SOCW 610 Ch 6 & 10

mystification

Befuddling or masking communications and obscuring the nature and source of disagreements and conflicts in family relationships. (10-3e)

Verbal Following Skills

Furthering responses Reflection responses Closed-ended and open-ended responses Seeking concreteness Providing and maintaining focus Summarizing (6-2 Slide 5)

Accent responses

Repeating, in a questioning tone of voice or with emphasis, a word or a short phrase used by the client in order to prompt further elaboration. (6-3b Slide 6)

Reflections

Response whereby the social worker indicates an understanding both content messages and client affect. (6-4 Slide 7)

Specificity of Expression by Social Workers

Seeking concreteness applies to the communication of both clients and social workers. In this role, you will frequently explain, clarify, and give feedback to clients. When social workers speak with specificity, clarify meanings, personalize statements, and document the sources of their conclusions, clients are much less likely to misinterpret or project their own feelings or thoughts. Clients like to be clear about what is expected of them and how they are perceived, as well as how and why social workers think and feel as they do about matters discussed in their sessions. Clients also learn vicariously to speak with greater specificity as social workers model sending concrete messages. (6-6b Slide 9)

contemplation

Stage of motivation for change at which clients are aware of the issue but are not fully aware of their options, the benefits of changing, and the consequences of not doing so. (6-4c)

precontemplation

Stage of motivation for change at which clients have not yet considered a problem that has been perceived by others. (6-4c)

Sender Skills

The ability of family members to express themselves clearly as feeling, thinking, acting, valuable, and separate individuals and to take responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, and actions. (10-3e Slide 21)

covert power

The power held by family members who, for example, enter into coalitions to challenge or circumvent executive power or task-specific power. (10-3c)

prescribed role

The role expectations that others hold with regard to a social position.For example, despite the changes in families, in a family's interaction with a bank officer, a male is almost always presumed to be the head of a household or the primary decision maker in the family. (10-3d Slide 21)

Reflections of affect

focus attention on the affective part of the communication (Cormier, Nurius, & Osborn, 2009). In reflections of affect, social workers relate with responses that accurately capture clients' affect and help them reflect on and sort through their feelings. (6-4c Slide 7)

task-specific power

Within a family, the distribution of power based on tasks. (10-3c)

Boundaries

abstract dividers that function (1)between and among other systems or subsystems within the family (2)between the family and the environment In essence, boundaries are invisible lines that identify people as insiders and as outsiders. They can be detected or observed by behaviors and communication patterns, both blatant and subtle, that signify who belongs within an identifiable family or subsystem within a family. (10-3b Slide 20)

Verbal minimal prompts

brief messages that convey interest and encourage or request expanded verbalizations along the lines of the client's previous expressions. These messages include "Yes," "I see," "But?," "Mm-mmm," "Tell me more," "And then what happened?," "And?," "Please go on," "Tell me more, please," and other similar brief messages that affirm the appropriateness of what the client has been saying and prompt him or her to continue. (6-3a Slide 6)

Furthering responses

indicate social workers are listening attentively and encourage the client to verbalize (6-3 Slide 6)

Self-Awareness in Family Assessment

social workers need to grapple with their own assumptions about what constitutes a "healthy" and "functional" family. In doing so, social workers, through supervision, study, and reflection, need to understand their own worldview beliefs about families It is also critical to recognize that social workers, being called on to form authentic relationships with clients, are not necessarily required to accept client family worldviews at face value, nor are they required to change their own family worldviews when they conflict with those of their clients. When confronted by stark family worldview differences that suggest oppressive or abusive cultural practices, social workers are advised to consult a variety of frameworks, including professional codes of ethics, legal codes, public policy, and the social work agency's values and mission, as well as human rights frameworks. Family worldviews shared by clients and social workers act in harmony Reinforce normative definitions of family structure and functions Social workers can represent community values about families that may not be shared by the client Should be aware of potential differences and act deliberately to understand them (10-2 Slide 17)

