Are members of your family currently facing some challenges? If so, would some form of family services be useful?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

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The following is a small listing of some of the infinite number of problems that may occur in families: divorce, alcohol or drug abuse, unwanted pregnancy, bankruptcy, poverty, terminal illness, chronic illness, death, desertion, empty-shell marriage, emotional problems of one or more members, behavioral problems of one or more members, child abuse, child neglect, sexual abuse, spouse abuse, elder abuse, unemployment of wage earners, money management difficulties, injury from serious automobile accident involving one or more members, cognitive disability in one or more members, incarceration or institutionalization of one or more members, compulsive gambling by one or more members, crime victimization, forced retirement of a wage earner, Alzheimer's disease in an older relative, involvement of a child in delinquent and criminal activities, illness of a member who acquires AIDS, runaway teenager, sexual dysfunctions of one or more members, infidelity, and infertility

When problems arise in a family, social services are often needed. The types and forms of services that social workers provide to troubled families are extremely varied. They can be grouped into two major categories: in-home services and out-of-home services.

In-home services are preventive. Although not all are offered literally within the home itself, they are specifically designed to help families stay together. They include financial aid; protective services (services to safeguard children or frail older adults from abuse and neglect); family preservation services (intensive crisis intervention within the home setting where children are so seriously at risk that removal to foster care would otherwise be required); family therapy (intensive counseling to improve family relationships); day care (caretaking services for children or older adults to provide respite for caregivers who might otherwise be overwhelmed, or to permit them to work outside the home); homemaker services (for the same purpose); and family life education (classes, often offered at traditional family service agencies, that cover such topics as child development, parenting skills, communication issues, and so on). Obviously, not all of these services can be provided by social workers, but workers must know where to find them and how to help the family obtain them when needed.

Out-of-home services, on the other hand, are those services that must be operationalized when the family can no longer remain intact. They are a manifestation that something has gone seriously wrong, as the breakup of any family amounts to a tragedy that will have ramifications beyond family boundaries. Although family members usually receive the blame, the larger system (social environment, and the level of support it provides to troubled families) may be called into question. Out-of-home services include foster care, adoption, group homes, institutional care (for example, residential treatment centers), and the judicial system (which provides a different kind of institutional care, prison or jail, for family members who have run into difficulty with the law). These services require the social worker to perform a variety of roles (broker, educator, advocate, case manager, mediator, and so on).