The family: a central focus for practice

Ann Hartman, DSW, is Professor, School of Social Work, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The social work profession and the profession to defy definition. As Reid family have long been intimately conhas commented, "Social work has no nected. The profession has supported, exclusive domain. Its uniqueness replaced, taught, rehabilitated, treated, seems to lie in its diversity."' dismantled, abandoned, and embraced Despite this diversity, one common the family. To Mary Richmond, the theme has appeared in most dis family was the central focus of social eussions of the profession's domain: work's concern. The first professional that the central focus of social work is practice journal was titled The Family, the relationship between people and The first social workers in health care their social environments. This key no and in mental hospitals sought to work tion appears in the major documents with patients' families to alleviate varithat mark the path of social work's de ous stressful elefnents in the environvelopment and in the work of many of ment. The early child guidance workers the major contributors to the concep focused their efforts on helping parents tualization of practice, from Richmond, to be better parents, and the childReynolds, and Hamilton to Gordon, saving movement sought to rescue Bartlett, Meyer, and Germain.2 children by placing them with families. In Germain's words, social work is It may be useful to look once again at the relationship between the profession a helping profession concerned with and the family. Certainly the time is tbe relationships between human propitious. The family has once again bein8s and tbeir interpersonal and moved to center stage after years of organizational environments, with , . .. .. . helping to modify or to enhance the being pushed aside by person-centered qua,jty of transactions between psychological theories, by radical indipeople and their environments, and vidualism, and, more recently, by the with seeking to promote envi emphasis on self-actualization on the ronments that support human well one hand and by an extensive focus on being.3 larger systems on the other. Renewed interest in the family has been sparked Given this delineation of the domain by growing concern about family and focus of social work practice, breakdown and its social and human where does the family fit in? It is this costs as well as by greater awareness of very focus on the person-in-situation alienation and rootlessness in a mobile that has contributed to the profession's society in which people are cut off from long commitment to the family. For familial sources of continuity and idenexample, when the early social workers tity. Articles and studies on every asin health or mental health systems took pect of the family abound in the profeson the role of understanding and sional and popular press. ameliorating the social and envi What, then, should be the relationronmental factors involved in a pa ship between social work and the famtient's illness or ability to make use of ily? How does the family fit into the care, it became clear that the family professional domain? Where does the was frequently the most salient part of family belong in conceptualizations of the social environment. When case practice? How does it fare in the develservices were developed, it also be oping designs for specialization? The came apparent that, as Richmond aim of this article is to explore these wrote, the beneficial results of individ questions and to describe the knowlual treatment would "crumble away" if edge, values, and skills essential to a workers failed to take account of the family-centered approach to social family.4 Thus, adopting the view that work practice. social work is characterized by a focus Defining social work is not a simple on transactions between the person and task. Generations of social workers the environment, the family, as the have struggled to describe their wide"intimate environment," should oc ranging profession and to clarify for cupy a central place among social themselves and others the characwork's concerns.5 teristics and domain of their practice. These concerns include not only Perhaps it is the very nature of the transactions between the individual and