Homeostasis

systems concept that describes the tendency of a system to maintain or preserve equilibrium or balance. In essence, homeostasis is a conservative property of family systems that strives to maintain the status quo. When faced with a disruption, a system tends to try to regulate and maintain system cohesion. that changes to family system structure are often slow and difficult to achieve In fact, families are in a constant state of adaptation to forces in the external environment, as well as to changes among members in the internal family structure. Under most circumstances, and for most families, the tendency of family systems toward homeostasis helps families adapt in ways that preserve the integrity of the family as a distinct unit. Under such circumstances, feedback loops help to guide change and adaptation in the face of sometimes overwhelming challenges and obstacles. (10-3a Slide 20)

Family rules

underlie all aspects of family system structure, prescribe the rights, duties, and range of appropriate behaviors of members within a family. They govern how boundaries are established and maintained, the distribution of family roles, the execution of power and decision making, how families adapt in the face of family life-cycle changes, and, in short, strive to maintain family system homeostasis. (10-3g Slide 23)

Receiver Skills

A critical dimension of communication is the degree of receptivity or openness of family members to the inner thoughts and feelings of other members in the system. In still other families, members may engage in dual monologues—that is, members communicate simultaneously, which to the casual observer might appear to be a free-for-all. In general, facilitative receiver skills invite, welcome, and acknowledge the views and perceptions of others. Physical attending (direct eye contact, receptive body posture, hand gestures, attentive facial expressions) "Listening" or paraphrasing responses by family members that restate in fresh words the essence of a speaker's message (e.g., "Man, you said ...," or as a youth might say, "I feel you ...") Responses by receivers of messages that elicit clarification of messages (e.g., "Tell me again, I'm not sure what you meant" or "Am I right in assuming you meant ...?") Brief responses that prompt further elaboration by the speaker (e.g., "Oh," "I see," "Tell me more") (10-3e Slide 21)

closed-ended questions

A question that defines a topic and restricts the client's response to a few words or a simple yes-or-no answer, generally used to elicit specific information. Closed-ended questions are used chiefly to elicit essential factual information. Skillful social workers use closed-ended questions sparingly, because clients usually reveal extensive factual information spontaneously as they unfold their stories, aided by the social worker's open-ended and furthering responses. It may sometimes be necessary to employ closed-ended questions extensively to draw out information if the client is unresponsive and withholds information or has limited conceptual and mental abilities. (6-5 6-5b Slide 8)

open-ended questions

A question that invites expanded expression and leaves the client free to express what seems most relevant and important. Open-ended questions often start with "What" or "How." "Why" questions are often unproductive because they may ask for reasons, motives, or causes that are obvious, obscure, or unknown to the client. Because open-ended responses elicit more information than closed-ended ones, frequent use of the former technique increases the efficiency of data gathering. In fact, the richness of information revealed by the client is directly proportional to the frequency with which open-ended responses are employed. Frequent use of open-ended responses also fosters a smoothly flowing session; consistently asking closed-ended questions, by contrast, may result in a fragmented, discontinuous process. Because open-ended responses generally yield rich information, they are used throughout initial sessions. They are used most heavily, however, in the first portion of sessions to open up lines of communication and to invite clients to reveal problematic aspects of their lives. (6-5 6-5b Slide 8)

symmetrical relationship

A relationship in which both parties function as equals—for example, when household or child-rearing responsibilities or decision making are shared rather than based on gender roles. (10-3d)

Reflections with a twist

A response in which the social worker agrees in essence with the dilemma expressed by the client but changes the emphasis, perhaps to indicate that the dilemma is not unsolvable but rather that the client has not at this time solved it. (6-4c Slide 7)

Complex reflections

A response that goes beyond what the client has directly stated or implied, adding content or emphasis to focus on meanings or feelings that the client did not directly express. (6-4c Slide 7)

Simple reflections

A response that identifies the emotion expressed by the client but does not go beyond what the client has said or directly implied. (6-4c Slide 7)

social environment

A set of broad social sectors that catalog the various ways that families engage with the outside world, including the economic sector and the labor market, educational institutions, public health and mental health systems, public safety and corrections institutions, nongovernmental organizations and religious institutions, familial networks, and informal support networks. How families manage their engagement with the social environment brings the interrelationship of family system structures (e.g., boundaries, rules, roles, power, and decision making) into strong focus. (10-3h Slide 23)

embedded questions

A statement that does not take the form of a question but embodies a request for information. A statement that does not take the form of a question but embodies a request for information. (6-5 Slide 8)

fault-defend pattern of communication

An exchange in which one family member continues to attack or accuse another member and the other tends to continue to defend his or her position. (10-3e)

complementary relationship

An independent-dependent role relationship, such as between a parent and a child, in which the needs of both are satisfied. (10-3d)

