Linking Practice and Theory (concepts)

Psychodynamic Theory
Psychodynamic Attachment Practice
Crisis Intervention and Task Centred Theory

Crisis intervention and task-centered theory are two important approaches in social work that are often used
together to help individuals, families, and communities deal with crises and challenges.

Crisis intervention
- is a short-term, immediate response to a crisis situation. It is designed to stabilize the individual in crisis and
provide support until they can manage the situation on their own or receive further assistance.
- The goal of crisis intervention is to reduce the impact of the crisis and promote resilience.

Task-centered theory
- is a longer-term approach that focuses on identifying specific tasks or goals that the individual or family needs to
accomplish in order to resolve the problem.
- The theory assumes that individuals are capable of solving their own problems, and that social workers can help
by guiding them through a structured process of goal-setting, problem-solving, and skill-building.

Together, crisis intervention and task-centered theory can be used to provide a comprehensive approach to social
work practice. Social workers can use crisis intervention techniques to help individuals manage the immediate impact
of a crisis, and then use task-centered theory to help them develop long-term solutions and skills to prevent future
crises.

For example, a social worker might use crisis intervention techniques to help a family who has experienced a natural
disaster. The social worker would provide emotional support, connect the family with resources for food, shelter, and
medical care, and help them develop a plan for meeting their immediate needs. Then, using task-centered theory,
the social worker would work with the family to identify longer-term goals, such as finding permanent housing,
rebuilding their community, and developing resilience strategies to prepare for future disasters.

Narrative Practice

- is an approach used in social work that focuses on the stories people tell about their lives and experiences.
- Social workers work with individuals or families to explore their stories, listening actively and respectfully while
asking questions to clarify and deepen understanding.
- By collaborating with clients to identify alternative narratives, narrative practice aims to help people build agency
and control over their lives, recognizing their strengths and resources, reframing negative experiences, and
identifying opportunities for growth and change. This approach is often used to help people who have
experienced trauma or other challenges, to support them in building resilience and hope for the future. An
example of narrative practice in action might involve a social worker working with a young person who has
experienced bullying at school, helping them to reframe their story in a more positive light and build their sense
of self and resilience.
Family System

The family systems approach allows the family social worker to assess a family within the context of interactions and
relationships.
- The systems approach complements the developmental approach.
- The developmental approach considers stages in the family’s life cycle.
- With a systems perspective, relationships at each stage of the family life cycle are the focus of assessment.
- From a systems view, the social worker focuses on the family as a whole, rather than on individual family
members.
- The family is seen as trying to achieve a bal-ance between change and stability. Change that affects one member
affects the whole family.
- Causality is circular rather than linear. The family system includes many subsystems and also is part of larger
suprasystems.

Family Development and The Life Cycle

- One way for social workers to understand families is to become familiar with issues that arise at various
developmental stages.
- Stages of family development include marriage or partnering, birth of the first child, families with preschool
children, families with school-aged children, families with teenagers, and families with young people leaving
home.
- The transition from each stage to the next is associated with a variety of stresses
and strains for family members.
- Understanding these issues enables the family social worker to help families cope with changes that occur as the
family matures.

Family Strengths and Resilience

- Resilience is a dynamic process whereby families rally their resources and cooperate as a unit to meet their
challenges.
- These strengths can be placed in an ecological approach along with risk factors, paying attention to micro-, meso-,
macro-, and exosystems.
- It also emphasizes the need to examine family members’ beliefs as a source of both strength and risk.
- Culture is not a straightforward concept but involves multiple dimensions.
- The contributions of culture and ethnicity to strengths and resilience is very important and must be understood
by the family social worker.
- Finally, there is a growing recognition of the importance of religion and spirituality in family life, which can pose
dilemmas and opportunities for family social workers. Social workers can broaden beliefs about working with
families by embracing a family’s strengths.

The Beginning Phase (Chapter 7)

Family social work takes place in five phases: beginning, assessment, intervention, evaluation, and termination.
- Specific skills are required of the family social worker in each of these phases.
- skills involved in the beginning phase when the social worker establishes rapport with families.
- The family social worker needs to understand the principles of effective communication and know how to
interpret clients’ verbal and nonverbal messages.
- Core qualities required of the family social worker include empathy, nonpossessive warmth, and genuineness.

Key Terms:

Attending Behaviors helps the family social worker to tune in and focus on all people in the interview. Fundamental
to attending is the development of active listening skills. Listening entails hearing, observing, encouraging,
remembering, and understanding.
Communication is both digital and analogic. Digital communication occurs when a work is spoken and refers to the
content. Analogic communication is more abstract, as it often refers to nonverbal components of meaning or the
relationship.

