Family Management Assessment : A Middle Aged Woman Who Lives

Over the course of the last sixty years, family values have consistently continued to change. With a heavier influx of women entering the work force and the social emphasis of individualism, the traditional family image has changed, and with

Affluenza has been found to be a family problem as well. “There is a tension between materialism and family values.” Family life is often viewed by parents as instilling competitive values in their children so they can compile the best resumes, go to the best college to get the best jobs to earn the most money. The number of families that are regularly eating together and going on a vacation together has dropped by a third since 1970. Overspending is one of the many conflicts that families face as well as the weakening of marriages. “The choices available to people in terms of products are so overwhelming. Whether you are going to buy a car or a bagel, there are so many choices. There’s a feeling when you’ve bought something that maybe you didn’t make the right choice, maybe you missed something. And it can’t help but carry over into

The health of a family is a vital part of how that family interacts with one another and how each individual of the family will function in society, later teaching their children about a healthy lifestyle or lack thereof. The family health assessment helps to identify risk factors and potential dysfunction (Edelman, 2014) I interviewed a single parent family home about their health and how they perceive it. This family is an all-male family, an athletic seventeen year old boy getting ready for his senior year, a twenty year old young man, and a hardworking, dedicated, overweight father.

Although Helen did some very disruptive acts she does have good sense of acceptance. Helen knew that she was feeling a certain way so she was responsible enough to find a baby sitter for her child instead of acting the way she did with her child. Another strength that she has is the ability to acknowledge that she has a problem. Regardless of how she was referred to a therapist the first time she did seek treatment, which shows that she is willing to learn. Her sister and her daughter Sonya and her husband support her.

In the past, plenty of issues were concealed instead of confronting them, which is no longer the case nowadays. Coontz has noted, “There are plenty of stresses in modern family life, but one reason they seem worse is that we no longer sweep them under the rug” (96). We talk candidly about controversies now, no longer hiding issues. We straighten out the problem instead of hiding or ignoring it. There are two disputing narratives about American families. One

Leon Dash’s book, Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America, follows the life of a mother whom is affected by poverty, drugs, and abuse while trying to provide for her 8 children and grandchildren. I will be creating a family assessment on this family. According to Anna Mcphatter, there are five crucial areas in a comprehensive family assessment: problem identification, family structure, family functioning, family strengths and resources, and intervention plan and method of evaluation. All of which will be analyzed throughout this family assessment.

They are on a regular diet with few restrictions on fried foods and fat intake. The children eat school lunch and the parents from outside restaurant choices. Mom tries to cook a meal a day after work or they seldom eat Subway or Pizza Hut. No variation in weight gain or weight loss reported. They try to eat dinner as a family at home on a regular basis. However, this was not feasible all of the time due to dad’s late night work hours and CH basketball practices after school. They generally get 6-7 hours of sleep per night and denied any sleep deprivation. No exercise program has been implemented by this family. CH is the only physically, athletic member. DH stated that he likes to ride his bike. The children are active in Sunday school and participate in summer camp.

A comprehensive family assessment provides a foundation to promote family health (Edelman & Mandle, 2011). 1987 Marjorie Gordon purposed 11 functional health patterns to use for guidance in order to facilitate nurses to have a frame work for the family assessment in. Gordon’s 11 functional health patterns help organizes basic family assessment information. This standardized format will guide nurses to complete the family assessment using system approaches, which will identify a patient’s

As the society we live in continues to transform, nurses need a comprehensive tool to assess family’s health patterns. Family units are influenced by environment, biological, mental, social and spiritual factors. Assessing these areas for health promotion and disease prevention will take all of these influences into consideration (Edelman & Mandle, 2010). A priority to a family focused health assessment approach is to adequately question, assess and examine these areas. A tool to assist a family health assessment using a family focused approach is Gordon’s 11 Functional Patterns. This paper will use these 11

The purpose of this paper is to incorporate one family's experience of living with multiple chronic illnesses into the Calgary Family Assessment Model (CFAM) and Rolland's Chronic Health Challenge Framework. CFAM was developed by Dr. Lorraine M. Wright, a professor Emeritus of nursing and by Dr. Maureen Leahey, a manager of a mental health outpatient program both have over 25 years experience while still managing to supervise, teach, consult, write, and maintain a part-time clinical practice in individual, couple, and family therapy (Moxie, 2007). CFAM allows nurses to assess families during interviews. CFAM is a multidimensional framework consisting of three major categories: structural, dimensional and functional. (Wright & Leahey, 2005)

Ms. Apple is a 45 year old African American woman who has been a widow for about 4 years. Ms. Apple has three children, whose ages range from 5-12 years old. Ms. Apple has been struggling to keep her family afloat since the death of her husband. Ms. Apple convinced herself that she would not require the extra assistance. However, she realized in attempting to provide alone has not only become very strenuous, but also quite costly. Expenses have become overwhelming for Ms. Apple to maintain, since her husband took care of the finances and was the breadwinner for the family. Ms. Apple has minimal education as she is able to read and write at grade school level. Ms. Apple also has never been employed as she was a home maker. At this

A family consists of a group of interacting individuals related by blood, marriage, cohabitation, or adoption who interdependently perform relevant functions by fulfilling expected roles. (Edelman, Kudzma, & Mandle, 2014, p. 150)

The families in America are steadily changing. While they remain our most valued and consistent source of strength and comfort, some families are becoming increasingly unstructured. In the past, the typical family consists of a working father, a stay at home mother and, of course, well-rounded children. Today, less than 20 percent of American families fit nicely into this cookie cutter image. American households have never been more diverse. Natalie Angier takes stock of the changing definition of family in an article for the New York Times.

The author’s family is very similar to other two parent, child rearing families other than the decrease in socialization from living in a very rural community where there are no other children to socialize with. The family assimilates into the community well as the author is involved with teaching classes to the local first responders and the family is very close to the few neighbors that they have. The family manages daily living one day at a time by working as a team and dividing the household tasks between the author and her husband, for example if the author cooks the husband does the dishes and vice versa, this generally works out well however there is usually friendly arguments about who gets to cook. The roles have had to get a bit more flexible with the author now attending school and household tasks have moved down the priority list a notch. Marriage, parents, and lover relationships are all viewed as a team effort with lots of give and take and a strong emphasis on compromise. For birth control the author’s husband has a vasectomy. The family copes with stressful life events by communicating; one strength that the family utilizes well is incorporating

Dr. Murray Bowen, a psychiatrist, offered us the family systems theory. This theory views the family as an emotional unit, further providing a thinking systems approach to describe the complex interactions in the unit. Bowen offered, “A change in one person’s functioning is predictably followed by a reciprocal change in the functioning of others” (Kerr, 2000). If one person within the family unit is having a difficult time, it effects everyone within the family unit. An example of this would be a father who is the primary breadwinner for his family suddenly loosing his job. Prior