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WEEK 2 READING 2 - The Field of Family Social Work: - Coggle Diagram
WEEK 2 READING 2 - The Field of Family Social Work:
WHAT IS FAMILY SOCIAL WORK:
Guiding vision is to promote the well-being of children in their families - it is a basic human right for children to grow up in healthy, supportive and growth-promoting families and communities. Also, parents deserve the right to receive support to raise children.
The foundation of family social work rests on the notion that children are best assisted when their family functions well.
Family social workers work under the assumption that what affects one member of a family affects other family members, and therefore the family unit is the client.
Many of the families you work with are burdened with multiple problems.
Working with these families can be challenging and intimidating for both new and old social workers.
Although the family social worker may sometimes interview a family in an office, much of the work is conducted in the family's home. Home-based intervention opens the door to a greater understanding of the family's daily routines, patterns and functioning.
The social worker ultimately capitalises on what is happening in the here-and-now to support, encourage, and direct healthy family dynamics in the physical place and time that problems emerge.
FAMILY SOCIAL WORK OBJECTIVES:
Reinforce family strengths to prepare families for long-term change (or intervention)
Create concrete changes in family functioning to sustain effective and satisfying daily routines independent of formal helpers.
Provide additional support following family therapy so families will maintain effective family functioning.
Build relationships between families and the environmental supports to ensure that basic needs of members are being met.
Address the crisis needs of the family in a timely fashion so they can effectively address more long-standing issues
FAMILY THERAPY VS FAMILY SOCIAL WORK:
Family therapy -
DEFINITION: It is office-based and primarily focussed on second-order changes, that is, changing thinking patterns that govern rules and thus behaviours, thoughts and feelings. It effects more abstract change compared to the first-order concrete change of FSW.
Relies on office-based intervention to help families make systemic changes.
Family social work -
DEFINITION: It usually occurs in a family's home and often concentrates on concrete needs, daily routines, skills, family patterns, and functioning. Problem solving, strength-based and crisis-intervention approaches are all utilised.
Can be both home-based and community-based, often unfolding in the same time and space as family life and focusing on daily routines, family interactions, and social environment.
Families have more difficulty maintaining a facade at home than in an office.
As targets for change, the family social worker will often concentrate on:
Concrete needs
Daily routines
Skills
Interactions within family
FSW can enhance the effectiveness of CP Services:
As a professional practice, it is built on the premise that parents, children and the family as a unit deserve support to avoid the need for later (more intrusive and severe) correction.
FAMILY SOCIAL WORK FROM A STRENGTHS PERSPECTIVE:
The strengths perspective reveal to family social workers how to discover and explore, enhance and exploit families' strengths and resources in the journey of achieving their goals, realising their dreams, and shedding the shackles of their own lack of confidence, shortage of skills, and misgivings.
PHASES OF FAMILY SOCIAL WORK:
Engagement:
Assessment:
Intervention:
Termination:
ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR PHASES OF FSW:
Relational (relationship) skills
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Perceptual skills-
what is taking place in the mind of the worker - what the worker observes in the meeting.
Conceptual skills -
what is taking place in the mind of the worker - the meaning that the worker attributes to these observations.
STIGMA AROUND PARENTING/SEEKING HELP:
Society expects every parent to raise children with the least amount of assistance and support from the state or other external agencies.
This assumption bolsters the belief that support is necessary only for bad, failing, or incompetent parents, thus contributing to a stigma about receiving help.
REALITIES OF FSW PRACTICE:
Intervention with the family often occurs when the need for assistance is most acute and when the family is most receptive to intervention and change.
The varied needs and demands o families might require that the FSWr become directly involved in the home beyond the traditional once-a-week interview. Some FSWrs are available to families around the clock during crises.
There may be a greater level of intimacy when working within the family home as opposed to an office setting. This may challenge the professional relationship.
The direct and immediate witnessing of family events as they unfold allows FSWs to become engaged with the daily life routines and experiences of families.
FSWs provide support, knowledge, and skills in the here and now and on-the-spot.
