Family_Support

FAMILY SUPPORT Title of Assignment In the context of your role as a future family support worker, consider both why it is important and how best, to support the family. Family institution in Ireland has seen a major transformation in terms of ethics, morality and lived experiences, it has evolved from the referenced married nuclear family to a broad array of family unions, and in its wake are consequences for the family. This essay will be looking at why it is important to support the family as a family worker and how best to achieve such an intervention. The essay acknowledges there are a plethora of evidence why families need support and ways to ensure delivery of service, but it will focus on a few. According to Pinkerton et al. (2006) family support is a process through which a set of activities and facilities are put together by statutory, voluntary, community and private services to ensure the well- being of children and their families; it is aimed at early intervention and the prevention of troubled family relationships getting dysfunctional. O’Doherty (2007) suggested that these supports could be emotional, practical or esteem support. Family support is important in shaping a child’s developmental experience, faced within the family and their relationship to the outside world. It helps the child to build resilience which thus acts as a buffer in dealing with stressors. For instance, when a child experiences parental loss, abuse, neglect, rejection by parental figures, separation from attachment figure in early childhood or witnessing parental conflict, violence, disruptive or unreliable care can all have a serious negative impact on the child’s early development (Gilligan cited in Canavan et al.2006). These negative stressors according to Runyan et al. (1998) cited in Gilligan (2000) are countered by the cumulative protective family support interventions, by reducing the stressor and adding protective positive factors in the child’s life. Because the child’s ability to develop cognitively and function in a comparable level with peers is highly correlated to his family and immediate environment. If a child witnesses too many unethical or immoral social experiences, invariably the child in adult life will have reinforced negative attitudes towards other people and to life in general (Berryman et al. 2006). Family support is also important for a child with disability within the family, who is the focus of unusual attention by parents for personal gains. There is evidence of detouring by parents in which couples deflect attention from their own personal difficulty or conflict by focusing their attention on the child with special needs. This refusal to acknowledge their marital difficulties invariably has a knock-on effect on the other siblings who receives little or minimal attention, (Roiste, 2006). In addition, family support enables children to maintain relationships; familial bonds are encouraged by family workers, because family relationship means a lot to children even when the child’s lived experience within the family was unhealthy or abusive in nature; the child may feel some loyalty towards the abusive parent. Gilligan (1995) cited in Gilligan (2000:16) attempts to put it into perspective by saying ‘‘you can take the child out of the family but you cannot take the family out of the child’’. In others words, it is difficult to replace the family satisfactorily even when the child is a ward of the state, because of the inherent attachment to parental figures; as a result family support worker encourages positive contact between children in foster care and their biological parents (Toynbee (1998) cited in Canavan et al.2000). Family breakdown due to economic recession also require support from social workers because of the negative impact on the family, family situation degenerates into an intervention level that requires multi-disciplinary approach .If at the onset support is not available, children are entangled in parental conflict, and could be taken away from the family (Thompson, 2009). Early intervention is recommended to prevent the family falling through the safety-net, family break-up is also detrimental to the child’s well-being and costly to the state; consequently in some families this breakdown has led to the deterioration of physical and mental health of parents, and a decline in their living standard. Mothers become anxious and depressed while the fathers develop physical symptoms (Canavan et al. 2000). The type of family union also determines the stability in the family, for example single- mother households are burdened with the needs of their children and as such require family support. In order to make ends meet single-mothers are more inclined to take up part-time jobs, less money which sometimes leads to relative-poverty. Studies have shown that being married helps to cushion the economic stress, poverty and unemployment which are major stressors in the family (Mckeown et al.2003). Parenting skills play a pivotal role in the well-being of the child, children who lack parental guidance, tend to grow up with conduct disorder in early childhood, and in adolescence exhibit aggressive and anti-social behaviour. Early intervention would help to curtail the negative behaviour from progressing. The worker supports the child through initiatives like springboard project or after-school clubs; while