Clinical Guide to Helping New Parents

Free Direct Download Clinical Guide to Helping New Parents - The Couple CARE for Parents Program1

 Across a long life together most couples face at least one signifi cant health challenge, and negotiate multiple life transitions that can impact on their health. The central theme of this book series is that the couple relationship is a central infl uence on health, both physical and mental health. Partner interactions are so crucial that, in essence, couples conjointly cope with major stress. This conjoint coping can be positive and benefi cial or negative and harmful .  There is now clear evidence that if health professionals work with couples, and help them conjointly to manage life stresses, it can meaningfully enhance health outcomes. The  Couples and Health  book series is intended to service the needs of professionals who work with couples, but who may not have expertise in working on health related issues. It guides professionals in the best evidence-based approaches to help couples better their relationships so that the relationship can become a buffer against stressful health and life events.  This includes books focused on couples in which on spouse has a specifi c chronic health problem, and on books focused on couples making life transitions that are associated with health. While there is overlap among the books in terms of relationship enhancement material, each book provides unique health or event content pertaining to each title.   This series is intended to assist busy clinicians incorporate into their clincial practice the best available evidence on working with couples working within diffi cult circumstances. We hope you will regularly turn to the books in the series on your e-reader or book shelf when planning a client session and fi nd useful information. If that happens then we have achieved what we set out to do. 

 W. Kim Halford and Tamara G. Sher  Series Co-editors 

 More information about this series at   http://www.springer.com/series/11191   

 In this book, we present an evidence-based approach to relationship and infant care education for couples having a child together. The program is called Couple CARE for Parents (CPP), and is intended to assist couples to sustain and strengthen their relationship as they become parents. C CP is distinctive from couple therapy. CCP is focused on relationship enhancement, relationship commitment, and prevention of relationship distress. CCP uses the positive feelings of the partners as a resource to build momentum for positive change as they adapt to parenthood. CCP also includes education and skill building to assist partners to support each other, and parent their baby in a sensitive and responsive manner. In contrast, couple therapy is focused on the treatment of existing relationship distress. Couple therapy necessarily deals with resolving longstanding grievances, negative thoughts, and feelings about the relationship.  

 CCP is most commonly provided in a mixed delivery format. In the antenatal period, which is when we recommend starting CCP, we offer couples a one-day face-to-face workshop. We fi nd couples often appreciate the chance to share experiences with other expectant couples. Subsequent to that workshop we usually offer CCP as a mixture of home visits and fl exible delivery. Flexible delivery is built around self-directed learning materials (such as online materials, printed worksheets, and instructional DVDs) that couples complete at home, usually with telephone-b ased or Internet-based support from a health professional. The home visit and fl exible delivery are intended to make CCP easy to access. At the same time, different contexts and health delivery systems might make other program delivery formats more appropriate. This book describes CCP in the usual format in which we deliver it, but also describes how different formats can be used to provide CCP to couples. T his book has eight chapters. The fi rst chapter briefl y analyzes the most relevant research on what infl uences couple adjustment as they become parents, and what approaches to couple relationship education are most effective to assist new parents. Chapters   2    –  8     describe the units that make up CPP. There are descriptions of content areas to be covered, and specifi c couple and group exercises are presented. The book includes suggestions about how the content and process of CCP can be  tailored to meet unique couple needs

 e aim to make the book useful to practitioners. There are boxed sections called Practice Tips that provide very specifi c suggestion on how to enhance the effectiveness of sessions with couples. We also have all the clinical handouts included in the book available as handouts that can be downloaded from the Springer link web site for this book at   http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4939-1613-9    . The effective delivery of the program also draws upon the personal experience and knowledge of you the reader. In order to prompt thinking on how your personal experiences might be used in delivering CPP, we have included boxed sections called Clinical Connections. In these boxes, we pose questions that we plan to stimulate refl ection on how your personal experiences might be drawn on in program delivery. We hope that our writing captures the blend of applied science and compassionate practice that we think characterizes good couple relationship education.  

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