Group Activities for Latino/a Youth Strengthening Identities and Resiliencies through Counseling

Directly applicable to practice, Group Activities for Latino/a Youth allows helping professionals such as human service workers, social workers, and school and community mental health counselors to select and apply a series of group sessions with topics relevant to today?s Latino/a youth. Each session contains detailed directions, suggested discussion questions, and additional readings on specific topics, with topic examples including grief, identity development, and conflict resolution. Sessions draw on Latino/a cultural norms and strengths to build culturally-informed communication and coping skills in an effort to improve educational, social, and career outcomes. A developmental perspective is used, and sessions are designed to be creative and interactive in order to appeal to the high energy and playfulness of youth at any age. Group Activities for Latino/a Youth helps professionals to better engage and retain Latino/a clients, a group that traditionally experiences one of the largest drop-out rates in therapy, often due to interventions largely informed by dominant Anglo norms and traditions.

I: Introduction 1: Who are Latino/a/as Krista M. Malott and Tina R. Paone 2: Stressors and Barriers for Latino/a Youth Krista M. Malott and Tina R. Paone 3: Ethnic Identity and Resilienies Krista M. Malott and Tina R. Paone II: Group Sessions 4: Latio/a Youth and Ethnic Identity Development Krista M. Malott and Tina R. Paone 5: Lation/a Youth and Grief Mary G. Mayorga, Katrina Cook, Tamara Hinojosa, Suzanne Mudge and Elizabeth A. Wardle 6: Understanding LGBTQA Latino/a Youth Kara Ieva and Kristine Weiss 7: Creando Esperanza: Hope Groups Lisa M. Edwards and Jessica McClintock 8: Latino/a Youth and Healthy Relationships
Jose M. Maldonado and Pietro Sasso 9: Promoting Critical Consciousness in Latino/a Youth Ijeoma Ezeofor, Jamie C. Welch, and Richard Q. Shin

Krista M. Malott, PhD, is an associate professor at Villanova University. A licensed professional counselor, she has worked as a bilingual (Spanish-English) counselor with Latino youth and their families across a myriad of settings, including schools, a drug and alcohol clinic, a prison in Ecuador, and a domestic violence shelter.

Tina R. Paone, PhD, is associate professor at Monmouth University. A licensed professional counselor and registered play therapist supervisor, she incorporates the use of creative activities to teach about diversity topics in the classroom.