Filial Therapy: A Child-Centered, Attachment-Based, Emotion-Focused, and Skill Training Family Therapy

Filial Therapy began in the 1960s and was a dramatic change for children’s therapy. Dr. Bernard G. Guerney, Jr. and his wife, Dr. Louise Fisher Guerney are the creators of Filial Therapy. They taught parents how to offer child-centered play therapy as a way to treat their children’s problems. They believed that an educational treatment model would be more effective than a medical model approach. Filial Therapy is evidence-based with a history of research that supports it to be an intervention program within the family unit. Filial Therapy instructs parents how to have child-centered play sessions with their children in their own home.

Therapists learn how to train the parents to have effective child-centered play therapy sessions with their children from infancy to twelve years of age in the privacy of their own home. Parents will have play sessions once a week for six months up to a year or more. This allows children to express themselves freely, improve their self concept, and take responsibility for their actions. Filial Therapy has been utilized successfully to help with a wide range of child and family challenges, including but not limited to:

• Relationship problems
• Depression
• Oppositional behavior
• Family reunification
• Abuse/neglect
• Single parenting
• Attachment disruptions
• Foster care and adoption
• Divorce adjustment
• Family substance abuse

This web conference is designed to help clinicians:

1. Identify the importance of an educational skill-training approach that fosters attachment and stability in the family and its members;
2. Recognize the principles and methods of child-centered play therapy;
3. Tutor parents in conducting weekly child-centered play sessions at home;
4. Explain the structured, systematic, and time-designated nature of Filial Therapy;
5. Recognize the principles and methods of therapist leadership skills;
6. Apply and integrate Filial Therapy and/or aspects of this model in their own work.

If you have any questions about this Web Conference or would like more information, please contact us here.

Continuing Education (CE) Information

1.5 CE credits will be provided by GoodTherapy.org for attending this web conference in its entirety.

GoodTherapy.org is also an Approved Education Provider by NAADAC, The Association for Addiction Professionals (provider #135463). Of the eight counselor skill groups ascribed to by NAADAC, this course is classified within counseling services.

GoodTherapy.org is an NBCC-Approved Continuing Education Provider (ACEPTM) and may offer NBCC-approved clock hours for events that meet NBCC requirements.

GoodTherapy.org, provider #1352, is approved as a provider for social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) www.aswb.org, through the Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. ASWB Approval Period: March 30, 2016 through March 30, 2019. Social workers should contact their regulatory board to determine course approval. Social workers participating in this course will receive two clinical continuing education clock hours.

GoodTherapy.org is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. GoodTherapy.org maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

GoodTherapy.org, SW CPE is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #0395.

To receive CE credit hours for an archived event, you will need to complete a survey as well as a 12 or 15-question exam, verifying that you listened to or watched the event in its entirety. Archived CE events generally are considered "homestudy" by licensing boards.

Registration Information

This Web Conference is available for free to GoodTherapy.org Members.

If the event is canceled by GoodTherapy, registrants who purchased the event will be notified and the charge for the event will be refunded

If you have any questions or would like information regarding disability accommodations, please contact us.

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