Abstract
This chapter describes the Group Attachment-Based Intervention (GABI) specifically designed for clinical work with marginalized, socially isolated parents and their children, aged zero to three years. GABI aims to prevent child maltreatment by developing secure parent/child attachment relationships, promoting infant mental health, and reducing parental stress and social isolation. The theoretical and research background to GABI, an illustration of how it is delivered, and how it is taught to trainees, are the focus of this chapter. Reflective functioning is a central feature of the approach, serving both as a therapeutic goal and an organizing feature of the supervision of trainee clinicians. A unique feature of the chapter is the presentation of two clinical vignettes abstracted from over 50 h of video footage of the clinical work that forms the basis of the GABI manual.
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Notes
- 1.
The manual has been developed over the last few years with many New School graduate students including Kiara Schlesinger, Ellie Figelman Neuman and more recently Jordan Bate, Kerri Chladnicek, Sarah Jackson, Hannah Knafo, Adella Nikitiades, Michael Kinsey, Carmen LaLonde, Jessica Retan, Sophia Hoffman, and Rie von Wowern.
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Murphy, A., Steele, M., Steele, H. (2013). From Out of Sight, Out of Mind to In Sight and In Mind: Enhancing Reflective Capacities in a Group Attachment-Based Intervention. In: Bettmann, J., Demetri Friedman, D. (eds) Attachment-Based Clinical Work with Children and Adolescents. Essential Clinical Social Work Series. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4848-8_11
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