For Children's Sake

For Children's Sake is a program that provides assessment and treatment services for children from domestic violence environments. The program is operated out of the Department of Psychology's Psychological Services Center. The services provided include:

For children:
Children who have witnessed domestic violence are provided with individual or group counseling. The children's groups are determined by the ages of the children in the program each semester. These groups educate children about the cycle of violence and its effects as well as help children realize that they are not alone on this issue. The groups also provide opportunities for children to talk about their experiences and express how they think and feel about domestic violence. Violence prevention activities in the schools are also provided as a service of For Children's Sake.

For parents:
Parents are provided with on-going consultation, along with the opportunity to participate in weekly parent training/education groups. These groups are tailored to address specific issues related to parenting and domestic violence, such as what to do now that the parent is a single parent, how to help children adjust to all the changes they have experienced as a result of the domestic violence, how to manage children's aggression, how to cope with stress and other emotions that may be felt being a parent in a domestic violence situation, and how parents' emotions affect children.

Counseling services:
The counseling services are provided by students in the School Psychology Doctoral program who work under the supervision of the project directors.

Undergraduate students:
Undergraduates can obtain course credit by assisting with the running of the weekly children's groups by providing child care to children who are too young to participate. In addition to assisting the clinicians who run the children's groups, undergraduates can participate in the clinical staffings and, from these experiences, begin to learn what counseling of children is like. Generally, they also write a paper about their experience. This paper is a review of the literature on some aspect of domestic violence.

How to participate:
Each semester there is only very limited space for one or two undergraduate students to assist with the program. If you are interested, contact Dr. Adena Meyers by e-mail at abmeyer@ilstu.edu.