Social Work Practice With Families

The goals of this course are to help students THINK SYSTEMICALLY and learn skills to conduct family sessions with various family members (e.g., parent-child, couple, adult child and parent, whole family). The course is designed to help students become excited about family-oriented work in everyday practice, regardless of the setting, the population, or how many family members they have in the room. Skill practice and exercises will illustrate (a) individual versus systemic thinking, and (b) the meaning or context of the symptom within the larger system. An important outcome is that students will be able to facilitate communication among family members. Students will learn family systems concepts and theories that are foundational to the practice of family assessment and intervention. A conceptual framework, Liberation Health, will be used to assist students in understanding families within the larger socio-political-cultural context. Students will also learn Structural Family Therapy and Narrative Family Therapy as exemplars of a family systems intervention.