Eliciting Details Related to Clients' Experiences Eliciting Details Related to Interactional Behavior

As previously mentioned, one reason why concrete responses are essential is that clients often offer up vague statements regarding their experiences concrete responses are also vital in accurately assessing interactional behavior. Such responses pinpoint what actually occurs in interactional sequences—that is, what circumstances preceded the events, what the participants said and did, what specific thoughts and feelings the client experienced, and what consequences followed the event. (6-6a Slide 9)

Selecting Topics for Exploration

Before meeting with clients whose concerns differ from client populations with which you are familiar, you can prepare yourself to conduct an effective exploration by developing (in consultation with your practicum instructor or field supervisor) a list of relevant and promising problem areas to be explored. Note that questions should tap into hopes, resources, exceptions, and skills as much as concerns and problems. In using an outline, you should avoid following it rigidly or using it as a crutch; otherwise, you could potentially destroy the spontaneity of sessions and block clients from relating their stories in their own way. Instead, encourage your clients to discuss their problems freely while you play a facilitative role in exploring in greater depth any problems that emerge. In particular, you must use outlines flexibly—reordering the sequence of topics; modifying, adding, or deleting topics; or abandoning the outline altogether if using it hinders communication. (6-7a Slide 10)

Exploring the Basis of Conclusions Drawn by Clients

Clients often present views or conclusions as though they are established facts. For example, the messages "I'm losing my mind" and "My partner doesn't love me anymore" include views or conclusions that the client has drawn. To accurately assess the client's difficulties, the social worker must elicit the information on which these views or conclusions are based. This information helps the social worker assess the thinking patterns of the client, which are powerful determinants of emotions and behavior. For example, a person who believes he or she is no longer loved will behave as though this belief represents reality. The social worker's role, of course, is to reveal distortions and to challenge erroneous conclusions in a facilitative manner. (6-6a Slide 9)

Highlighting Key Aspects of Problems, Strengths, and Resources

During the phase of an initial session in which problems and resources are explored in moderate depth, summarization can be effectively employed to tie together and highlight essential aspects before proceeding to explore additional concerns and strengths. For example, the social worker might describe how the problem appears to be produced by the interplay of several factors, including external pressures, overt behavioral patterns, unfulfilled needs and wants, and covert thoughts and feelings. Connecting these key elements assists clients in gaining a more accurate and complete perspective of their circumstances. Summarization that highlights problems and resources is generally employed at a natural point in the session when the social worker believes that relevant aspects have been adequately explored and clients appear satisfied in having had the opportunity to express their concerns. Summarizing responses of this type serve as a prelude to the process of formulating goals, as goals flow naturally from problem formulations. Moreover, highlighting various dimensions of the problem facilitates the subsequent identifications of subgoals and tasks that must be accomplished to achieve the overall goal. Summarizing salient aspects of problems and resources is also a valuable technique in sessions with groups, couples, and families. It enables the social worker to stop at timely moments and highlight the difficulties experienced by each participant. (6-8a Slide 11)

Eliciting Specific Feelings

Even when clients personalize their messages and express their feelings, social workers often need to elicit additional information to clarify what they are experiencing, because certain "feeling words" denote general feeling states rather than specific feelings. (6-6a Slide 9)

Exploring Topics in Depth

Exploring topics in depth by blending open-ended, empathic, and concrete responses Social workers must have the skills needed to explore problems thoroughly, because their success in the helping process depends on their ability to obtain clear and accurate definitions of problems. (6-7b Slide 10)

Defining Family and Family Functions

Families are defined within a sociocultural milieu that prescribes acceptable ways in which family membership is determined, roles are allocated among family members, and the functions and obligations ascribed to families are carried out. Underlying the definition of family is a shared understanding of two elements of family structure: how family membership is composed, and the various functions that the family serves as an enduring institution in society. Worldviews about family structure and function are the basis for how family members understand many if not all of the presenting problems that bring families into contact with social workers. (10-1 Slide 15)

