What Therapists Need to Know About Perinatal and Early Relational Health. A Guide to Anti-Oppressive Counseling with Caregivers, Babies, and Young Children

What Therapists Need to Know About Perinatal and Early Relational Health is a vital and timely text that will strengthen any clinician’s awareness and competence when working with children, infants, and caregivers. All the chapters are written from a framework of cultural humility to support the competent care of individuals with different intersectionalities. Cultural humility involves critical self-reflection and critique of values, beliefs, and experiences, and so each chapter provides reflective questions and tools that support clinicians’ anti-oppressive practices.

What Therapists Need to Know About Perinatal and Early Relational Health offers practical strategies that are rooted in diversity-informed tenets and support reflection on our values, beliefs, and experiences. By embracing the wisdom within these pages, therapists can transform their practice into one that is more relational and heart-centered.

CONTENTS

Section 1: Introduction  1. Bridging the Gaps Observed: Reflections on Counseling Perinatal Caregivers and their Little Ones  Section 2: Establishing the Framework  2. Grounding the Relational Approach to Therapy  3. An Overview of the Perinatal Period  4. Supporting Babies and Young Children  5. Leaning into Reflective Practice  6. Aspiring to Embody Cultural Humility  Section 3: Conducting Assessments  7. Partnering Through the Assessment  8. The Invitation to Deepen the Relationship  Section 4: Interventions for Perinatal Individuals and their Little Ones  9. Parental Reflective Capacity  10. Play as a Pathway to Healing  11. The Caregiver as a Whole Person  Section 5. Transitioning Out of Counseling  12. The Theraputic Pause