Empathy is a way for the family social worker to communicate understanding of family members’ experiences,
behaviors, and feelings from the family member’s point of view.

Genuineness refers to a lack of defensiveness or artificiality in the family social worker’s communications with the
family members. Genuineness is being sincere and honest.

Nonpossessive Warmth exists when the family social worker communicates with family members in ways that
convey acceptance, understanding, and interest in their well-being and make them feel safe regardless of such
external factors as the family member’s problematic behavior, demeanor, or appearance.

Self-Awareness involves an understanding of your own needs, values, feelings, behaviors, thoughts, biases, and their
effects on your work with families. The family social worker needs to be honest and avoid unethical use of clients to
fulfill personal and interpersonal needs.

Family Systems Intervention(10)

assessment of the entire family, moving into six different ways to define family problems.
- Intervention targeted changing circular patterns through stimulating interaction;
- the use of lineal, circular, strategic, and reflexive questions; and detriangulation. (Karl Tomm)
- We also discussed working with involuntary clients, including the need for the family social worker to develop
goals and set contracts with all family members.

The family social work relationship is established to achieve certain goals.

- Goal setting allows the work to develop and retain its purpose.
- Goals should specify what the client wishes to achieve through family social work, as well as the methods that
will be used.
- Goals should be measurable, set within a reason-able time limit, consistent with the client’s values and abilities,
and under the client’s control.
- Strategies for setting goals include identifying general intentions, defining the specifics of the goal, and setting
goals that can be reached within a measurable period.

Contracting occurs at the end of the assessment phase.

- The contract is an agreement between the client and the family social worker outlining the goals of the
relationship and the means to be used to achieve these goals.
- The contract can be oral or written and should be negotiated early in the work, but it may change as the work
progresses.
- Without a contract, there is often confusion because the family social worker and the family are proceeding
without a shared understanding of the work to be accomplished.
- Contracts are limited by time constraints and agency mandates.
- Effective contracts specify what needs to be accomplished and how, the roles of the family social worker and the
client, and procedural details such as when and where meetings will take place.
Interventions at the Child and Parental Levels (12)

- techniques for helping families to better handle the stresses and problems of day-to-day living and strategies to
develop a positive family climate.
- Interventions included behavioral family therapy, family psychoeducation, and parent training.
- As couples transition through normal developmental stages, they can help the family maturation process by
creating a positive parent-child relationship and learning techniques to shape their child’s behavior in a positive
direction.

KEY TERMS

- Reinforcement a reward that keeps a behavior going.

- Positive reinforcement the process whereby appropriate behaviors are recognized and reinforced, thereby
increasing the probability that the behaviors will continue in the future.
- Eg: a parent may give their child a treat when they do their homework on time. A teacher may give a student
praise for a job well done.
- the social worker may offer praise and encouragement for attending sessions, and may offer a small reward (such
as a certificate or a gift card) after a certain number of sessions have been completed.
- Negative reinforcement the use of consequences that strengthen or maintain a behavior through their removal.
- Eg: help a client who is struggling with substance abuse to develop healthier coping mechanisms. By teaching the
client to recognize the triggers for substance abuse and replacing the behavior with a healthier alternative, the
client may experience relief from negative emotions, which reinforces the new behavior.
- Punishment the use of aversive consequences immediately after the behavior occurs. Punishment is designed to
eliminate a particular behavior.
- Eg: parent may scold a child for misbehaving. A boss may reprimand an employee for poor work performance.
- if a client is engaging in violent or abusive behavior, a social worker may need to intervene to protect others and
to hold the client accountable for their actions. This may involve sanctions such as probation, community service,
or jail time.
- Extinction a technique designed to eliminate behavior through the lack of any consequence (e.g., attention).
Time-out a child discipline technique designed to weaken problematic behaviors. It involves removing the child
from the stimulating environment and placing the child in a low-stimulus environment.
- Eg: if a child throws a tantrum to get attention, the parent may choose to ignore the behavior, which will
eventually result in the child no longer throwing tantrums for attention.
- if a client is struggling with anxiety and is engaging in avoidance behaviors, a social worker may encourage the
client to gradually confront their fears and to develop healthier coping mechanisms. By consistently reinforcing
the new behaviors and gradually reducing the reinforcement of the old behaviors, the client may experience a
reduction in anxiety and an improvement in their quality of life.