Flexible and Rigid Rules

Flexible rules enable the family system to respond to family stressors as well as to the developmental needs of individual members. As you observe families, you will want to assess the extent to which rules provide members with opportunities to explore solutions that utilize individual and collective family capacities. Rules that permit the system to respond flexibly are usually optimal. Examples of flexible rules that facilitate an open climate in the family include the following: Everyone's ideas and feedback are important. Family members don't always have to agree or like the same things. It is okay to talk about any feelings, including disappointments, fear, anger, or achievements. Family members should work out their disagreements with other family members. It is okay to admit mistakes; others in the family will understand and support you. In addition to assessing the stresses on rules caused by developmental changes and internal events (inner forces), it is important that you also assess the extent to which a family's rules allow the system to respond flexibly to dynamic societal stresses (outer forces) (10-3g Slide 23)

Focusing on the Here and Now

Focusing on feelings as they occur will enable you to observe reactions and behavior firsthand, eliminating any bias and error caused by reporting feelings and experiences after the fact. Furthermore, the helpfulness of your feedback is greatly enhanced when this feedback relates to the client's immediate experience. Not only do such instances provide direct access to the client's inner experience, but they also may produce lasting benefits as the client shares deep and painful emotions in the context of a warm, accepting, and supportive relationship. Here-and-now experiencing that involves emotions toward the social worker (e.g., anger, hurt, disappointment, affectional desires, fears) is known as relational immediacy. (6-6a Slide 9)

Communication Styles of Family Members

In all instances, you must first determine whether the family's communication patterns and styles negatively affect members' relationships, and further whether change is desirable, including weighing the cultural implications. Verbal level: When people explain the intent of their messages verbally, they are speaking at a meta-communication level. Meta-communication happens when people discuss the content and topics of communication. Note that implied messages are also a form of meta-communication. Nonverbal level: People reinforce or contradict their verbal messages nonverbally, through gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, posture, eye contact, and so on. Contextual level: The situation in which communication occurs can reinforce or disqualify a speaker's verbal and nonverbal communications. As you observe the communication styles of families, it is important to assess three issues: The presence of patterned negative communications The pervasiveness of such negative patterns The relative ability of individual members of the system to modify their communication styles (10-3e Slide 21)

Clarifying the Meaning of Vague or Unfamiliar Terms

In expressing themselves, clients often employ terms that have multiple meanings or use terms in idiosyncratic ways. Many other words also lack precision, so it is important to avoid assuming that the client means the same thing you mean when you use a given term. (6-6a Slide 9)

Interviewing Skills and Circular Questioning

In general, it is important that the social worker listen carefully to all family members who participate in family meetings. Thus, reflective listening and summarizing will be two skills that are especially featured in family meetings. Moreover, the complexity of a family meeting, given the multiple people present, will usually require that the social worker manage the interview process carefully, liberally seeking concreteness and using focusing skills to ensure that the conversation stays on track. Circular questioning is a specialized interviewing strategy that is often employed to elicit information about the repetitive transactions that take place among family members Circular questions treat family members as "perceivers" of family life, eliciting information from them about the interrelatedness of family members and relationships that are often external to the perceiver. First are circular questions that elicit member perceptions about the presenting problem. A question as simple as "What is the problem as you understand it?" can initiate a circular dialogue when it leads to a discussion of similarities and differences among family members. Second are questions to establish sequences of events related to a presenting problem. Beginning at a point in time, the social worker will ask variations of the question "What happened next?" repetitively to obtain a concrete version of how a series of events unfolded Finally, social workers can use rating and ranking questions to highlight differences and similarities. (10-4b Slide 24)

Observing Patterns of Interaction

In order to assess family system structure, social workers first assess the sequences of interaction that occur between members. All families play out scenarios or a series of transactions in which they manifest redundancies in behavior and communication. Learning about these repetitive patterns of verbal communication, nonverbal communication, and behavior among family members provides clues about the presence and strength of family system boundaries, decision-making authority and power, roles, rules, and adaptive capacity. It is important to understand that family scripts rarely have beginnings or endings; that is, anyone may initiate the scenario by enacting his or her "lines." The rest of the family members almost invariably follow their habitual styles of relating, editing their individual scripts slightly to fit different versions of the scene being acted out by the family. (10-4a Slide 24)

subsystems

Networks and relationships within the family that are formed on the basis of gender, interest, generation, or functions that must be performed for the family's survival. Members of a family may simultaneously belong to numerous subsystems, entering into separate and reciprocal relationships with other members of the nuclear family, depending on the subsystems they share in common (10-3b Slide 20)

