Integrating Reflective Practice in Family Therapy Supervision

This paper discusses how to integrate reflective practice in the family therapy supervisory relationship. This enables family therapists to think creatively, be insightful, and develop a range of perspectives regarding systemic formulation and practice. It encourages review of the past and promotes understanding in the present with the aim to improve therapists work with families in the future. Reflective practice encourages independent thinking and learning and helps therapists to develop a systemic process of critical enquiry to investigate and critique their own practice. It encourages therapists to be self‐reflective and develop confidence to think hypothetically regarding change. This allows them to pose questions for exploration, construct a new lens to conceptualise therapy and the therapeutic relationship and develop awareness of the personal as well as the professional self.     

Enhancing Family Support in Practice through Postgraduate Education

Family Support as a named orientation is a relatively new concept in service provision for children and their families in the Republic of Ireland. Notwithstanding this, there are a number of practitioners across a range of disciplines and agencies within this arena who apply a Family Support approach in their day-to-day work. Furthermore, it is increasingly expected that these practitioners and agencies work together in a collaborative manner with the intention of providing the best possible assistance and support. Practitioners are also required to develop their knowledge and skills on an ongoing basis while in practice. One model of postgraduate education which is responding to such developments is the Master’s Degree in Family Support Studies. This programme is delivered in one University in the Republic of Ireland. In 2011, the programme was reviewed to assess its influence on participants’ understanding and knowledge of Family Support and on their practice. A mixed methods approach was used in this review, the results of which provide the basis for this article. At an overall level the programme is found to have a very positive influence on participants with a growing pool of practitioners who are skilled and confident in their practice.     

Family Support as a Gang Reduction Measure

Recent public concern about youth gangs in Britain has prompted a narrow, almost stereotypical, range of US‐derived policy responses. This paper argues that family support is an unexplored but potentially effective gang reduction tool, but in order to overcome persistent concerns regarding misidentification, stigmatic labelling and policy misdirection, programmes must not only be ‘good science’ but also be non‐punitive, acceptable to families and context‐sensitive. Beginning with a discussion of the grounds for intervention, the paper identifies likely barriers from the point of view of the parents of gang members, and from these, derives necessary standards for effective support. The paper describes some promising (‘public health oriented’) and unpromising (‘criminal justice oriented’) programmes, and argues for more ‘gang‐sensitive’ family support and a related research agenda.     

Case Work in Social Work: Exploring the use of Reflective Letters in the Intensive Family Support Services

This paper begins by reviewing the current policy context of ‘evidence based interventions’, a term littered in social work literature and more recently working with complex families in Wales. This study demonstrates the application of practice of a range of workers located in the Integrated Family Support Services (IFSS) in Wales in the context of reflective letters utilising motivational interviewing (MI) techniques. As part of the MI method, which is used as a model for practice in the IFSS, the consultant social worker, alongside other practitioners, uses a range of tools including the use of reflective letters and narrative principles. These letters are evidence themselves of the work and therapeutic conversations that happen during sessions within the family home, and with various family members. This paper draws on 14 samples of reflective letters from current practice in Wales and explores and considers their application to practice and areas for further development.     

Social Support and Family Stress

No abstract available for this article.     

Implementing Single Session Family Consultation: A Reflective Team Approach

Setting up and implementing a single session family consultation in a specialist child and adolescent mental health setting, which for a long time has been an organisation and culture that has undertaken a traditional detailed child and family assessment and treatment, brings with it challenges. This paper will look at the history of single session consultation within the field of child and family services and, in particular, child and family services in mental health. It will also look at the development and implementation of a single session therapy program, and associated research on the effectiveness of the program, at the Alfred Child and Youth Mental Health Service. Clinical examples will assist in illustrating the program and its model and structures. Lastly, it will review the research data and compare this with other research data in the field.     

An Autoethnographic Exploration of Learning and Teaching Reflective Practice

Learning and demonstrating reflective skills for practice is a key requirement for students and practitioners in Social Work in Australia. Yet teaching and assessing reflective practice continues to present a number of practical and ethical issues for educators. This paper will discuss reflective practice in the context of an autoethnographic study that researched learning to be a social worker and educator. The findings from the study suggest that educators should be cautious about the extent to which educational activities direct attention to student selves for the purposes of building skills in reflective practice. The conclusions suggest that the moral order of the discipline, the hidden curriculum and the course culture in addition to the actual activities can have a significant impact on the extent to which reflective practice assessments deliver learning benefits to students.     

Work/Family Policy Stratification: The Examples of Family Support and Family Leave

In the past decade the United States Congress has debated and passed legislative policies concerned with women's work, both in the family and in the labor force. The Family Support Act of 1988 and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 fall into this category of legislative policy. A comparative study of Congressional testimony in each case reveals that these two pieces of legislation are excellent examples of how federal policies—and the debates which fashion these policies—maintain and promote a system of policy stratification that perpetuates differences based on gender, race, class and marital and occupational status.     

Family Network Support and Mental Health Recovery

Family members often provide critical support to persons living with a serious mental illness. The focus of this study was to determine which dimensions of the family support network were most important to the recovery process from the perspective of the recovering person. Consumers of a community mental health program completed in-depth structured interviews that included separate measures of social network support and recovery. Consumers named an average of 2.6 family members on the social network, interacted with family on a weekly basis, and were quite satisfied with their contact. This study revealed that support and reciprocity with family members are important dimensions of a personal support network that relates to the recovery process.     

Family Support and the Health of Children

This paper examines the relationship between family support and the health of children. The impact of the decline in the structural support for child rearing is considered first, followed by an examination of the health effects of support provided in home visitation programmes. Finally, the health and welfare effects of the provision of day-care services for children are considered. Because the validity of evidence from properly conducted randomised controlled trials is more readily assured than with other study designs, particular emphasis has been given to the results of experimental evaluations.     

Family Support for the Elderly in China

ABSTRACT

With the introduction of economic reforms, families in China are challenged by a variety of family-related problems. Demographic and social changes are affecting both the capacity and willingness of the family to provide care for the elderly. The Chinese Government is aware of the importance of the family in the welfare of its citizens, and has promulgated a series of laws and regulations prescribing family obligations. Yet formal services supporting families are extremely underdeveloped, and it is urgent that the government formulate an effective policy to facilitate, support, and maximize family care.     

Family Support for the Elderly in Korea

Abstract

This article discusses major issues and concerns regarding family support for parents and elderly people in industrialized and urbanized Korea. It summarizes new trends in family support for elderly members, continuing influences of the traditional value of family support (filial piety), growing needs for public services for elderly people and their families, urgent calls for the state to assume greater responsibilities for providing social security and services for the elderly, needs for cross-cultural studies of family support, and certain cultural similarities and differences to be considered. The article concludes with some suggestions for future research.     

Learning from Experience in Family Support Programs

ABSTRACT

The paper describes three related California family support program initiatives representing field experiments in program development and policy related to reducing adverse outcomes for vulnerable families through replicating known “best practices” models. The ways in which the three initiatives were affected by the context of implementation are used to demonstrate the difficulty both of identifying the “best” program models and the need for leadership at all levels in order to develop programs and policies, which achieve the intended effects.     

The Use-of-Selves Interdependent Model: A Pedagogical Model for Reflective Practice

Use of self is an integral concept in social work practice. It is implicitly embedded throughout the Council for Social Work Education’s Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards and the National Association of Social Workers’ Code of Ethics. The present exploratory study developed a pedagogical model for use in social work education: use of selves interdependent model (USIM). Use-of-self essay assignments (N=17) in two sections of an MSW concentration-year integrative field seminar were used to further inform the model. Using constant comparative methods, the student essays were qualitatively analyzed and coded for USIM domains and elements. Exploratory study results suggested there is support for numerous domains and elements in the model.