Reproducible Activities to Address the Challenges Families Face Today
All families experience struggles, stress, and crises at one time or another. These will often disrupt the unity and functioning of the family and its members. The focus of this workbook is to explore the aspects of living with a family member, or being the family member, who has an emotional or physical challenge, and to provide help for ALL of the family members to effectively adjust and manage the situation in the best way possible.
When family members learn that they have developed an emotional or physical challenge, or that another member of the family has special needs, many of the family members will go through stages that resemble the stages of grief. Regardless of their makeup and family dynamics, family members proceed through a wide variety of stages related to being responsible for taking care of a special needs family member.
This workbook contains the materials facilitators need to work with changes that occur in the family structure, functioning, and level of stress related to being responsible for caring for a special-needs family member.
The Managing Family Life Involving a Member with Emotional or Physical Challenges Workbook is designed to be used either independently or as part of an integrated curriculum. You may administer any of the assessments and the guided self-exploration activities to an individual or multiple family members with whom you are working, or you may administer any of the activities over multiple sessions. Feel free to pick and choose those assessments and activities that best lead to the outcomes you desire. The assessments and activities are divided into four chapters to help you identify and select assessments easily and quickly.
Chapter I: Stress
This chapter helps all family members explore types and level of stress they are experiencing as part of a family with a person with an emotional and/or physical challenge and with other family members.
Chapter II: Changes
This chapter helps all family members explore and manage the changes to their personal and family life when having a person with an emotional and/or physical challenge as a member of the family.
Chapter III: Feelings
This chapter helps all family members explore how they are managing their current feelings associated with their family situation.
Chapter IV: Positivity
This chapter helps all family members explore the various ways that having a person with an emotional and/or physical challenge as a member of the family can have a positive effect individually on family members and on the family as a whole.
All assessments and worksheets in this workbook are fully reproducible for your convenience. This workbook is spiral bound to facilitate making copies of the various activities and handouts.