Nonverbal minimal prompts

Nodding the head, using facial expressions, or employing gestures that convey receptivity, interest, and commitment to understanding. (6-3a Slide 6)

Managing Obstacles to Focusing

Obstacles - Changing the subject, rambling from topic to topic, intellectualizing or using abstract or general terms, and responding to questions with questions Social workers can intervene to help clients focus or refocus in group or conjoint sessions Many clients seek help because they have—but are not aware of—patterns of communicating or behaviors that create difficulties in relationships. In addition, involuntary clients who do not yet perceive the relationship as helping may be inclined to avoid focusing. You can counter repetitive behaviors and communications that divert the focus from exploring problems by tactfully drawing them to clients' attention and by assisting clients in adopting behaviors that are compatible with their goals for work together. These techniques include asking clients to communicate or behave differently; teaching, modeling for, and coaching clients to assume more effective communication styles; reinforcing facilitative responses; and selectively attending to functional behaviors. (6-7c Slide 10)

perceived role

One's own role expectations relative to one's social position. (10-3d Slide 21)

Family Decision Making, Hierarchy, and Power

Power arrangements and family decision-making authority should create an environment in which primary attachments can flourish, in which the economic needs of the group can be met, in which social status can be preserved, and in which the emotional and developmental needs of all members can be nurtured. Unless power dynamics and the distribution of power have a significant role in family problems, it is inappropriate to attempt to make adjustments in this area. You should, however, assess the functionality of covert and overt power, keeping in mind that power in families can shift on a situational basis, and power can be distributed among many members on some level and at different times. (10-3c Slide 20)

Communication Barriers

Prematurely shifting the subject or avoiding topics Asking excessive questions, dominating interactions Sympathizing, excusing, or giving reassurance or advice Mind reading, diagnosing, interpreting, or overgeneralizing Dwelling on negative historical events in a relationship Making negative evaluations, blaming, name-calling, or criticizing Directing, threatening, admonishing Using caustic humor, excessive kidding, or teasing Focusing conversations on oneself (10-3e Slide 22)

Reflections of content

Rephrasing, using different words, what the client has expressed to indicate that the social worker has grasped the content of the client's message. emphasize the cognitive aspects of client messages, such as situations, ideas, objects, or persons Footnote Reflecting a content message in response to a client's thoughts does not mean that you agree with or condone those thoughts (6-4a Slide 7)

Minimal prompts

Reponses, either nonverbal or verbal, that signal the social worker's attentiveness and encourage the client to continue verbalizing. (6-3a Slide 6)

Checking out Perceptions

Responses that help social workers clarify and "check out" whether they have accurately heard clients' messages (e.g., "Do you mean ..." or "Are you saying ...") are vital in building rapport with clients and in communicating the desire to understand their problems. Such responses also minimize misperceptions or projections in the helping process. Clients benefit from social workers' efforts to understand, because clarifying responses assist clients in sharpening and reformulating their thinking about their own feelings and other concerns, thereby encouraging self-awareness and growth. By modeling clarifying responses, which occur naturally as social workers seek to check out their own perceptions of clients' messages. By directing clients to ask for clarification. By teaching clients how to clarify perceptions and by reinforcing their efforts to "check out" the messages of others (6-6a Slide 9)

Roles

Roles are generally understood patterns of behavior that are accepted by family members as part of their individual identities. Usually, roles can be identified by their labels, which denote both formal roles that are socially sanctioned (e.g., grandparent, mother, father, brother, sister) and idiosyncratic roles that evolve over time within a specific family context (e.g., comedian, scapegoat, caregiver). In the assessment, you will want to determine what role assignment in the family is based on—for example, age or gender rather than such factors as abilities, need, and interest. As you assess the role behavior in any family, you will probably note a number of individual and family strengths, such as how well members flexibly adapt to changing roles and their role-performance behavior. Because each culture or family form may have its own definitions of roles, social workers must also determine and assess the goodness of fit with the needs of family members. (10-3d Slide 21)

