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In the ever-increasing world of step, or blended, families, there is nevertheless an under-resourced field of tailored therapeutic support available. This book provides a comprehensive and solutions focused guide for all professionals seeking to understand the complexities and requirements of working with stepfamilies.
The book is extremely well structured and takes a step-by-step approach to enable professionals to feel confident in giving appropriate and effective support and advice. Written by a leading British stepfamily expert, the book is peppered with real world examples to contextualize and describe the realities of life in a modern stepfamily. Using well researched and evidenced based theories, Dr Doodson has delivered a manual filled with practical tips and tools that reflect the understanding and methods necessary for negotiating the unique challenges and emotions experienced by stepfamilies as opposed to biological families.
The first two chapters clearly set out the diverse nature of stepfamilies and clarify the subtle differences and challenges faced by the individual members within them, and the relationships between them. These chapters also analyse the differing stories, emotions and demands experienced by the individuals as they try to establish their place and identify their role within the stepfamily unit in order to allow the reader to relate these to clients in their own work settings. The author also suggests short exercises for practitioners to use with clients to open up thinking and discussion and offers tips that could be shared with individuals in order to reassure and advise them.
Chapter 3 presents the supporting psychological theory by introducing a new model of therapeutic intervention devised by the author and specifically targeted at stepfamilies called IST - Integrated Stepfamily Therapy. This theory adopts a behavioural and solutions focused approach based on empirical evidence and three existing theories and the chapter describes an