Child & Family

Foundation Year Practice Framework

At the foundation level, (the first year in the Roberts two year program) the curricular emphasis is upon providing basic social work values, knowledge, and skills enabling the student to work with client systems of various sizes at a beginning professional level. These basics are commonly referred to as "generalist practice."
Brown (1982) describes generalist practice in this way:
Generalist social work practice consists of assisting individuals, families, small groups, and larger social systems to work on change which promotes the best possible relationship between people and their environment. In this process, all social work methods - traditional and innovative - are utilized, singly or in combination, to meet reality needs and to alleviate stresses in ways that enhance or strengthen the inherent capacities of client systems. Generalist practice is addressed to the solution and/or prevention of problems at all levels of intervention: intrapersonal, familial, interpersonal, organizational, community, institutional, and societal (p. 123).

Generalist values, knowledge and skills at Roberts build on an undergraduate liberal arts base with requisite knowledge about basic human systems, including human biological systems, psychological systems, sociological systems, and the humanities. During the foundation year, students are presented with a graduate level exposure to the common body of social work knowledge, values, and skills, with special attention given to values and ethics, diversity, economic and social justice issues, and at-risk populations including low-income populations. The Spiritually Enriched Ecological Systems, described previously in some detail, provides the framework which allows for coherent analysis and interpretation of human behavior.
Social work practice during the foundation year assesses client transactions within the unique array of social dynamics and social systems as framed by the Strengths Oriented Life Model. Intervention planning is based on the needs of the particular client system being served and mutually identified with the client system. Practice goals are built around the strengths of client systems as central to the practice effort. Through use of dialogue and collaboration with client systems, professional use of self is instilled whereby students use a variety of methods.

Child and Family Concentration Practice Framework

In the two year program at Roberts, the second year is referred to as "advanced practice." It is here that students specialize through what is known as a concentration. The Roberts Wesleyan College MSW has two advanced social work practice concentrations: Child and Family; and Physical and Mental Health. The mission of the Child and Family Concentration, which is summarized below, is to prepare students for advanced direct social work practice within public and private agencies serving children and families.

Relationship to Generalist Practice
While the purpose of the Child and Family Concentration is to prepare students for advanced practice, it is important to understand that advanced practice is anchored in generalist practice. That is to say, advanced practice does not abandon generalist knowledge, values, and skills but explores in greater depth social work knowledge and skills pertaining to children and families. Consequently, the Child and Family Concentration remains committed to both the Spiritually Enriched Ecological Systems perspective and the Strengths Oriented Life Model Practice framework. As practitioners engaged in advanced social work practice with a more particular focus, their practice will still need to be placed in a systems framework and generalist skills for working with systems of various sizes will still be needed. Even though the concentration is focused on direct practice and is oriented more to the micro and mezzo levels, it is imperative that behavior be understood comprehensively.

Advanced Practice Framework
While the Child and Family Concentration remains within the eco-systems perspective, in-depth attention is given to intergenerational and environmental systems that have a direct impact on the whole or a part of a family system and the structure that makes up the parts and whole of a family system. Basic to the Child and Family Concentration is a multidimensional assessment strategy which places the practice perspective firmly in the social work tradition. The multidimensional assessment approach to practice builds upon the person/environment social work perspective by developing assessment strategies which consider the biological, cognitive, psychological, spiritual, social, and cultural variables that influence human behavior and functioning as well as economic, political, and religious forces at work.

From this foundation, the Family-Centered model for advanced practice is developed. Hartman and Laird (1983) Family-Centered Social Work Practice is used as the primary text in teaching this model. The model has three dimensions: time (intergenerational dimension), space (external systems dimension), and internal structure (internal system dimension). The additional aspect of the model, that is not specifically articulated in the text, is the evaluation of family levels. The A level is the entire family system i.e. the whole is more than the sum of its parts. At this level the focus is on family rules, roles, and boundary issues. The B level is the subsystems level. The focus is on the identification and evaluation of adult, parent, sibling, and parent-child subsystems. The C level is the member level. The focus is on the experiences and development of individual members of the family system. The three dimensions and three levels are used as a basis for assessment and the selection of appropriate approaches to family treatment.

Six family therapy approaches are presented in the two advanced practice courses, in this concentration. These approaches are: Bowen’s family systems, Structural, Communicative-Strategic, Behavioral/Cognitive, Psychodynamic, and Experiential/Humanistic. The primary text to present these approaches is Goldenberg and Goldenberg (1996) Family Therapy: An Overview. As stated by Goldenberg and Goldenberg (1996), the trend in family therapy in the 1990’s is towards "integration" of approaches to treatment. "Therapists continue to approach families from different perspectives, but there is greater overlap and frequent borrowing from one another, as the clinical problems demand" (p. 102). Based on a knowledge of all six approaches, students can be integrative in their approach and select aspects of one or more treatment approach based on the philosophy of the agency, their own professional "use of self" in the treatment process, and the assessed areas for intervention as identified by the client/family system. The major focus is on the latter, the client/family system’s "construction of reality." As stated by Goldenberg and Goldenberg (1996), "family therapy, from this new perspective, becomes the collaborative creation of a context in which family members share their constructions of reality with one another, in the hope that the new information thus obtained will facilitate changes in perceptions among the members" (p. 103). Family therapy approaches are thus selected in order to facilitate this type of "second order" change in the system.

Several important threads are woven throughout the advanced practice curriculum. They include the centrality of values and ethics in guiding practice; an ability to incorporate diversity knowledge in the assessment and intervention of children, and families, including spirituality and religion; the ability to include knowledge about effects of discrimination and oppression on behavior, particularly related to at-risk populations; and the ability to work toward change, including improving services by improving policy.

References

Brown, E. (1982). Rationale for a generalist approach to social work practice. In O. K. D.S. Sanders, & J. Fisher (Ed.), Fundamentals of social work practice (pp. 119-130). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Hartman, A., & Laird. (1983). Family-centered social work practice. New York: Free Press.