Arts Activities for Children and Young People in Need: Helping Children to Develop Mindfulness, Spiritual Awareness and Self-Esteem

by Diana Coholic

Overview

Art-based activities can develop resilience and self-esteem, enabling children in need to cope better with ongoing stress and loss. Arts Activities for Children and Young People in Need offers interventions and exercises drawn from practice and research, for practitioners to use as a basis for their own arts-based groups or one-to-one sessions.

Holistic arts activities facilitate a spiritually sensitive approach. Mindfulness-based exercises underpin the approach, and include guided meditations in which a group imagines that they are clouds, or draw feelings and emotions while listening to music, to encourage awareness of the senses. The activities help the group to relax and become more self-aware, encourage an exploration of feelings, values and understanding and are beneficial for children not ready to embrace traditional therapies or counselling.

This book is accessible and suitable for helping, health and education practitioners and students from a variety of disciplines, such as social work, psychology and counselling.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781849050012
Publisher:	Kingsley, Jessica Publishers
Publication date:	03/15/2010
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.18(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.43(d)

About the Author

Diana Coholic is Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Laurentian University, Canada. Her research programme studies the effectiveness of holistic arts-based methods with children who have significant problems. She has been a social work practitioner for 18 years, and also maintains a small private practice working with children and young people.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 9

Introduction 11

1 The Usefulness of Holistic Arts-Based Methods 23

Overview of holistic arts-based programmes 23

The current context of arts-based and holistic practice and knowledge 26

Characteristics of children and young people in need 29

Aiming to improve self-awareness and self-esteem 37

Treating trauma 40

Outcomes and feedback 44

Conclusion 49

2 Spirituality and Spiritually Sensitive Helping 55

Conceptualizations of spirituality within helping and health professions 55

Spirituality and children 59

Facilitating spiritually sensitive discussions 70

Death, life and safety issues 74

Conclusion 82

3 Mindfulness-Based Practice 87

What is mindfulness? 87

Mindfulness as a holistic philosophy and practice 89

Mindfulness and children 91

Facilitating mindfulness 92

Conclusion 124

4 Building Imagination, Self-Awareness and Strengths 127

Encouraging awareness of feelings and emotions 127

Using imagination and focusing on strengths 134

Developing self-awareness 141

Working with dreams 148

Conclusion 154

5 Working in Groups 157

Benefits and challenges 157

Group structure 159

The number of sessions and size of the group 164

Primer activities 169

Developing group cohesion and functioning 171

Additional benefits-Learning about values and needs 175

Closing exercises 178

Conclusion 187

Afterword 189

Subject Index 190

Author Index 192

Editorial Reviews

The book describes many techniques for the purpose of drawing out feelings. Participants are helped to recognise the value of choices, enabling them to act on thoughts rather than impulse with negative consequences...I recommend this book for its thoughtful approach, holistic philosophy, and the variety of easily accessible techniques.

Joan Moore Dramatherapy