Whole Family Theraplay: Integrating Family Systems Theory and Theraplay to Treat Adoptive Families

This article regarding the effectiveness of Theraplay for the clinical treatment of adoptive families both outlines a model for integrating family systems theory with Theraplay to create a new approach entitled Whole Family Theraplay (WFT), as well as provides a preliminary report of a pilot study demonstrating the efficacy of that model. WFT integrates Theraplay with family systems approaches (Structural and Experiential Family Therapies) to treat parents and all the siblings within adoptive families. The findings indicate that WFT treatment may lead to statistically significant benefits in regard to family communication, adults’ interpersonal relationships, and children's overall behavioral functioning.     

Shared Family Care: Fostering the Whole Family to Promote Safety and Stability

ABSTRACT

Shared Family Care is an innovative child welfare service that temporarily places whole families in the homes of community mentors who, along with a team of professionals, help the families to obtain the skills and resources they need to move toward self-sufficiency and adequately care for their children. This article provides an overview of this model, identifies existing programs in the United States, discusses key elements of the model, summarizes outcomes and comparative cost information, identifies implementation challenges, and provides tips for starting a Shared Family Care program in any community.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Bentovim, Arnon, Barnes, Gill Gorell, and Cooklin, Alan (Eds.). Family therapy: Complementary frameworks of theory and practice (Vols. 1&2).
Leff, Julian and Vaughn, Christine. Expressed emotion in families: Its significance for mental illness.
Gurman, Alan S. (Ed.). Casebook of marital therapy.
Kaufman, Edward (Ed.). Power to change: Family case studies in the treatment of alcoholism.
Vincent, John P. (Ed.). Advances in family intervention, assessment and theory (Vol. 2).
Minuchin, Salvador. Family kaleidoscope.
Coleman, Sandra B. (Ed.). Failures in family therapy.     

A Vocabulary of Motives: Understanding How Parents Define Quality Time

Although discussions of parenting refer to quality time, parents’ views of quality time have not been explored. Using the Sloan 500 Family Study, this article examines how 220 parents from 110 dual‐parent families define the spending quality time with their families and finds 3 distinct views: Structured‐planning parents saw it as planned family activities, child‐centered parents emphasized heart‐to‐heart talks with their children, and time‐intensive parents believed that all the time they spent with their families was quality time. Mothers and fathers both valued quality time, but, particularly when parents within a household disagreed, mothers more often described having a more active parenting role and assumed greater responsibility for quality time, reflecting a gendered division of parenting within the home.     

Australian Family Therapy: Have We Lived Up To Our Mission Statement?

In 1983 the Fourth Australian Family Therapy Conference had the theme ‘Merging the Streams — Integrating Trends in Family Therapy’. In his keynote address Brian Stagoll outlined concerns regarding the nature of family therapy as it was then developing in Australia. This article revisits some of these themes to see where we have come from, where we are heading and which topics continue to be ignored. Evidence is drawn from articles that stood out for me in the Australian Journal of Family Therapy (later the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy) and selected relevant papers from the 1983 conference itself. Finally, I speculate upon possible reasons for the absence of discussion on certain issues, most strikingly: systemic influences upon indigenous Australians, farm families, working with children in families, certain aspects of gender, the systemic implications of addiction; and environmental impacts on families now and for the future. The danger for family therapy is becoming stuck in a closed system that ignores the wider system.     

Connection and Community

Abstract

More and more GLBT people are choosing parenthood, many of them finding connection through organizations like the Family Pride Coalition and other local parenting groups. While some live in communities where resources are more plentiful, others still struggle to find other families like theirs. Groups like Family Pride have largely grown out of the desire of GLBT parents to find others like themselves and to provide a place for their children to experience families similar to their own. This article reviews the history of the Family Pride Coalition and shares the personal memories and motivations of pioneering GLBT parents/activists who have made a difference.     