Implicit rules

Rules that are hidden from family members' awareness and are often difficult to detect without careful observation of behavior that reveals their operation. Implicit rules govern how family members unwittingly collaborate to maintain the status quo in the family system structure. Whereas explicit rules are often the topic of a family feud, implicit rules govern how family feuds are fought and resolved. Whereas explicit rules dictate how order is maintained, implicit rules dictate how rule changes are negotiated. And whereas explicit rules establish expected behavioral repertoires, implicit rules explain why family members do not always conform to expectations. (10-3g Slide 23)

Explicit rules

Rules that family members readily recognize and can articulate, including expectations for behavior that parents impose on children. These include expectations for behavior that parents impose on children, both prescribed behavior (e.g., complete your chores) and proscribed behavior (e.g., don't hit your brother), as well as negotiated agreements among members of the executive subsystem (e.g., who manages money) and across subsystems (e.g., elders are expected to spoil their grandchildren). (10-3g Slide 23)

Family Systems Framework

Shows how families organize to achieve their goals and perform their functions Defines properties and characteristics of families rather than of any particular individual within the family In essence, assessing presenting problems in terms of family functioning deemphasizes individual pathology and blame and often diffuses responsibility for participating in solutions among multiple family members simultaneously. (4-3 Slide 19)

Providing Focus and Continuity

Social workers can also use summarization at the beginning of an individual, group, or conjoint session to review work that clients have accomplished in the last session(s) and to set the stage for work in the present session. At the same time, the social worker may decide to identify a promising topic for discussion or to refresh clients' minds concerning work they wish to accomplish in that session. In addition, summarization can be employed periodically to synthesize salient points at the conclusion of a discussion or used at the end of the session to review the major focal points. In so doing, the social worker will need to place what was accomplished in the session within the broad perspective of the clients' goals. The social worker tries to consider how the salient content and movement manifested in each session fit into the larger whole. Only then are the social worker and clients likely to maintain a sense of direction and avoid needless delays caused by wandering and detours—problems that commonly occur when continuity within or between sessions is weak. (6-8d Slide 11)

Assisting Clients in Personalizing Their Statements

Social workers must model, teach, and coach clients to use self-referent pronouns (I, me) in talking about their concerns and their own emotional response to those concerns. Social workers must teach the difference between self-referent messages and subject-related messages (those dealing with objects, things, ideas, or situations). Although teaching clients to use self-referent pronouns when talking about their concerns is a substantive task, clients derive major benefits from it. Indeed, not owning or taking responsibility for feelings and speaking about problems in generalities and abstractions are among the most prevalent causes of problems in communicating. Social workers must focus frequently on the client and use the client's name or the pronoun you. (6-6a Slide 9)

family stressor

Something that threatens existing family structures and patterns or that interferes with a family's capacity to achieve its goals. First, stressors can be classified based on their relationship to the family life cycle. From this perspective, stressors are considered to be normative—disruptive events (e.g., marriage) that are predictable based on expected patterns of growth and development of family members but that nevertheless provoke a change in prevailing family routines—or nonnormative—disruptive events (e.g., an accident) that are unexpected and not necessarily associated with the family life cycle. Acute stressors are usually single occurrence events. They may be relatively minor yet disruptive health problems that force family system adjustments (e.g., a sick child who cannot attend day care or school) or large events that permanently change family system structure (e.g., marriage, birth of a child, divorce, death). Episodic stressors are those stressors that have an ending but that are repeated periodically. Some serious mental health conditions, such as major depressive disorder, can be episodic in nature, requiring families to adapt during the period of illness. Finally, chronic stress persists over a long period of time. Poverty and economic insecurity, Stressful life events are generally considered major disruptions that in some cases may be traumatic, whereas daily hassles are the pressures and responsibilities that family members must face on a daily basis. Stressful life events are generally considered major disruptions that in some cases may be traumatic, whereas daily hassles are the pressures and responsibilities that family members must face on a daily basis. (10-3i Slide 23)

