It's Not Your Fault is a workbook for parents, family, and friends of parents of offenders or at risk (for criminal behavior) youth. Others who would find this workbook very helpful are: university professors and students, criminal justice and juvenile justice professionals, youth workers, and medical professionals who are working with troubled adolescents, juvenile offenders, children at risk of becoming juvenile delinquents, or their parents.
After reading this book, you will end the blame game - where parents and professionals spend valuable time trying to figure out who or what to blame for the child's behavior - and instead you will focus on moving forward. Parents are free to drop the guilt and shame that gets in the way of helping their child and their family. This approach requires the delinquent child to take responsibility for his own actions, and avoids the ineffective, misguided tactics of most treatment programs that seek to find reasons why the child has become a juvenile delinquent - sometimes ending in blaming the parents.
This workbook borrows heavily from proven cognitive behavioral therapy techniques where children identify and own thinking errors, complete daily logging and review change team behavior ratings. There are assessment components and team-building guidelines as well as compelling advice.
Author Cay Shea Hellervik has fifteen years of experience with adolescents who have committed serious crimes. Parents have played a critical role in her successful approach. It's Not Your Fault is the practical guide that one can follow step-by-step to help these troubled children turn their lives around.
About the Author: Cay Shea Hellervik was born and raised in Norwood, Ohio, the oldest of four children. With her husband, Lowell Hellervik, she is parent to two children, three stepchildren, and an adult "son" she and her husband brought from Russia. She graduated from the University of Dayton and earned her master's degree in developmental psychology from Saint Mary's University in Minnesota. The Minnesota Board of Social Work has granted her the status of Emeritus Licensed Independent Social Worker.
She was the director of a program for Hennepin County's (Minnesota) most serious juvenile offenders for fifteen years. It is here she became a tenacious cheerleader for the parents of serious juvenile offenders. She found that parents are commonly blamed for the choices their child makes, and she believes this blame game is wrong and even harmful.
Her book, It Is Not Your Fault, provides suggestions for actions parents can take to teach their children how to stop committing criminal acts, while also teaching them to make responsible choices by examining and controlling their own thinking and behavior.
