There are so many helping professionals who encounter Step/Blended families in their daily practice such as;
• School Counsellors and Teachers
• Family Therapists and Counsellors
• Family Doctors
• Family Mediators
• Personal Coaches
Unless they have had specialized training in this complex family system, they may actually be part of the problem rather than part of the solution to help their step/blended clients become successful Stepfamilies.
“Stepfamily Struggles-Stepfamily Strategies” is a must have valuable resource for any person in the “Helping” profession. You will gain a new understanding of the complexity of the family dynamics as well as be given tools and techniques to help serve these families.
Here are just a few of the techniques you are given;
• Help the family create a dialogue to understand and communicate the meaning of “family” from each family members’ point of view.
• Address a variety of common Step/Bended family assumptions and beliefs that can set a family up for failure
• You are provided with specific questions and points to help you determine the Stepparent Operating System
• Questions and exercises to incorporate into your practice to help you and your clients/families gain some clarity and understanding of what is keeping them stuck in the stepfamily chaos and conflict and more importantly, how to overcome these issues.
Brenda Hooper is a Nationally Certified Comprehensive Family Mediator and Masters Certified Stepfamily Coach. She has combined over 30 years of Stepfamily research with 8 years of mediating stepfamilies and developed her Stepfamily Mediation system that has helped a countless number of stepfamilies through the their challenges, chaos and conflict while at the same time honour each family and their uniqueness.
The tools and techniques Brenda has developed are now available to you so you have a quick, easy to read resource to help your families. The Professional’s Version of Stepfamily Struggles-Stepfamily Strategies can be used alone or in conjunction with the Family Version. Each slightly different, the families can work independently with their Family Version and if they have questions or need some help with the exercises, you have your Professional version to assist them.
Here are what some Professionals are saying about “Stepfamily Struggles-Stepfamily Strategies”
“Much to our delusion as clinicians, counsellors, and educators, we continue to see nuclear, biological families as the norm in Western society. Brenda Hooper’s Step Family Struggles, Step Family Strategies genially sets that notion to rest and points out to all professionals the importance of understanding, addressing and truly helping step-families who walk through our doors in pain to have a fighting chance at success!
Brenda has synthesized many sources of information, combined this with her inspirational and informative personal story as a step-mother, step-sister and step-daughter, and created a well-researched, easy-to-relate-to, and highly useful text for professionals. The unique problems step-families face given our nuclear-family centrism, the timing required to create new bonds and family models, and our own conscious and unconscious expectations and reluctances to face the challenges in creating a new “template” of family are well-described. More importantly, Brenda generously gives concrete strategies (right down to the kinds of questions to ask) that she uses in her practice to mediate the treacherous and, until now, uncharted territory of step-family survival and their thriving!
I wish I had this book in my hands in previous years of my couples counselling practice! More importantly, I wish such a book had been written as my own family of origin became a step-family 30 years ago. In my opinion, what we don’t know, we can’t understand; what we don’t understand, we can’t validate; what we can’t validate, we cannot be accurately empathic or effective. This book is a must-read for helping professionals dealing with families of all types to develop such effectiveness and empathy!”
Diane Anderson, MA
Registered Clinical Counsellor
Vancouver, Canada
“Step Family Struggles Step Family Strategies is a wonderful blend of the intuitive with research and personal experience and will be an invaluable resource for my work assisting clients in the restructuring of their families. The examples drawn from Brenda Hooper’s own experience add a heightened level of authenticity to this ebook, which will quickly become a must read for all practitioners working with families.”
Arlene H. Henry, QC, CMed
Mediator, Lawyer, Parenting Coordinator, ADR Trainer
