Remediation of Dysfunctional Families

Abstract

Objective: This article presents the results of Social Work with dysfunctional families of children in foster homes; with families threatened by the exclusion of children from the family environment; with families of adolescents and young adults who had returned from institutional care. It stresses the importance of Social Work in the natural family environment of clients, encouraging parents to change their behavior towards their children and the role of Social Workers in promoting positive changes in dysfunctional families. Participants: The research sample consisted of 100 families, which were divided into 3 groups:1) Families with children placed in foster homes, crisis centers and reeducation centers - 63 families;2) Families with imposed educational measures and threatened by the exclusion of a child - 23 families;3) Families of adolescents and young adults who had returned from foster homes, reeducation, resocialization and crisis centers and pretrial detention centers or facilities for the execution of punishment - 14 families.Methods: Content analysis of the collection of documents of selected families and author’s own observation. The clients’ collections of documents consisted of the following:• an anamnesis report on the family (provided by the promoters of the social project and supplemented by further data on the client collected by Social Workers from relevant authorities and institutions;• social diagnostics of the family prepared according to the methodology of the program PRIDE by which we identified the status of the family in terms of its strengths and weaknesses, ecomaps, genocharts, developmental puzzle of the child;• a table with the history of losses of each family member and the socalled “analysis of the causes of the crisis”.Results: The main objective of the research was to find out which factors positively influenced the process of remediation and its results. After evaluating the results of our research, we can conclude that these were the changes that the parents were willing and able to make so that their children could be returned to the families or the children could remain living in biological families). Another factor that influenced the results of working with the family was the time of cooperation with the family for the purpose of its remediation.Conclusion: The results which are presented are the results of teamwork of Social Workers of the accredited body Society of the Friends of Children from Children´s homes Smile As A Gift in Nitra in cooperation with other entities involved in social projects that were under my professional supervision. In the case of 57 families I worked as a field Social Worker, too.