From January 2021, the State Inspectorate for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (VBTAI) will offer a new service for families – family psychotherapy. The service includes family psychotherapy counseling for families with children and group psychotherapy sessions as support measures for children aged 12 to 18 whose parents are living apart or in the process of divorce.
“The new service will provide significant support to families in a crisis situation, who in most cases need psychotherapy, but often do not have enough funds for it,” says Inga Gulbe, Head of the VBTAI Advisory Department. Initially, the new service will be provided for one year, but if its results are good, it can be extended. The service for families will be free of charge.
Family psychotherapy counseling will be provided for the whole family with children of any age, incl. children under the age of 12, without setting a specific limitation on the issues identified in the family (parental divorce, child behavioral problems, mental illness of a parent, loss of a relative, etc.). The duration of one family psychotherapy consultation is planned from one to one and a half hours. Depending on the specifics of each case and the assessment of the service provider, the family will be able to receive from one to ten consultations, but the total number of consultations for the family will not exceed 10 hours.
“The goal of family psychotherapy counseling will be to help the family as a whole to create and improve the quality of family life, for example by mobilizing and developing family resources, promoting successful and healthy functioning of families, supporting family members in building respectful, mutually supportive and understanding relationships. to better agree among themselves on the future care of the child, respectfully resolving mutual differences ”, emphasizes Gulbe.
It is also planned to implement group psychotherapy sessions for one year. They are primarily intended as support measures for children aged 12 to 18 (excluding) whose parents are living apart or in the process of divorce. In these sessions, children will be divided into two age groups – from 12-13 years and 14-18 years (excluding). The expected duration of one session will be two hours, with up to 10 group sessions per group. Large groups of up to 20 children are planned, it is planned to organize 70 groups during the year.
Group psychotherapy sessions will aim to strengthen children’s personality and independence, for example by helping children not only to recognize their emotions, to experience a dignified opportunity to talk about internal conflicts, conflicts with parents, and conflicts between parents, separating themselves from parental conflicts, but also at this age. the support of such important peers and the opportunity to orient oneself and the world in mutual communication, to reduce the feeling of loneliness and exclusion, to see and learn different, safer and healthier strategies of psycho-emotional survival in the current situation, etc.
Both family psychotherapy consultations and group psychotherapy sessions are planned to be provided by private psychotherapists and / or psychotherapy specialists in private practices throughout Latvia.
The application for the service will start in the autumn.
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