Call Us: 630-832-6155
A Day in the Life of a Social Worker

A Day in the Life of a Social Worker

by | Jun 5, 2023 | Counseling, Wellness

What happens behind the closed door of the therapy office is often a mystery. By necessity, it’s confidential. Yet beyond the personal details, every clinical alliance unfolds in predictable stages. First, there’s an identifiable beginning, a middle, and an end. Next, each of those stages can be teased apart into those same three categories. In other words, there’s a beginning, middle, and end of the beginning stage, the same three phases are found within the middle stage, and finally, the same three phases are within the end stage. All in all, nine stages.

Now that you’ve been thoroughly confused, let’s take a glimpse at each of the nine stages of the clinical alliance in an imaginary 20-session engagement:

 

Beginning

Early-Beginning (sessions 1 – 2):

  • Welcome the client and invite a healing/learning partnership.

Mid-Beginning (sessions 3 – 4):

  • Gather a comprehensive history with unconditional support and acceptance.

Late-Beginning (sessions 5 – 6):

  • Engage in a working alliance with defined goals and expected outcomes.

 

Middle

Early-Middle (sessions 7 – 8):

  • Maintain a holding environment for pain, struggle, and collaborative discovery.

Mid-Middle (sessions 9 – 11):

  • Investigate the relationship between the client’s history and current circumstances.

Late-Middle (sessions 12 – 13):

  • Invite a new understanding of recurrent cognitive, affective, and behavioral themes.

 

End

Early-Ending (sessions 14 – 16):

  • Teach and practice healthy coping strategies to support a corrective experience.

Mid-Ending (sessions 17 – 18):

  • Empower the transition of gains from the clinical alliance to relationships outside of therapy.

Late-Ending (sessions 19 – 20):

  • Review progress, anticipate future challenges/coping plan, and facilitate emancipation.

 

Clean and simple, right? Establish a working partnership. Gather history and set goals. Create a safe environment to explore the relationship between past traumas and current struggles. Teach coping skills. Test them outside the therapy setting. Set the client free.

As therapists, our job is to put ourselves out of a job by making our clients their own therapists.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

Think Globally Act Locally

Think Globally Act Locally

by | May 11, 2023 | Counseling, Marriage & Family, Parenting, Wellness

A trusted friend recently reminded us that sometimes the problem is bigger than the solution. “One finger does not lift 1,000 people,” he said, quoting an adage from his country of origin. There, he shared, the depth of national crisis leaves most leaders at a loss for how to make even a tiny dent. So you lift what one finger is able to lift.

Our country is currently in the throws of a mental health crisis. It has two prongs. First, the acuity level struggle among children and teens is at unprecedented levels. Second, there is a shortage of available resources. A shrinking pool of therapists is either backed up with untenable waiting lists or burned out from the long hours and the clinical intensity of the work. Often, it’s both.

So, what can you do if your kiddos are struggling and you can’t find a local resource? In our practice, we field numerous requests with limited clinician availability. We match client needs with therapist skills to the best of our ability and refer out to trusted colleagues when we are unable to provide the needed service. For most families, unless you are lucky enough to snag one of our limited hours, that doesn’t help much.

While you can’t control the availability of community resources, you can influence the wellness of your home. And although you can’t alter the choices of everyone who impacts your family, you are in charge of your home ecosystem. Start there. Your need for outside resources may be less urgent if you are able to stabilize the rhythm and buttress the structure of the crew that makes up your home.

Often, this is precisely the guidance that paid professionals provide:

  • Ensure that everyone is honoring the basics of respect, trust, health, and safety.
  • Call time-out when a crisis alters the family norm, so there’s time to process the change.
  • Attend to little problems before they have a chance to take root and get big.
  • Allow stress to activate coping skills before solving the challenge prematurely.

If you performed an informal check-up on your family’s well-being, you would probably discover some opportunities to put these in play. Are respect, trust, health, and safety your priorities? Are you slowing down enough to discuss transitions? Are you practicing early detection/early intervention to the best of your ability? Are you allowing adaptability to develop rather than jumping in to solve problems too quickly?

You might not need a therapist. Or maybe a session or two gets things on track. Think globally, act locally.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

Squeeze the Sponge

Squeeze the Sponge

by | Apr 8, 2023 | Marriage & Family, Parenting

Imagine your child as a sponge. Imagine all the things you model as a parent in a puddle. Now squeeze the sponge and place it at the edge of the puddle. Release your grip on the sponge. Let it fill with whatever is in the puddle. The earliest lessons our children learn in life are the result of modeling.  

