Strengthening Family Resilience through Social Work Practice:

A Theoretical Discourse

Jacob Islary and Shagun SaklaniPhD Scholars TISS, Mumbai

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Family

• A fundamental unit of society• An ecological perspective • A sociological perspective • The structural-functional perspective• Play a dual role • Janzen and Harris (1980) concept of

homeostasis

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Resilience• Is a dynamic process encompassing positive

adaption within the context of significant adversity

• Is characterized by the positive end of the distribution of developmental outcomes among individuals at high risk (Rutter 1897, 1990, in Luthar et al. 2000: 544)

• Can be assessed on their levels of optimism, resourcefulness, determination, sense of belonging and communication patterns

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Changing perspectives on resilience

• Resilience was viewed as inborn or acquired on one's own

• Walsh (2002) stated that it is equally affected by factors like socioeconomic disadvantages, urban poverty, community violence, chronic illness, and catastrophic life events

• An interplay of risk and protective processes over time, involving individual, family, and larger socio-cultural influences (Rutter 1987)

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Resilience at various levels

• Resilience and individuals• Resilience and families• Resilience and community

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Family through the lens of Social Work Practice

• Locates the family in the centre of the unit of attention or the field of action

• Based as on systems approach, human beings can be understood and helped only in the context of the intimate and powerful human systems of which they are a part

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SWP…Contd…

• Social work practice concerned with transactions among persons, family and environment and wide range of strategies for assessment and intervention which may strengthen or change those transactions (Hartman and Laird 1988:4)

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SWP is concerned with the relationship

between people and their environment

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SWP helps enhances resilience• Case work, Group work and Community

Organization & Development Practices (CODP)• SWP places itself on the assumption that group

life plays inseparable role in a person’s life• Its goal is enhancing and enriching the quality

of life for individuals and families.• Not only understands the complex family

system but also equally understands the complex interactions between the family and their ecological milieu.

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Social Psychology Approach to family

• Looks at family as a unit made up of individuals who feel, think, and behave in a manner influenced by host of factors in and around them

• These, as caused by presence of others- actual or implied, can be positively influenced by social work practice

• SWP promotes social change, problem solving in human relationships and the empowerment and liberation of people to enhance ‘well-being’ (IFSW 2000)

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Social Psychology (Contd…)

• Focus of social psychology is the individual; it aims at understanding how most people would act on a given situation (Worchel et al. 2000: 4–5)

• It attempts to identify what would be the most likely response within the given situation, and how this situation affects the most likely response

• Case Work seems to be most appropriate SW-Method

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Structural Functional vs Social Psychology

• Understand family structure, composition, kinship, caste types, its power relations , roles and functions

• Good for understanding inter-relations and how equilibrium of the family as a system can be maintained- within and without

• Understand family as a semi-opened structure influenced by environment

• Takes family as composite of individuals who feel, think and behave

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Structural Functional vs Social Psychology

• Takes family as a stable unit and does not offer explanation for how family grows as a unit and its members change and grow.

• Sees family as a dynamic and constantly influenced by internal as well as external factors

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This is where social work which believes in possibility for change aligns with Social Psychology for intervention- individually and in groups

‘Subtle’ Points to remember in Social Psychological Approach to Family

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• With Families (works on assumptions):– family is a semi-open system whose thoughts,

feelings and behaviour are influenced by external stimulus,

– there is a complex interplay of internal dynamics that involves each member of family in relation to each other and the external environment,

– family do influence the nature of external stimulus and

– family have positive adaptive capacity to spring back from adverse situation

Thank You

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