Collaborative Family Work: A Practical Guide to Working with Families in the Human Services - Softcover

Trotter, Chris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1741758327 ISBN 13: 9781741758320

Verlag: Allen & Unwin, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Life can be a struggle for some families and support from skilled human service workers can make a real difference. Collaborative Family Work offers practical strategies for working with families, always emphasising the importance of collaboration in assisting them in developing strategies to learn new skills and improve their lives. Chris Trotter explains how to identify strengths, assist families in setting goals, articulate strategies for change and develop methods of ongoing evaluation. He offers a systematic overview of family work models and theories, from long-term therapeutic and narrative approaches to short-term solution-focused and mediation models. His evidence-based model for family work draws on extensive field research and observation with experienced professionals. Collaborative Family Work is a valuable reference for professionals seeking to enhance their professional skills, and an essential text for students in the human services.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Chris Trotter is Professor in Social Work at Monash University. He has an international reputation for his research on family work, offender supervision and pro-social modelling. He is author of Working with Involuntary Clients and Helping Abused Children and their Families, and his books have been translated into German, Japanese and Chinese.

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Collaborative Family Work

A Practical Guide to Working with Families in the Human Services

By Chris Trotter

Allen & Unwin

Copyright © 2013 Chris Trotter
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-74175-832-0

Contents

Figures, 
Acknowledgements, 
1 Introduction: Why Collaborative Family Work?, 
2 Family work models and theories, 
3 The Collaborative Family Work model, 
4 Preparing families for family work and developing ground rules, 
5 Identifying issues to work on and focusing on strengths, 
6 Deciding what to work on first and setting goals, 
7 Problem exploration and developing strategies, 
8 Reviewing and concluding the family work sessions, 
References, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Why Collaborative Family Work?

Sylvia works as a youth justice worker. She supervises young people who are placed on probation. Steve is 14 years old, and is one of her clients. He is on probation for stealing cars. He also has a problem with sniffing glue. Sylvia has worked with Steve for three months since he was placed on probation and has come to know him well. He has a long history of stealing cars and is due to return to court next week to face charges for another offence. He has a very poor record of school attendance and is pretty much illiterate. He has no real friends and most of his acquaintances are also school truants.

He lives with his father, Mario, his father's partner, Maria, and her two children, Emily, 14, and Jane, 11. Steve's mother died when he was 4 years old. He likes his father's partner but feels that she favours her own two children. Steve and his father don't get on well. They rarely talk to each other and Steve feels that his father does not like him. Sylvia has interviewed Mario on several occasions and she feels that his rejecting and authoritarian attitude to Steve is an important factor in Steve's behaviour. In fact, it is her view that one of the reasons why Steve steals cars is to get his father's attention. On several occasions after police have visited the house, Mario has told Steve to get out of the house and not come back. This has been followed by Steve getting into further trouble. On one occasion after he was told to leave, Steve broke into a house with some other young people and stole money and food.

Sylvia feels that Mario cares about Steve but does not know how to deal with his behaviour — harsh discipline is the only way he knows. Mario has acknowledged to Sylvia that it isn't working, but says that he can think of no other way of handling the situation. Steve talks about his father as if he is in awe of him. He talks about his father's work as a supervisor in an engineering shop that repairs ambulances. The ambulances must be maintained in perfect condition and only top-class mechanics can work in this field. He also talks about the times his father took him to the football, to the beach and so on.

Sylvia feels that she has done about as much as she can for this family. She has talked to Steve at length and she has talked to Mario and tried to persuade him to be more positive with Steve, and (to try) to let him know that he cares about him. She has even talked to Maria and asked her to encourage Mario to be more positive towards Steve. She feels that if she could get the relevant family members together — maybe Steve, Mario and Maria, or even just Steve and Mario — she could work through the issues more effectively. However, she feels that she does not have the skills or the confidence to work together with the family members to address the issues they are facing.

The aim of this book is to help professional workers like Sylvia to develop the skills and confidence to do this.

Andrea is a foster care worker. Sophia is 12 and has been in kinship foster care with her aunt, Stephanie, and Stephanie's partner, Huang, for three years. Sophia had been in several foster care placements before this; she had been happy with Stephanie and Huang until everything started to go downhill a few months ago. Stephanie rang Andrea, saying that things had deteriorated so much that they could no longer continue to foster Sophia. Her temper tantrums made them scared and they felt it was only a matter of time before she turned violent. They were also worried that their other two children were beginning to dislike Sophia. Andrea was very disappointed with the foster parents' attitude, mostly because it would be so difficult to place Sophia with another family. Sophia's mother was not an option — while she had some contact with Sophia, she continued to struggle with a mental illness and was not in a position to have her daughter with her. Earlier attempts to place Sophia with other relatives had failed.

Andrea understood the reluctance of the foster parents to keep Sophia with them; however, she could see that a move at this stage was not in Sophia's best interests, and she was worried that she would ultimately end up homeless. Andrea attempted to do some mediation with the three of them. She even tried involving Naomi, Stephanie's 16-year-old daughter. However, this did not seem to help and Andrea felt that she did not really know how to tackle working with the family group.

In both of these situations, the professional worker feels that working with the family group may be the best way to deal with the issues facing the family and the worker. However, in each case, even though the workers have professional qualifications, they do not feel equipped to work with the family group through a series of family counselling sessions. This book aims to help them do this. It aims to help social workers, welfare workers, psychologists, school counsellors and others in the human services to work through a series of family sessions with client families.

This chapter introduces the Collaborative Family Work model, discusses the aims of the book and clarifies the terminology relating to family work, family therapy, family counselling and family mediation. It identifies situations where human service workers work with families, and discusses some of the benefits and difficulties of working with the family group rather than, or as well as, working with family members individually. It also discusses situations where family work may not be appropriate — for example, with families who are experiencing domestic violence or child sexual abuse.

Why Collaborative Family Work?

There have been many books published on working with families. There are general books on family therapy and there are books on specific forms of family therapy — including psychodynamic, structural, experiential and behavioural models. There are books on narrative and solution-focused family work and books on problem-solving with families. So why is there a need for another book on working with families?

There is a need for Collaborative Family Work because there are few if any other books like it. It differs from other books on working with families because it focuses on families in the social services and criminal justice systems, many of whom are involuntary clients. It presents a model that has been developed for use with young offenders and their families, with families in the child protection system, with young people who are homeless, with families of children referred to school welfare staff, with family members with learning disability or acquired brain injury, and with family members with drug and alcohol addictions. It has been developed and used with families experiencing poverty and with...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Allen & Unwin
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1741758327
• ISBN 13: 9781741758320
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland