Maintaining the connection: Parenting as a noncustodial father

The purpose of this study was to identify relevant factors associated with the noncustodial father's frequency of contact with his child following divorce. The findings of the research revealed that a combination of demographic, personal characteristics, and psychosocial factors are related to the father's frequency of contact with the child.     

The social worker as psychoanalyst

This paper examines the development of social workers as psychoanalysts to determine whether psychoanalysis is a legitimate function of social work. Historically, social work has found psychoanalytic theory helpful. However, it is generally understood that for the caseworker to competently practice psychoanalytic psychotherapy, advanced training is necessary. Although many social workers have availed themselves of this opportunity, the profession continues to believe that the practice of psychoanalysis is incompatible with social work. This is based upon an inaccurate conception of psychoanalysis. Since the social work psychoanalyst is concerned with the client's adaptation to the environment, his or her practice can easily be defined as clinical social work.     

Dilemmas in provision of urban mental health services for latency age children

Urban mental health facilities are increasingly overwhelmed by the sheer number of cases, at a time when federal, state and local funding cutbacks are greater than ever before. Additional to the numbers of cases needing care, is a growing number of cases presenting overwhelming social problems, i.e., emotional and medical pathology, economic deprivation, and substance abuse, with resultant family violence and child abuse. The case-loads in mental health agencies have become almost indistinguishable from those on the roles of child protection, juvenile justice, and child welfare agencies. Mental health service is near to impossible to provide, prior to major environmental manipulation, via educational planning, and frequent placement of children in day treatment programs, day care, or securing of in-home assistance, via home-maker services. These needed referrals take inordinate time, given the unresponsive, poorly coordinated bureaucracies providing such services. Many of the families seen are burdened by overwhelming social pathology, e.g., poverty, huge numbers of children per family, single-parenthood, drugs, and neighborhood violence. Treatment is increasingly difficult to provide, given the poor access to child serving systems, by parents and professionals, alike. Token services and worker burn-out in response to overwhelming difficult cases and excessive assignments, suggest a situation of crisis proportion. Clearly coalitions must be formed by over-burdened professionals, to better educate governing bodies, politicians, boards and administrators, and parents regarding this growing crisis. Professionals, battle-weary, are retreating from agency practice, simultaneous with agency cut-backs of staff and service. Agency administrators are cowed by local and state directives regarding budgetary cuts, and the situation worsens daily, as overburdened line staff struggle with an impossible challenge. Some sort of advocacy and social action must be taken by leaders in the field, to better inform and educate those responsible for budgetary allocations. Latency age children are among the most vulnerable, caught in deteriorating schools and neighborhoods, living with incredible daily violence, and pressures from drug dealers, pushers, adolescent gangs, and inadequate supports in their homes. This group of children is being pushed to become the violent adolescents of tomorrow. Major innovations and changes in delivery of services is necessary in health and mental health agencies serving this at-risk population. Proposed is a school based model of practice to provide access, coordination and collaboration of needed services.This paper was presented at the National Health Policy Forum, National Academies of Practice, April 1992.Ph.D. Specialization in the treatment of Children and Adolescents, Ph.D. Program.     

In Spite of All,We Make It: Themes of Stress and Resiliency as Told by Women in Families Living in Poverty

The purpose of this research study was to increase our understanding of how families living in poverty successfully meet life challenges. Family resiliency provided the theoretical framework for examining family coping and adaptation. This study used a purposive sample of women (N = 128) in families with children attending Head Start. All families lived below or at poverty level, most with 11th grade education or high-school/GED diploma. Content analysis methods were used for data analysis. Results of this study identify the characteristics that promote competence, including how individual, family, and environmental factors are potential stressors that also may serve to promote family resilience. The data indicate that family love and mutual support, as well as faith, help stressed families cope and maintain meaning in spite of lack of control over life circumstances resulting from economic poverty.     

Treatment of noncustodial fathers: Gender issues and clinical dilemmas

This article addresses issues involved in the treatment of fathers who do not have custody of their children. It reviews literature on demographic trends and discusses fathers' reactions to loss of child custody. Assessment and treatment guidelines are offered so that clinical practice may become more responsive to the needs of the population. Gender concerns, particularly as they relate to transference and countertransference, are also discussed.     

Clinical social work and the family court: A new role in child sexual abuse cases

Clinical social workers encounter difficult treatment issues when working with children where there is a suspicion of child sexual abuse, or where there has been an indicated child protective services case but no family court action. This article outlines a new role for the clinical social worker to play in relationship to the family court system. The author argues that the involvement of the clinician in an assessment process developed to aid the court can aid in the protection of children and set the stage for effective intervention and treatment.Director, Center for Training and Research in Child Abuse and Family Violence.     

Thinking empathically: The video laboratory as an integrative resource

The use of video taped, simulated interviews is an effective means of addressing the dynamics of affect in clinical practice. This mode of training, grounded in ego and self psychological concepts, is instrumental in identifying, understanding and integrating feelings—the goal of which is to help trainees think empathically. The theoretical framework and structure of the laboratory mode are presented; examples of the teaching/learning process are also discussed.     

Decision making in child welfare: A critical review of the literature

The decision to intervene with families has enormous implications for a democratic society. Child protective services must both protect children and families. Practice theory, social policies, and agency procedures have not provided a consensus on the criteria to guide decision making in child welfare. This paper reviews the empirical studies in the decision making literature for the purposes of: identifying variables workers are using to guide their decisions; identifying major professional concerns and issues with this literature; and suggest questions for further research.