Assessing Family Outcomes: Psychometric Evaluation of the Beach Center Family Quality of Life Scale

There is currently a lack of reliable scales with which to assess the construct of family quality of life, particularly for families who have children with disabilities. The current work presents 2 studies, including a total of 488 families with children with disabilities, which were conducted to complete the development of a scale to assess family quality of life. The measure was refined through confirmatory factor analyses into 25 items that assess 5 domains of Family Quality of Life: Family Interaction, Parenting, Emotional Well‐Being, Physical/Material Well‐Being, and Disability‐Related Support. Each subscale was found to be unidimensional and internally consistent. An initial examination of test‐retest reliability and convergent validity is also presented. Implications for future research, scale use, and policy are discussed.     

Time and time again: Implications of time perception theory

This article explores the integration of time perception theory from various root disciplines related to family resource management. It includes anthropological models of time perception and sociological and psychological concepts related to time measure and usage. Examples of issues appropriate to the exploration of time use in the home and instrumentation that may assist in its understanding and measurement are included.This research was supported in part by Lincoln University Cooperative Research.Alma J. Owen is Associate Professor and Small Farm Family Program Leader for Lincoln University Cooperative Extension, 900 Moreau Drive, Jefferson City, MO 65101. Her research interests include measuring household production, at-home income generation, and rural families. She received her Ph.D. in Family and Consumer Economics from the University of Missouri-Columbia.     

Shifting sex roles: The silence of the family therapy literature

This article suggests that it is important for family therapists to be attuned to the struggles families are experiencing in relation to their changing sex role mores. Traditional ideas about what is feminine and masculine still exist while new realities with new values are emerging. Although one would expect the family therapy literature to be discussing and clarifying the implications of sex role shifts for individuals within the family and for the family as a whole, it has been surprisingly silent. This article reviews the concept of sex roles and discusses it from the perspective of the dichotomization of gender. Object relations theory is suggested as a framework by which sex role differentiation and particularly its more polarized aspect can be understood.This article was submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the certificate in Family Therapy, Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, MA, 1979.     

Families in court—guilty or guilty?

SUMMARY. The case for the introduction of family courts in England and Wales rests on the unsuitability of the present court systems to the effective and efficient resolution of family problems Last year the Socio-Legal Centre for Family Studies of the University of Bristol, published an important study by Mervyn Murch and colleagues, The Overlapping Family Jurisdiction of the Magistrates' Courts and County Courts (1987), which describes the views of the court-users of their experience in court. The research discovered that families find court attendance frightening and that the present court arrangements are insensitive to the needs of families. This article brings these findings to a wider audience and comments on their significance     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Weeks, Gerald R. & L'Abate, Luciano. Paradoxical psychotherapy: Theory and practice with individuals, couples, and families.
Kempler, Walter. Experiential psychotherapy within families.
Kempler, Walter. Experiential psychotherapy within families.
Box, Sally, Copley, Beta, Magagna, Jeanne and Moustaki, Errica (Eds.). Psychotherapy with families: An analytic approach.
Capra, Fritjof. The turning point: Science, society and the rising culture.
Wolberg, Louis & Aronson, Marvin (Eds.). Group and family therapy, 1981.
Green, Robert J. & Framo, James L. (Eds.). Family therapy: Major contributions.
Wile, Daniel B., Couples therapy: A nontraditional approach.
Willi, Jürg. Couples in collusion.
Becvar, Raphael J. & Becvar, Dorothy Stroh. Systems theory and family therapy: A primer.
Pinney, E. G. & Slipp, S. Glossary of group and family therapy.
Brown, Kristi (Ed.). Family counseling: An annotated bibliography.
Glick, Ira D., Weber, David H., Rubinstein, David & Patten, John T. Family therapy and research: An annotated bibliography.
Olson, David H. & Markoff, Roxanne (Eds.).Inventory of marriage and family literature.     

