Interview a social work practitioner about how he or she ideally likes to end family interventions. What challenges do they tend to experience in trying to facilitate an appropriate ending?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Summarized below are ending activities that are consistent with structural intervention. During this interview the student may be able to add to this list, and understand more fully some common challenges involved at times with appropriately ending intervention.

• Structural interventions focus on behavioral change, and thus indicators of goal achievement can be ascertained through family member behaviors in sessions or family self-reports of activities between sessions.
• The social worker can use time measures to see how alliances change among family members (how much time thy spend with each other)
• Social workers can utilize role-plays more flexibly to help members anticipate possible future challenges, and to test their readiness for ending. He or she can ask family members in role-plays to respond to difficult situations they have not yet faced. Their ability to do so with flexibility of family roles and rules indicates that the family has acquired the ability to respond to new challenges.
• Throughout the intervention the social worker and family will be sharing impressions of how well they are managing their target behaviors related to task activities in the natural environment. When there is consensus among all or most participants that they have mastered these behaviors, the intervention can end.