the parents who employ permissive parenting are encouraged through information, parental training, workshops to make use of available resources and to adopt authoritative style of parenting which involves nurturing, internalising issues with the children and the creation of appropriate boundaries ( (Deater-Deckard, 2004) . The dynamic nature of family and the prevailing economic situation has seen an upsurge of parents taking employment far away from home, working long-hours; this geographical mobility has contributed to the loss of informal support to the elderly who are then forced to formal support, also children within this family have less quality and bonding- time, neglected and often spend the best part of their early childhood in crèche. Family support helps parents in assessing, planning and tailoring their resources to meet the needs of the child and family. (Scott and Ward,2005). Having made some in-roads into why support is needed by families, the paper would now explore how best to deliver this support to meet the standard of best-practice. According to Thompson (2009) On-going planning and assessment of the family needs is an essential part of best-practice, it involves gathering relevant information about the family, planning what are the family needs and how to achieve them, setting targets, putting an action plan in place which would guide and inform the process; the worker adopts Bronfenbrenner ecological model of evaluating the child within the family, acknowledging systemic interactions when reviewing and making recommendation in stages. The overarching goal is to empower and promote independence (Mcternan and Godfrey, 2006). Dolan et al .(2006) contends that this process must be needs-led, support worker must be flexible and without any pre-conceived ideas, the worker must be willing to change the plans as the needs of the family changes when reviewing the care plan. Hypothetically, if a child living with his parents is at Hardikel intervention level 2, because the child was assessed to have problem writing in school, the care plan would not suffice if the child’s parent fall ill and dysfunctional, the child taken into care, the plan has to be revised to take into account an intervention that is commensurate with Hardikel level 4 intervention. Support cannot be generalised because every individual is unique and their needs vary from time to time (Quinton 2005 in O’Doherty, 2009). While undertaking research on a Springboard Project Mckeown ( 2000) identified strength within the family as a key tool in the journey of empowering a family. Family support workers should endeavour to identify and amplify the strengths, abilities and the resources available within and around the family, and develop on it. Because every individual has the capacity for change, the worker has to be able to reaffirm it in order to build resilience without ignoring the weakness in the family. The resilience will then act as a buffer when faced with adversities in the home. Through support, twins Kellie and Katie Henderson raped and abuse by her brothers and father; refused to allow the incident to define them (Wenzl,2011). Furthermore, Pinkerton et al. (2005) enumerated best practice principles in the delivery of care to the service –user, among which was the ability to work in partnership with the child, community and family to create a social capital. Through partnership rights and values are respected.; the family worker engages with other professionals connected to the child such as the teachers, doctor, Gardaí, therapist, in a concerted effort to promote independence, the process of partnership can be achieved only Meekeum (2009) when the worker and user define how the services should be designed and delivered because it will promote and endorse equality in decision-making. Family intervention aimed towards children’s development from disadvantaged background through crèches, afterschool clubs, nurseries, home-school liaison project etc. This approach focuses on the child but excludes formal educational system, and it has been shown to be an effective source of developing partnership between schools and family support service (Health Service Executive, 2011). Supporting the child and family helps to integrate and harness communal cohesion which is an essential ingredient in building a viable social capital. O’Doherty (2009) likened the family to a franchise that involves management, but members have to buy-in to make it an important venture as long as the product is tailored to the needs of the consumers. “If we think about it, save for the vagaries of birth, errant biology, class and status, or simply circumstance, we are all but a half step away from the ‘other’ families we describe as in need of service or ‘at risk’. In the final analysis, it is not ‘us’ and ‘them’. It is all of us. Together.”(Whitetaker1997:138). In conclusion, family support is a vital instrument in maintaining and promoting well-being within society, empowering service-users without forgetting the principal tenet which is the safety of the child. Workers must ensure service delivery is client oriented, using best-practice standards to protect and prevent the most vulnerable families in our society from falling through the cracks, else the crimson tide will leave some boats behind. REFRENCE Berryman C. J., Smythe K. 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