Family problem solving: A case study

Abstract

Working with the families of young offenders may often be the best method of helping those young offenders to change. Sometimes, however, social workers and others who work with young offenders are reluctant to work with family groups because they may feel that they lack skills in family counselling. This article presents a case study which illustrates a family counselling intervention. The case study uses Family Problem Solving, a method which involves the adaptation of mainstream social work skills to work with families. It is anticipated that the article might be of interest to social workers who work with families but who feel apprehensive about counselling family groups.     

Immigration and the British news media: Continuity or change?

This article examines research carried out over the last 40 years in the area of media and migration in the British context. This thematic review of more than 60 empirical studies explores how U.K. media attention to the immigration issue has fluctuated over time, but has displayed consistent negativity in its terms of reference, exclusionary features, and significant interpretative limitations, not least in the conflation of distinct types of migration.     

Integrating the older/special needs adoptive child into the family

This qualitative, grounded theory study investigated 11 families who reported having successfully integrated into their family unit at least one older/special needs adoptee. The theory that emerged through the constant comparative methodology consisted of two categories (Decision to Adopt and Adjustment) and a core category (Developing a Sense of Family). The two categories and core category comprised a process that was informed by the Family Narrative Paradigm and culminated in the successful integration of the child or children into the existing family unit. Parental perceptions that appeared to facilitate this process included: (a) finding strengths in the children overlooked by previous caregivers, (b) viewing behavior in context, (c) reframing negative behavior, and (d) attributing improvement in behavior to parenting efforts.     

Case Management with Families Receiving Public Assistance: Results from an Empirical Evaluation

ABSTRACT

This article describes the results from a family-based case management demonstration program which served families in North Carolina during the period of 1990 to 1993. The model for the program was based on the family investment initiative strategy developed by the George Washington University Center for Policy Studies. Entitled the Family Investment Initiative, the goal of the program was to assist families receiving AFDC to reach economic self-sufficiency. Results indicate that this family-based case management approach has promise for helping AFDC-dependent families achieve economic self-sufficiency. Implications of the results for social work case management practice with families are discussed.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Nichols, Michael P. Family therapy: Concepts and methods.
Stahmann, Robert F and Hiebert, William H. (Eds.). Counseling in marital and sexual problems:
Anderson, Carol M. and Stewart, Susan. Mastering resistance:
Doherty, William J and Baird, Macaran A Family therapy and family medicine: Toward the primary care of families.
Bagarozzi, Dennis, Jurich, Anthony and Jackson, Robert. Marital and family therapy: New perspectives in theory, research and practice.     

Family structure or interpersonal relationships: the context for child development

SUMMARY. This article is based on an opening address given in March 1988 at the National Children's bureau conference on ‘Family fortunes: adapting support services for children in changing families’. It argues that the family is not a static unit impervious to outside influence and that on the contrary it is essential we understand the reasons why families change in certain respects and even try to anticipate such changes, as only then is it possible to target support services effectively. This should be done at the level of interpersonal relationships rather than family structure, for research on the determinants of child development has singled out this level as the crucial one     

Family psychoeducation: chronic psychiatrically ill Caribbean patients.

This article described a method of patient and family intervention designed for psychotic patients who are prone to relapse. Issues addressed in a monthly group meeting were designed to clarify, inform, and support families on the facts of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. This format succeeded in improving the rate of recidivism in the population of Caribbean patients because it clarified distortions of the nature of the illnesses and made obvious that medication compliance was separate and did not intrude on the culture and belief systems. Family dynamics were not a focus in this psychoeducation program, but alliances, boundaries, and process did change over the course of the 6 months of the program. Family members were engaged relatively easily and responded when it was clear there was no intention to intrude on culture or personal beliefs. Many expressed anger and frustrations that such a program had not been offered before, especially those families whose relatives had experienced multiple readmissions. The questionnaires clearly illustrated an increase in knowledge and understanding about the illness, and this correlated with reduced recidivism. A major effort is made to maintain contact with patients and their families following discharge from the day hospital for up to 3 years to ensure their follow-through. Follow-up phone calls ensure 100% follow-up. For the past few years, we have found that ongoing contact is also useful on a reduced frequency to reinforce the concepts communicated initially.