FSW tends to be hands on, practical and action-oriented - When they are not in the home, they are typically a phone call away, enabling them to avail themselves for critical family incidents.
One overarching purpose of FSW within the community is to enhance environments for family members while concurrently meeting social expectations and community standards.
FSWrs must be prepared to address concrete issues related to family problem areas.
COLLABORATION WITH THE FAMILY:
Although workers have access to extensive info about the family, they need to develop skills to integrate and organise this complex in for a professional intervention.
Through joining with the family and participating in daily events for several hours at a time, rich opportunities emerge with which to develop a worker-family partnership.
Empathy and understanding are needed for this collaboration
FSWrs must also teach families to transfer their learning to settings where family members work and play, including schools and recreational orgs.
POTENTIAL LIMITATIONS OF FSW:
Can sometimes be hard to maintain professional boundaries as you are working so closely with the family in their own home (not an office).
Some family members may find it hard to transfer changes/skills/techniques to other settings outside of the home (eg school, work, recreational activities).
Home visits can be distracting (eg TV, pets, visitors, phones, toys)
Home visits may make it easier for the worker to lose control.
Creating a contract with the family at the outset would facilitate future work with the family. The contract might include how to handle distractions (eg not answering the phone, turning the TV off). The contract might be negotiated and signed to maximise social worker control over the direction of meetings.
IMPORTANT ASSUMPTIONS OF FSW:
Home-based support for families:
It's been suggested that home visits open a window into the emotional climate of the home and allow the worker to see firsthand the psychosocial identity of the family and it's specific expressions in a defined environment.
Mealtime can be a useful assessment tool.
Ecological validity allows the worker to witness real-life behaviours in that family members often do not exhibit the same behavioural intensity in an office that usually occurs in homes.
Transfer of learning from interventions is easier when family work occurs in client homes (skills and techniques are harder to transfer from an office to home).
Helps overcome treatment obstacles such as lack of transport. Thus cancellations are less likely.
Family-Centred Philosophy:
The family is the context within which treatment originates
While FSWrs assert that every child has the right to grow up in a nurturing and protective environment, placing the family in the centre of treatment to address wider problems beyond those presented by the target child is the most beneficial - don't focus solely on the child.
Crisis intervention:
Because of the immediate, on-the-spot intervention, the FSWr provides crisis intervention during stressful family events.
During a crisis, the worker's intervention with the family focuses on problem solving and decisioning making, and the goal is to resolve the crisis and help the family develop adaptive coping skills.
Teachability of families:
FSWrs often work with family members to increase skills that are integral to family harmony.
Parenting and child management techniques are necessary skills that FSWrs can help parents develop. These skills may involve methods such as: reinforcing effective or desired behaviours, helping family members deal with hurt and anger more effectively, teaching parents how to observe and track children's behaviour, using time-outs when family conflict or child behaviours become unmanageable or too stressful, practicing positive behaviours by using techniques such as role-play, focussing on the development of social skills for parents and children, teaching relaxation techniques to help parents cope with stress and learnt to self nurture more effectively, and developing more effective parenting skills and child management techniques.
Ecological Approach:
This approach encourages the FSWrs to consider challenges, strengths, supports, and barriers at multiple levels - inclduing the individual, family and community, as well as from within a cultural and societal context that affects the experiences of a person facing problems within a family.
This is relevant when working with families who are marginalised or disadvantaged.
Assessing family connections to work, friends and their broader community is essential to understanding their problems and to figuring out strategies for intervention.
eg. a family living in a high-crime area are less likely to be supported by neighbours than a close-knit neighbourhood.
a common error os social workers is to focus solely on the internal functioning of a family or its social environment, rather than both together.
Social barrier can prevent families from reaching their potential
Social environments can provide valuable resources whether they are material, monetary or social supports.
Abuse and behavioural problems are two primary reasons for FSW involvement.
PERSON-IN-ENVIRONMENT (PIE):
Similar to the ecological approach, PIE does not focus on the individual in isolation but looks at the individual in relationship to another significant person, families, small groups, large groups, local communities like state and country and even the global community and global environment.