Parenting in Today's World: Clinical Conversations

Intervening with Fathers Who Have Been Violent: The Fathers for Change Model
About this Event

2 CE HOURS
NY Practitioners - LCSWs, LMSWs, LPs, LMFTs, LMHCs, LCATs, PHDs, PSYDs

Fathers for Change (F4C) is a novel, individual clinical intervention for fathers who have been violent with their partners and/or children. F4C addresses 9 individually focused core topics, 4 co-parent topics, and 5 father-child focused topics in 60-minute individual therapy sessions over 18-24 weeks. In the context of a strong working alliance developed through focus on fatherhood, F4C employs a continual emphasis on reflective functioning and emotion regulation skills. Improvement in these targets in turn leads to reduced intimate partner violence (IPV) and child maltreatment. F4C motivates the father to change by continually recognizing his desire to be a better parent and facilitating his ability to reflect on the experiences of his co-parent and children and learn skills to manage his emotions to improve outcomes for his family. This presentation will include: 1) an overview of F4C intervention, the theory of change and research data to support F4C as an emerging evidence based approach to reducing IPV.

Presenter

Carla Smith Stover, PhD is a Professor at the Yale University School of Medicine’s Child Study Center, and an Investigator with the IPV Center for Implementation, Research and Evaluation at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System. Dr. Stover was awarded a Career Award from the National Institute of Drug Abuse that began her research on interventions for fathers to reduce intimate partner violence (IPV) and substance misuse behaviors and improve parenting. She developed Fathers for Change and her recent book published by Guilford Press Fathers and Violence: A Program to Change Behavior, Improve Parenting and Heal Relationships is the manual for this intervention approach. She currently has two NIH research grants to conduct clinical trials of Fathers for Change. One for families involved with child protective services due to IPV and the other for fathers with co-occurring IPV and substance misuse disorders seeking substance use treatment in the community or the VA. She has presented trainings internationally on the topics of family conflict, healthy relationships, family violence, engaging and treating fathers and interventions for childhood trauma.