Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP)

This treatment model serves young children from birth through age five and their parents/caregivers. One of the main goals of Child-Parent Psychotherapy is to support and strengthen the parent-child relationship as this relationship is central to the child’s healing, development, and well-being.

One of our main goals through Child-Parent Psychotherapy is to support and strengthen your relationship with your child. We believe that you are central to your child’s development and well-being. If your child is facing challenges, you are critical to your child’s healing. Unfortunately, many families go through stressful experiences. Families and children we work with teach us that young children (even babies) are very sensitive to stress in their environments. They are not immune to these experiences, but they can recover with the support of parents and other caregivers. Very stressful or scary experiences can teach young children unspoken lessons that then affect their development and their behavior. Stressful experiences can also affect young children because these experiences can affect the mood and functioning of the grown-ups around them. Young children learn from watching us. Our worries can become their worries, and when we are under significant stress, we might become irritable, impatient, or withdrawn. Young children often blame themselves for their parents’ moods and behavior.

We believe in the commonly used phrase "it takes a village to raise a child". We hope that we can become part of your village.

What happens during CPP?

We work together in three stages:

1. Getting to Know the Child & Family - we spend time meeting alone with parents or caregivers to understand the family's:
   • Needs & Challenges
   • Strengths & Values
   • History & Experiences
2. Addressing Family Needs - we usually meet once a week with the parent or caregiver and child. We help parents or caregivers and children to:
   • Understand each other
   • Talk and play about difficult experiences
   • Respond to difficult feelings and behaviors
   • Create a family story that leads to healing
3. Wrapping Up & Planning for the Future -
   • We celebrate changes the family has made
   • We talk about how parents and caregivers made changes happen
   • We consider how endings and goodbyes may bring up different feelings
   • We talk about what will be needed in the future

**The use of evidence-based interventions aligns with our agency's vision to be the foremost mental health provider for youth, adults, and families in Carroll County by providing innovative, culturally sensitive, and highly-effective treatment. CCYSB curently uses five treatments which are evidence-based models requiring fidelity to the model.