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Children and Families
Social workers bring their unique skills to helping two increasingly
vulnerable groups: children and families. In all, about 16% of the
country’s half a million social workers work in child services while
12% work in family services.
A range of factors—poverty, homelessness, alcohol and drug addiction
and child abuse and neglect—make today’s families more susceptible
than ever to splitting apart. In fact, less than half of America’s
children live in a traditional “nuclear family,” according to statistics.
Fortunately, social workers have a wide array of tools to help children
and families to better cope with the normal stresses of life and
to deal with systemic problems such as child abuse and homelessness.
Through assessment, support, counseling, resource coordination and
advocacy, social workers:
- Counsel families to find better solutions to their problems;
- Place abused children in loving homes;
- Find employment and housing for homeless families;
- Help pregnant women, adoptive parents and adopted children navigate
the adoption system; and,
- Help children and families make best use of the welfare system.
In all of these arenas, social workers use a systems and family-oriented
approach to helping families cope. The adoption system is a good
example. Social workers counsel pregnant women, conduct home studies
of potential adoptive parents, find suitable “matches” of adoptive
parents and children and help adoptive parents deal with the struggles
unique to adopted children. Increasingly, they also provide post-adoption
counseling to help older adoptees deal with issues of self-identity,
loss and self esteem as well as medical problems that may have a
genetic component.
Social workers provide a wide gamut of services in the foster-care
system as well. These services are critical as the number of children
in foster care continues to rise. In this arena, social workers assess
at risk families to determine if a child needs placement. They evaluate
potential foster homes, monitor the foster home during placement
and help legal authorities and the family to determine an appropriate
time to return the child to the family of origin.
A growing component of social work practice actually aims to make
foster care services a thing of the past. Using a system known as
family preservation services, social workers are key members of teams
that work to keep families intact. Some of these interventions include
helping stabilize immediate crises, maintaining and strengthening
family relationships, increasing families’ coping skills and competencies
and helping families to access useful services.
Social workers also help women and their children who are victims
of domestic violence. In a typical case, a social worker at a shelter
in Ann Arbor, Mich., helped a battered woman and her two sons get
back on their feet. She counseled the woman one-on-one, arranged
for transportation to get the boys to and from school, and helped
the woman develop goals and life skills so she could afford housing
and child care once she and the boys left the shelter. The social
worker also helped the woman find affordable housing and helped her
contact a lawyer who specialized in abuse cases. Indeed, the social
worker was essential to helping the woman develop a new and healthier
life for herself and her boys.
http://www.socialworkers.org/children.asp
http://www.helpstartshere.org/Kids_And_Family/Default_Page.html
References:
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- Gibelman, M. (1995). What Social Workers Do (4th ed.).
Washington, DC. NASW Press.
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- NASW (2000) Social Work Speaks (5th ed.).
Washington, DC NASW Press
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