Healing Together

For families who have experienced domestic violence, therapeutic support can provide some relief from experiences of stress, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). YWCA Spokane offers a specialized therapy program for youth 7-18 years old who have second hand experience with domestic violence in their household. The program is designed to provide a safe space for them to heal from this specific kind of trauma.

Our youth therapy program centers education, empowerment, and support throughout the therapy provided. This allows survivors' children to understand the therapeutic process and make an informed decision with how they’d like to proceed. Our child therapist, Caroline, works directly with survivors and their children to help them process trauma and build healthier futures.

The work we do with families is all about building trust, understanding, and creating a space where healing can begin. As Caroline shares, “Getting to know these families and watching them grow in comfort and ease is truly the best part of the work.” It’s about the relationships we build with the child, parent, and family unit.

Meeting Families Where They Are

Our youth therapy program centers relationships, helping families heal together. “We do our best to figure out what the family needs,” says Melva Moore, Director of Mental Health Services, who oversees the program.

Families come to us at different points in their journey. Some may seek one-on-one therapy for a child, while others may benefit from family therapy or parent coaching. The goal, whether working with a child individually or guiding parents through difficult conversations, is always to foster understanding, connection, and healing.

As an agency that specializes in intimate partner domestic violence, we have a deep understanding of the complexities that can occur within relationship abuse and can understand how the violence may have impacted a family without requiring the survivor to explain in great detail, which may be retraumatizing and potentially unnecessary for healing. This sense of shared understanding between therapist and family helps to reduce barriers to communication, allowing for a more open and effective therapy relationship.

The Power of Play

For children, our therapy process often begins with play. Play is a natural way for youth to express themselves, work through trauma, and rebuild a sense of control. “They see all the toys and they want to play with all the toys right away,” Caroline says with a smile. “The entry to most of my relationships is through play.”

Using toys, art materials, and activities like making beaded bracelets or playing with LEGO sets, Caroline provides children a safe space to express themselves. These activities can help them process difficult emotions and even recreate stories, which can facilitate healing. Caroline might see a child replay the same storyline in different sessions, but overtime the narrative of the story shifts.

“In nondirective play therapy, we let the child be the expert in their own life,” emphasizes Melva. “We stay curious about what’s happening and try to understand their world.” It can be incredibly healing for children to have the space to process and change how a story ends.

Supporting Parents

Throughout a youth’s therapy journey, we maintain consistent communication with the parent to incorporate them into the process. During parent coaching sessions, Caroline may explain appropriate developmental stage behaviors and recommendations to address behavioral challenges. Through these education sessions, she can also dive deep into how domestic violence may have changed their parenting.

“Domestic violence may have impacted how they want to parent or how they wish they could parent,” Caroline says. “By recognizing and validating these challenges, we work with parents to rebuild trust with their children and break cycles of trauma.”

Beyond helping parents understand their children better, we help them understand themselves. “We talk about how culture, race, and gender play a role in parenting,” Melva adds. “We ask them about their values and discuss how they can incorporate those values into their parenting techniques.”

Healing the Whole Family

The impact of this therapy goes beyond just reducing symptoms. Children and families report tangible improvements in both emotional and physical well-being. Caroline describes the transformation she sees in youth as “getting to see them develop into themselves and get relief from the burden of the past.”

Parents may first pursue therapy for their youth after noticing a new behavioral change or challenge. Having something clear and trackable helps direct the therapeutic goals. The progress can be qualitative with youth demonstrating a noticeable shift in body language, from slouching and avoiding eye contact to being comfortable in the space and engaged.

The program also uses quantitative measures like mental health assessments for anxiety, hyper-vigilance, and PTSD. It can also include youth self-reporting, with one child remarking, “I don’t think I need to come here anymore.” Feeling as though they’re done and have no more to say can indicate that they’ve successfully moved through processing and are ready to continue forward with resilience.

Realities of Youth Therapy

The need for youth therapy is always present. Having specialized staff with the appropriate creative space to work with youth is crucial. There is so much potential for the youth therapy program to grow. In the first year of the program, we served 50 unique families.

Scheduling is another barrier for some participants. "We only have so many slots after 4pm,” says Melva. The afternoons fill up quickly, with many parents finding it challenging to fit weekly therapy sessions into their schedules. Additionally, some parents are hesitant to pull their children from school for a weekly mental health appointment, even for just a few months.

Caroline and Melva hope that one day they can build upon the youth therapy model they have established and expand the program. They think about how amazing it would be to integrate parenting education and child therapy into our preschool and shelter programs. Youth therapy will continue to build safe spaces to support children and families. Melva shares, “There is so much healing that can happen when a child feels safe and secure.”

Learn More

Find more information about our programs for youth at ywcaspokane.org/youth-programs.