Family Functioning

When assessing the functions of a family, a social worker must consider many things. After reading chapter 10 of the textbook, I believe that looking at the content and process of family interactions is one of the best ways to gain insight into how a family functions on a regular basis. Often in dysfunctional family settings, communication is the major problem. Because of this, it is important that after the social worker observes the interactions between family members, they must identify the barriers to communication that are causing the struggling relationships.

At my internship, I have not had many opportunities to observe the family as a whole. So far, I have mostly dealt with individuals, with one exception. Last week, I sat in on a family visit between one of the children in our program and his grandmother. This child is in foster care and is in the process of being adopted. The grandmother attempted to gain custody of the child, but she was denied. She is now allowed to visit with him once per month. I observed the interactions between the youth and his grandmother, and now that I have read this chapter on family interaction, I am able to better define what occurred during this meeting. During this visit, the child wanted to play a game with his grandmother. She denied this request, and instead wanted to "teach him the word of God". The child was irritated, but went along with this activity. The child paid attention, but did not engage or show interest. The grandmother preached to him for almost their entire visit together, and then allowed the child to play his game with me (she did not want to join in). When it was time to say goodbye and hug his grandmother, the child got angry that his game was interrupted and quickly dismissed his grandmother.

CONTENT AND PROCESS- After reading on the subject, I realize that the child and his grandmother lack effective communication skills. The child explained to me that his grandmother preaches for the entirety of every visit they have together. The grandmother explained that it is "all she knows how to do". The CONTENT of their interactions does not seem to show any personal conversation. The PROCESS of their interactions is always the same. The grandmother preaches and the child politely listeners, but is obviously not interested in what she is saying. Although this type of interaction is ineffective, each visit continues to follow this pattern. BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION- The grandmother tends to dominate the relationship and does not allow room for the child's interests or feelings. The conversations focus entirely on her interests. The child, on the other hand, tends to avoid the topic being discussed and focuses on his wants as opposed to the interaction at hand. RECEIVER skills- the child lacks the skills of physical attending, true listening, or elaboration, as is evidenced by his lack of engagement in the interactions. SENDER skills- The grandmother is able to express herself well, but only on one particular topic (religion). She lacks the ability to interact in any other way. Also, considering of the nature of the topic, the interactions are often preachy and there are a lot of "shoulds" and "oughts" used.

Currently, the interactions in this family are ineffective and the communication skills are lacking. There is much work that needs to be done to teach these skills to both the child and the grandmother in this family.