About Us:
Strategic Therapy Associates, Inc. provides intensive in-home, outpatient, mentoring, and mental health support service across Central Southside & Southwest, Virginia.
Opened in 1994, Strategic works to prevent unnecessary placement and help children, adults, and families lead happier, more fulfilled lives. We believe that all clients (either rich or poor) deserve to have quality services available to them.
Strategic employs a team of well-trained, caring professionals who use creative, change-oriented solutions to help clients improve their lives. Therapists are trained in Strategic Family Therapy, and counselors are trained in the Nurtured Heart Approach. Both are methods for helping clients that are positive, change-oriented, and strengths-based. Clients are treated as individuals with unique problems and situations.
Locally owned and operated, Strategic is large enough to provide a continuum of quality services to our clients, yet small enough to be flexible in addressing their individual needs. We make a difference in the lives of children and families.
Our Mission:
Few things in life are sadder than the suffering of a child. When children hurt, their families and all who love them hurt. At Strategic Therapy Associates, the safety and well-being of children is our priority. We are a dedicated team of life-long learning professionals who constantly strive to evolve their professional skills in order to keep families together by focusing on their strengths and empowering the family to solve their own problems. We believe that all children have the right to grow up in a loving family environment where everyone is safe, well-cared for and protected. We take responsibility for preventing abuse and neglect and the unnecessary placement or institutionalization of children. We put parents in loving charge of their children; we restore stability, laughter and love to families, schools and communities.
The Strategic Approach:
Rooted in the work of Milton Erickson and the Bateson Project, Strategic Therapy was developed by Jay Haley and Cloe' Madanes through their work at the Family Therapy Institute of Washington, D.C. A systemic approach, some of its characteristics follow:
1. It is a theory of optimism and hope rather than explaining problems as pathological and terminal.
2. It is a therapy of change rather than insight without action, promoting solutions and new behaviors over understanding and excuses about why problems should exist.
3. Strategic therapy is dedicated to the premise that therapists should practice in an active,directive, and skillful fashion.
4. The tone of therapy is warm and respectful, often with a playful nature. Humor is used frequently.
5. The uniqueness of clients and the need for interventions tailored to that uniqueness is respected. The therapist is expected to work within the client’s own world view whenever possible.
6. Flexibility is a key element of the therapy, and different approaches are needed for the variety of presenting problems and cultural, ethnic, and social contexts brought to therapy.
7. It is a therapy of responsibility – of parents for children, of therapists for clients, and of supervisors for supervisees.
8. Strategic therapy is a therapy of justice and advocacy in which therapists take strong stands against violence and abuse and advocate for children, families, and those living in poverty.
A brief, pragmatic approach to solving problems, strategic therapy has proven to be effective with some of the most severe cases.
