CPHC Affiliated Service Site: Wellspring Family Services – Seattle, WA

A site which hosted RNT.

Wellspring Family Services (formerly King County Family Services) began its collaboration with The Children’s Psychological Health Center in 2007 when 14 therapists and teachers received four days of intensive initial training in RNT, which included many treatment sessions with the traumatized, homeless, and recently homeless preschool children then being served in Morningsong Early Learning Center.

Teachers were amazed when they saw how quickly their three-year-old pupils opened up and began to talk meaningfully and movingly about their traumas, and to show behavioral improvements and cognitive leaps during their very first in-classroom treatment sessions.

CPHC provided ongoing training and supervision through site visits by senior staff, frequent video conferencing, onsite conferences, phone consultations and seminars. Keith Myers, LICSW, VP of Clinical and Training Services for Wellspring, and Dr. Kliman collaborated to coordinate efforts. Catherine Henderson, PhD of the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute was eager to refer prospective serv ice project therapists for training in Reflective Network Therapy for the Early Learning Center preschool (then called Morningsong). Therapist-teacher teams began using RNT in this community-based agency’s new and much larger facility, largely funded by donors, including the Kresge Foundation.

Video documentary of actual treatment sessions conducted at this affiliated service site are valuable for research and as a training resource for teachers and therapists—an important addition to our hundreds of hours of such archived video. Many of CPHC’s videos are available to qualified professionals who sign confidentiality agreements. Contributions funded Reflective Network Therapy preschool services in Seattle for several years. Wellspring administrators, teachers and therapists continue to be enthusiastic about how well and how quickly their children responded to the method’s structured combination of therapy with learning.

Wellspring continues to serve about 90 homeless, traumatized preschoolers per year. A child specialist is on hand for their play group program to provide in-classroom or out-of-classroom therapy. www.wellspringfs.org