Standardized Scales

The Clinical Assessment Package for Assessing Risks and Strengths (CASPARS), developed by Gilgun (1994, 2001), for families receiving mental health and child welfare services, responds to related concerns. Specifically, CASPARS measures both risks and protective factors related to family relationships, peer relationships, and sexuality. The Culturalgram (Congress, 1994) is a useful tool for assessing family dimensions in the context of culture, because "the systems view limits important cultural considerations" (Green, 1999, p. 8). The ecomap enables you to focus on the social context of families and interactions between the family and the larger society (Hartman & Laird, 1983). The Family Assessment Wheel allows you to examine the sociopolitical and cultural context of the family experience (Mailick & Vigilante, 1997). The Integrative Model by Level of Need, developed by Kilpatrick and Cleveland (1993), recognizes five levels of family need and functioning. The Multisystems ApproachThis approach recognizes that assessment and intervention goals involve families, as well as the systems external to the family that affect and serve as resources to families. The Social Support Network Map examines the structure and quality of the family's interconnected relationships and social supports Risk assessments Standardized structured actuarial tools that specify indicators in which a certain score predicts the probability of a behavior or condition. (10-4d Slide 24)

Resilience

The capability of individuals and families to sustain their functioning and to thrive when threatened by risk and adversity. These factors provide families with resources for problem solving and patterned ways of approaching challenges that promote growth and successful adaptation. Social support, from the community as well as from kinship bonds. Internal cohesion and commitment. Creativity and flexibility. Appraisal, insight, and meaning. Boundary setting. (10-3i Slide 23)

family life cycle

The developmental stages through which families as a whole must pass. Unattached young adult New couple Family with young children Family with adolescents Family that is launching children Family in later life Because of various changes, one life-cycle phase may not necessarily progress in a linear fashion. Exploring the meaning of the life cycle with diverse families is particularly critical to determine important milestones from their perspective. (10-3f Slide 23)

adaptive capacity

The extent to which a family can achieve its functioning goals, given the demands of family and social life. As the family faces demands from its environment and challenges from its members, its capacity to adapt is a central property of the ability to maintain itself as a cohesive unit. The concept of adaptive capacity brings to light two additional concepts that are relevant to family life: family stressors and family strengths and resilience. (10-3i Slide 23)

Verbal following

The use and sometimes blending of discrete skills that enable social workers to maintain psychological contact with clients on a moment-by-moment basis and to convey accurate understanding of their messages. Stimulus-response congruence: The extent to which social workers' responses provide feedback to clients that their messages are accurately received. Content relevance: The extent to which the content of social workers' responses is perceived by clients as relevant to their substantive concerns. First, they yield rich personal information, allowing social workers to explore clients' problems in depth. Second, they enable social workers to focus selectively on components of the clients' experiences and on dynamics in the helping process that facilitate positive client change. (6-1 Slide 4)

Reviewing Focal Points of a Session

Toward the end of the first or second session, depending on the length of the initial exploration, summarization is employed to review key concerns that have been discussed and to highlight themes and patterns related to these problems. Summarizing themes, patterns, and resources expands each client's awareness of concerns and tunes them in to promising avenues for addressing those concerns, awareness of opportunities, and potential resources. Through summarizing responses, social workers can not only review themes, patterns, and resources that have emerged in their sessions but also test clients' readiness to consider goals aimed at modifying these problematic patterns. (6-8c Slide 11)

Responding concretely

Using words that describe in explicit terms specific experiences, behaviors, and feelings. Check out perceptions Clarify the meaning of vague or unfamiliar terms Explore the basis of conclusions drawn by clients Assist clients in personalizing their statements Elicit specific feelings Focus on the present Elicit details related to clients' experiences and interactional behavior Social workers should be specific while explaining, clarifying, and giving feedback to clients In developing competency as a social worker, one of your challenges is to consistently recognize clients' messages expressed in abstract and general terms and to assist them to reveal highly specific information related to feelings and experiences. A second challenge is to help clients learn how to respond more concretely in their relationships with others—a task you will not be able to accomplish unless you can model the dimension of concreteness yourself. A third challenge is to describe your own experience in language that is precise and descriptive. (6-6 Slide 9)

interrole conflict

When an individual is faced with excessive, competing, and multiple role obligations, especially when two or more roles are incompatible. (10-3d)

double-sided reflection

When clients express indecision and conflict between several alternatives, a response that captures both sides of the dilemma that is fostering ambivalence about acting. (6-4c Slide 7)