These lessons are not communicated verbally. They are absorbed in the day-to-day observations our kids inhale around the clock. Their five senses are locked in and depending on their developmental maturity at the moment of the lesson, realities are shaped. The older the kid, the better their ability to discern inconsistency. The younger the kid, the more likely the observation will be infused into their identity unchecked.

It is imperative that parents choose the ingredients of the puddle.

  • Whether you are more attentive to your child or your laptop when they recount their day.
  • The mood that fills the home when you arrive home from a challenging work day.
  • How you manage the stress of balancing domestic responsibilities with your career.
  • The way you respond to an unfair call from a referee when your kid’s goal is disallowed.
  • How you prioritize attendance to school conferences, sporting events, and music performances.
  • The way one parent steps up and covers logistics when the other parent is traveling.

You get it. The ethics we teach are rarely in the lectures we deliver. They are almost always acted out in the way we live. Our kids are watching attentively and are almost certain to carry their learnings into their adult relationships. They’ll either replicate the values they’ve seen practiced by their most important role models, or they’ll pursue the opposite once they discover that words and actions don’t match. 

Try the ‘minivan rule’ (quietly observing the conversations between your kids and their friends on the way home from an event). Your kids will say things reflecting the views and language they’ve witnessed in the home. At first it seems uncanny until you realize you’ve shaped mini-adults in your minivan.

Everything counts. Because we’re human and because raising kids doesn’t come with an instruction manual, you’re allowed to screw up. It’s the most consistent experience that imprints. They are the sponge and you are the puddle.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

When Struggle is Good News

When Struggle is Good News

by | Mar 14, 2023 | Parenting

When our clinicians participate in an intake discussion with a parent, one of the level-of-care thresholds is whether the struggle is healthy and normal. Every developmental stage includes a variation of struggle by its very nature. New skills only develop when the environmental conditions necessitate them.

In the beginning, the child lacks the coping ability to manage the situation. That mismatch sparks the need for a skill that hasn’t yet formed. Game on.

The most common parenting mistake is to soothe the struggle. Fixing the issue for the child might calm the household, but it short-circuits the kid’s movement toward solving their own problem. The well-intended parent just solved it for them. Unfortunately, the struggle must happen again and, hopefully, the parent will, this time, endure the discomfort long enough to let the emerging bud burst into a flower.

It’s hard to see your child in a state of discomfort. They, in turn, experience their parents’ anxiety and a contagious exchange is then ignited. Instinct clamors for stress reduction. The wise parent embraces the trouble as a growth opportunity.

Here’s the mantra: “I know this is hard and I’m confident in your ability to handle it.” Parents need to communicate this mantra at a time when they AREN’T confident in their child’s ability to manage the situation. This is what enables the struggle to become a coping skill.

Try it. Delay your gratification. Rather than expecting immediate maturation, observe how the struggle unfolds. Savor your kid’s new acquisition. The struggle always precedes the growth.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

Nothing New Under The Sun

Nothing New Under The Sun

by | Feb 24, 2023 | Parenting

Let’s challenge the notion that there’s nothing new under the sun. Navigating the journey through childhood and adolescence these days is nothing like the world these kids’ parents and grandparents traversed. To begin with, everything is more intense.

To make matters worse, the window of childhood has shrunken down to about ten years. Puberty and all of the other adult-level stressors launch at about 4th grade. These kids’ parents are barely out of their 30s, about the age when adults start to figure out the parenting puzzle.

Fortunately, the modern parenting landscape isn’t as bleak as it sounds. Humans are the only mammal whose lifespan extends beyond childbearing capacity. Mothers have the opportunity to lean on grandmothers who lean on great-grandmothers. Fathers lean on grandfathers who lean on great-grandfathers.

While the landscape is nothing like the challenges faced by the two previous generations, the example of our elders still offers relevant guideposts. Whether it’s how to or how not to, the history and experience of our predecessors help to shape our current perspective and actions.

A colleague once shared that most of the good parenting decisions she and her husband had made were nothing more than luck plus experimentation based on what they knew didn’t work in their own histories. The kids weren’t born with instruction manuals and neither of them had been raised in families with reliable role modeling.

Eventually, we all figure it out. Learning from others, however, is far more efficient. Whether the guiding precedent comes in the form of a therapist, a parent, or a grandparent, why wait for life to solve its own puzzles?

Asking for help is a strength.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.