Families as Nurturing Systems


Book Description

Here is a major new volume for practitioners, researchers, and those concerned with future policies to promote the welfare of children and families. The patterns of support and the ability of family members to care for each other have changed along with the problems for the health and functioning of families. In Families as Nurturing Systems, respected scholars examine the new and emerging directions in the design and implementation of family resources and support programs. They describe and analyze a wide range of program models in the areas of prevention, social support, family resource, and empowerment that have been implemented in schools, the Afro-American church, early intervention programs, the workplace, and the public policy arena, reflecting the needs of families at different stages in the family life cycle.




Family Communication


Book Description

What's the most common family form today? In what ways can we define "family" that ensure it is inclusive of all family forms? Despite the current diverse nature of family forms, which functions are fulfilled by the family regardless of its makeup> In what ways do family members function to nurture and control each other through their changing roles and rules to maintain their family identity? Family Communication examines the role communication plays in family development and maintenance--from a consideration of what constitutes a "family" (according to various governmental, religious, and social science orientations), to the initiation of dating relationships and romantic commitment, to adding and raising socio-emotionally competent children. Also explored are the roles that communication plays in maintaining intimacy and closeness in the family and in managing family conflicts and tensions. In addition, unique emphasis is given to how cognitions and emotions influence communication outcomes in the family. Despite the diversity of family forms today, families all share one thing in common--they all include some form of nurturing and control: support and development and behavior control and limitations; nurturing communication to encourage intimacy development and maintenance and controlling communication to resolve conflict and change undesirable behavior. By organizing the study of family communication around the concepts of nurturing and control, author Beth Le Poire emphasizes the central role that communication plays in both families if origin and newly formed families.







Parenting Matters


Book Description

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.




Nurturing Mobilities


Book Description

Nurturing Mobilities employs new empirical material and an innovative theoretical framing to bring new clarity to why families travel today – and what happens when they do. The authors argue that an imperative to ‘think with mobility’ and to ‘aspire to be mobile’ shapes identities, futures, and family practices. Drawing on data that examines family travel practices – typically short-term trips – across the working-, middle-, and globally mobile middle-classes, Nurturing Mobilities describes how families travel, why they travel, and the role young family members play in curating family travel. Vitally, it examines the two biggest contemporary issues in global mobility: COVID-19 and climate change. How has COVID-19 changed travel motivations in a world beset by lockdowns and diminished finances? How are concerns around climate change, and engagements with global citizenship education, changing family travel practices? Nurturing Mobilities illuminates new ways in which social class divergence is forged through movements across borders. The authors’ theoretically inter-disciplinary approach delivers a full analysis of the apparently divergent processes that differentiate family travel along social class lines, yet also allow travel to play a core role in social mobility. This book is a vital resource for scholars and students studying mobility, globalisation, social class, and climate change engagement.




GARF Assessment Sourcebook


Book Description

First published in 1998. The GARF Assessment Sourcebook is a comprehensive guide to the Global Assessment of Relational Functioning (GARF) scale for family assessment. This comprehensive guide to the GARF is an essential tool for practicing professionals as well as students in training programs. It provides a thorough description of each element of the GARF, a comprehensive review of the GARF in relation to other marriage and family assessment tools, summaries of GARF research, and a comprehensive appendix of reproducible GARF-related forms. The GARF Assessment Sourcebook challenges marriage and family therapists to use, evaluate, and refine the GARF so that it may be included in the main portion of the next revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). As managed care becomes more pervasive and providers start giving more direction over treatment options, the GARF will become an important new tool in family mental health treatment to assist clinicians who are struggling to improve services and justify their work to the broader health-care community.




Family Therapy with Ethnic Minorities


Book Description

The classic and critically acclaimed book Family Therapy with Ethnic Minorities, Second Edition has now been updated and revised to reflect the various demographic changes that have occurred in the lives of ethnic minority families and the implications of these changes for clinical practice. Family Therapy with Ethnic Minorities provides advanced students and practitioners with the most up-to-date examination yet of the theory, models, and techniques relevant to ethnic minority family functioning and therapy. After an introductory discussion of principles to be considered in practice with ethnic minorities, the authors apply these principles to working with specific ethnic minority groups, namely African Americans, Latinos, Asian/Pacific Americans, and First Nations People. Distinctive cultural values of each ethnic group are explored as well as specific guidelines and suggestions on culturally significant family therapy strategies and skills. Key Features: The revised text reflects advances in family therapy scholarship since the first edition thus ensuring for readers an up-to-date treatment of the topic Accents and extends current critical constructionist theories and techniques and applies them within a culturally specific perspective Pays special attention to the issues of 'historical trauma' (referred to as 'soul wound'), especially in work with First Nations Peoples and African American families /span




Praisesong of Survival


Book Description




The Socio-economics of Crime and Justice


Book Description

This book on crime and justice is motivated primarily by the idea that individual behaviour is influenced both by self-interest and by conscience, or by a sense of community responsibility. Forst has assembled a collection of authors who are writing in four parts: (1) the philosophical foundations and the moral dimension of crime and punishment; (2) the sense of community and the way it influences the problem of crime; (3) on offenders and offences; and (4) on the response of the criminal justice system.