Used in over 500 health clinics, practices and schools around Australia, the Take Action program is an easy-to-use, flexible, and robustly effective CBT child anxiety disorder treatment designed for both individual and group use.
The benefits of Take Action include:
The Take Action Practitioner Guidebook is a user-friendly guide to the Take Action Program, detailing the assessment and treatment of child anxiety. It is designed to be used with two companion workbooks: the Take Action Child Handout Workbook and Take Action Parent Handout Workbook.
This easy-to-follow and comprehensive practitioner guide contains all six treatment modules, an assessment module with useful information on a range of assessments for those practitioners wanting to use pre or post intervention outcome measures, a background and theory section, and 124 child and parent handouts which may be photocopied. The treatment modules can be used sequentially across eight or ten weeks to provide an individual or group intervention or the modules can be used as stand-alone guides to teach specific skills.
Clients can be provided with a professional and permanent record of therapy via the handouts and worksheets from the guide being purchased separately as the accompanying Take Action Child Handout Workbook and Take Action Parent Handout Workbook.
Take Action teaches children aged 4-7 and 8-12 years helpful ways to cope with and manage anxiety. It is an evidence-based intervention combining recent research on threat-based cognitive biases and maladaptive thinking styles in childhood anxiety disorders with the well-established principles of CBT. Sea animal cartoon characters are used throughout the program to assist children’s understanding of the anxiety management strategies taught.
Designed for easy use by mental health and educational professionals trained in CBT, Take Action allows flexible delivery by practitioners to individuals and groups of children with anxiety.
The word ACTION is a coping-oriented acronym used throughout the program. Children are encouraged to take action against their anxiety. This means children approach their fears and worries using strategies learnt during the program.
While anxiety is a normal part of childhood, around 278,000 Australian children a year develop a diagnosable disorder, experiencing substantial fear, nervousness, and shyness, and avoiding places and activities. Without treatment these children are at higher risk to perform poorly in school, miss out on important social experiences, and experience physical complaints such as sleeplessness, diarrhoea, stomach aches and headaches. If untreated, childhood anxiety disorders can take on a chronic and unremitting course toward an adult life of social restriction, emotional torment and daily struggle.