Helping Engage Families

Larry’s family began coming to SCAN after being involved with DCS. SCAN’s team began conducting both therapeutic supervised visits and individual therapy with Larry and his children, Jessica and Isabella.

At first, the children would often shut down and disengage from the visits, especially when any discussions arose involving their emotion. Larry also struggled with expressing himself as it went against what he knew growing up. Moreover, he would often dismiss Jessica and Isabella’s emotions and respond in less nurturing ways, reinforcing the cycle.

After several months of therapy, the family started becoming more comfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings and gaining a sense of hope. Larry, in particular, started responding in ways that were beyond his comfort zone, with the support of the SCAN therapist.

Larry started responding in more nurturing ways, such as asking questions and being less dismissive, and Jessica and Isabella started opening up more. At the end of the year, Larry and therapist reached a point of helping him take ownership of how his old ways of responding was not beneficial to his children, and how he truly wanted to do it better. Therefore, Larry became more vulnerable and apologize to the children for the way he was responding in the past and talked to them about how he plans to do it differently in the future.

Less than three months after that, Jessica and Isabella started having partially supervised visits in the home and they fell safer than ever before.

Learn more about these services by visiting the Family Connections page.