Genograms

a genogram is a pictorial representation of a family, resembling a family tree, which helps social workers and family members understand family traditions and family system structure across generations and over time. In therapeutic applications, genograms help family members understand how problems in living can be passed from generation to generation, identify problematic relationships that contribute to emotional and behavioral health problems, and point to family-based strategies to resolve presenting problems In these settings, genograms help the social worker and client quickly understand sources of stress that can exacerbate presenting problems and sources of support and resilient functioning that can serve as resources for problem solving. As a genogram interview proceeds, the process of elaborating on family membership, relationships, and events often begs for family storytelling. Stories have a way of drawing attention and enhancing involvement in a way that a simple statement of facts does not. In some ways, people are wired to explain the world through stories (10-4c Slide 24)

Feedback loops

cycles of interactions, or expected interactions, that are used to exert influence over families and family members. Ordinarily, feedback loops preserve one or more aspects of family system structure, such as family boundaries, roles, rules, and hierarchy. Sometimes feedback loops are quite dramatic, involving aversive, coercive, forceful, and loud communication strategies (e.g., yelling, threats of violence), whereas other times feedback loops are subtle, quiet, subversive, and difficult to detect (e.g., not following through on agreements). (10-3a Slide 20)

Enmeshment and Disengagement

disengagement (diffused boundaries) or enmeshment (inappropriately rigid boundaries). Family closeness in an enmeshed family system is defined as everyone thinking and feeling alike and relationships that require a major sacrifice of autonomy, in which members are discouraged from developing their own identity and independent explorations or behaviors. Enmeshment and disengagement are not necessarily indicative of dysfunctional relationships, because in some cultural, racial, or socioeconomic groups, these concepts may have little or no relevance (10-3b Slide 20)

Family functions

he ways that families have organized to solve problems of evolutionary survival. As characterized by Constable and Lee (2004), the family is "the basic informal welfare system in any society" (p. 9). In essence, the family performs certain functions and has responsibilities, such as attending to the social and educational needs, health and well-being, and mutual care of its members, that are unlike those of any other social system (10-1 Slide 16)

reframe

A form of adding content in which the social worker puts the client's response in a different light beyond what the client had considered. (6-4c Slide 7)

Providing and Maintaining Focusing

Because your time with clients is limited, it is critical to make the best use of each session by honing in on key topics. You are also responsible for guiding the helping process and avoiding wandering. Unlike normal social relations, helping relationships should be characterized by purposeful focus and continuity. To enhance family and group functioning, social workers must be able to refocus the discussion whenever dysfunctional interactional processes cause families and groups to prematurely drift away from the topic at hand. (6-7 Slide 10)

enacted role

Engaging in actual role behavior relative to a social position, such as a mother engaging in caretaking behavior. (10-3d Slide 21)

role transition

Making the necessary adjustments in role behavior at times of life transition, as when an older relative comes to live in the home or when children leave the home. (10-3d)

Executive power

The concentration of formal decision-making authority into the position of a broadly recognized leader or set of leaders. (10-3c)

flexibility

The extent to which outsiders are permitted or invited to enter and become part of the family system, members are allowed to engage in relationships outside the family, and information and materials are exchanged with the environment. (10-3b Slide 20)

Summarizing Responses

The technique of summarization embodies four distinct yet related facets: Highlighting key aspects of discussions of specific problems, strengths, and resources before changing the focus of the discussion Making connections between relevant aspects of lengthy client messages Reviewing major focal points of a session and tasks that clients plan to work on before the next session Recapitulating the highlights of a previous session and reviewing clients' progress on tasks during the week for the purpose of providing focus and continuity between sessions (6-8 Slide 11)

Summarizing Lengthy Messages

When employed in this manner, summarization provides focus and direction to the session and averts aimless wandering. With clients whose thinking is loose or who ramble to avoid having to focus on unpleasant matters, you may need to interrupt to assure some semblance of focus and continuity. Otherwise, the interview will be disjointed and unproductive. (6-8b Slide 11)

congruency

Whether there is correspondence between the various verbal and nonverbal elements of a message. (10-3e Slide 21)

executive subsystem

Within a family, the formal decision-making authority that provides overall direction to the family, allocates resources, manages boundaries, protects the integrity of the family system in its external relations, and assigns roles to individual members. (10-3c)