'Holding Therapy' is not utilized in our practice
We thoroughly review all information in the family's application packet; the results of our information gathering process; and assessments from other professionals. From there we design an individualized, realistic intervention with specific goals for each child to help both the child and his parents learn to undo the damage he suffered in the past. Treatment is structured to help parents provide their child with what was never offered to him in previous environments. In general, our goals include the following:
Reduce the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness
Enhance child's self-concept
Reduce self-destructive behavior
Develop a more secure attachment—increase trust, reciprocity, emotional closeness with parents
Increase child's ability to be loved and cared for by his parents
Increase child's willingness to be comforted.
Deal with child's trauma, loss, and grief issues in hopes of finding some positive resolutions.
Teach parents effective parenting strategies
Children and Families
Attachment can occur between a child and a primary caregiver(s) in a biological family as well as a variety of alternative family constellations such as foster or adoptive families.
The bulk of the work of healing attachment difficulties occurs at home, between the parents and child or teen.
Families dealing with attachment difficulties need understanding, support, and complete, unbiased information from a variety of resources about their unique challenges.
Treatment
Appropriate attachment treatment and parenting can relieve the effects of a break or strain in primary attachment.
Crucial to treatment progress is the parents' commitment to keeping the child in their family.
Attachment therapy is hard work for everyone involved.
A therapeutic atmosphere must convey safety, protection, hope, empathy, and comfort to all family members.
Good work relies on both child and family having a developmentally appropriate understanding of the therapeutic process and its goals.
Attachment therapy requires a family systems approach since the heart of this disorder is the child's relationship with her primary caregiver(s).
Parents may have problems that need to be understood and addressed in order to help their child resolve attachment and other problems.
Parents and professionals need to educate the systems that impact a child's life and advocate for adequate funding.
Referrals to community providers
Sometimes we refer to other professionals to enhance our work with a child and her family. We may refer for:
· Sensory Integration Therapy
· Psychiatric evaluation and medication prescription
· Specialized therapy for predatory, sexually aggressive youth(SAY Therapy)
· Neuropsychological Evaluation
Consultation with colleagues
We use consultation to enhance our work and provide the best services possible to our clients.
We consult monthly with child psychiatrists on difficult cases.
Peer consultation with other professionals at ATS is always available.Fee structure
Fees for therapy at Attachment and Trauma Specialists are $125 per hour per therapist. The initial hour is $175.
Ancillary services such as extended phone calls, reports, and school consultations will be billed separately.
We can bill insurance and Adoption Support for services if families have obtained a pre-authorization for treatment.
Click on the link below to download our intake packet.
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Membership
8011 118th Ave. NE
Kirkland, WA 98033
ph: (425) 889-8524
fax: (425) 576-8274
