The Importance Of Active Collaboration With Families Of Culturally Diverse Backgrounds

A therapist will face problems, issues and client troubles everyday. The professional must understand how their client relates to the world around them. These feelings and ideas affect how the client sees the problem and how they respond to their situation. Their actions, in turn, have bearing on individual thoughts, needs, and emotions. The therapist must be aware of the client's history, values, and culture in order to provide effective therapy. This paper will outline and provide information as to the importance of cultural competence and diversity in family therapy.

Many people have many different definitions of a family. Some include family as the people they live with, some include their entire extended family, and some include friends, neighbors, coaches, and teachers. According to the Vanier Institute (2013), a family is “a combination of two or more persons who are bound together over time by ties of mutual consent, birth, and/or adoption” (para. 2). Whichever way you look at it, families often play a major role in life. It only makes sense that when a person begins to go through a drastic change in life such as illness, the family will be involved. This is why it is important that nurses learn how to provide suitable client and family centered care. They can do this by following the four

Cultural Considerations. It has been observed that professionals cannot offer effective support for families without understanding the systems within which the families exist and function (Enwefa, Enwefa, & Jennings, 2006). Given the great importance of support systems for families affected by IDD, it is necessary to consider cultural factors which may affect such systems in either a positive or negative manner. Across cultures, people tend to have varying beliefs about disability (Kayama, 2010), which at times may function as barriers, preventing access to supports and services (Cagran et al., 2011; White, 1987). Kayama (2010) asserts that systemic change may lead to revised perceptions and beliefs among families, moving them from segregationist and negative views, toward a perspective of inclusion.

To find that a member a family has learning difficulty is a huge shock for the rest of the family and brings emotions and new challenges. Living with a disabled person can have profound effects on the entire family–parents, siblings(brothers and sisters).For parents, having a disabled child

Communication plays a massive part once building a relationship in the work setting. By regularly keeping effective communication between practioners, parents/careers and children makes a positive working environment. The relationships are mostly based on the type of communication between one another, communication is not just by verbally but also the body language we show, facial expressions and our gestures.

The responses families make when one member becomes ill or disabled include fear, shock, disbelief and denial. It is interesting to see that across these 3 disciplines such responses are alike. All of the professionals have worked with minorities so I am curious to see if these reactions belong to a particular group or everyone as whole. According to the mental health counselor, the responses of families to illness vary across cultures. She found that African-Americans and Latino/as both respond with shock but find a sense of comfort with their religion.

Being able to communicate effectively with children, young people and adults is vital in order to form positive and professional relationships with them. It can help build self-worth and confidence in a child, young person or adult whilst also promote trust. Effective communication needs to be direct, quick and easily understood by the recipient. If not, it can cause a breakdown in communication leading to misunderstandings and have a negative impact on the relationship between those involved. Communicating in a positive way and getting to know the people involved can be useful in understanding their own individual needs. Some children do not have the same positive relationships at home with family members as they do at school, and so they

Interviewee Billie Ragon gave me the opportunity to hear the story of her life and how her color and disability has affected how she has lived. Family values and the region, in which she lived, played a huge part in how she lived daily life. Different groups of people, whether it was family or just individuals from the community impacted her life greatly. Finally, Mrs. Ragon out of the kindness of her heart wanted to conduct this interview so maybe it could help others that may be suffering or feeling any kind of pain.

Families: I establish a positive and productive relationship with families by building trust, giving respect, communication and consistency. I greet each child and family daily. When I inform parents of issues with their children, I do so in a positive manner using the sandwich method. This method gives strengths before stating any issues or concerns and allows the parent and myself to come to a meeting of the minds on the best way to approach correcting problems. This also allows parents to contribute to positive ways of working together to help further the child’s education and development.

Gibson, J. E. (2012). Interviews and Focus Groups With Children: Methods That Match Children's Developing Competencies. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 4(2). doi:10.1111/j.1756-2589.2012.00119.x

Then using the client’s strengths to help them complete those goals, thus lessening or solving their stress/problem. The overall goals of this video were for the family to be able to communicate more effectively, be able to spend time with one another, and the daughter would begin attending school again. In the very beginning, I really appreciated Berg’s ability to help the family stay on track. The first time I noticed this is where she was directed and used humor with Lou when she told him she did not have a job for him, and then quickly brought him back to the topic to answer the question, ‘what would you like to get out of family therapy?

Working with Families on Addressing Feelings and Problem Solving was a topic that struck a cord with myself. I personally do not work with children presently; however, I feel that this chapter will be most vital in my future work with children. Being able to solve problems and express feelings are skills essential to function well in a community. In a preschool or school age settings conflicts will occur and without the means of resolving these issues; the environment will remain unpleasant.

When we begin our work with parent and child, they do not have to come to our office because that’s a hallmark of a system centered approach. We ask if we can go to them. We want families to know that we care about them as persons. When we go to their houses, we don’t want to know what is in the refrigerator, or how clean the living room is. Our priorities come out of listening to what families say, and building out from their

My Nuclear family consists of my mother, my father, my little brother and I. While this is my nuclear family, my external family has played a crucial part in my development. Growing up, I have always counted on an extensive family system during some stressful situations. This is one of the reasons why when my family had to separate to come to the United States, I was able to cope with the transition gracefully. This experience provided my family with the tools to cope with adversity. The experience of being separated from my family has provided the circumstances to test how I deal with stressful situations. More importantly, it gave me hope for positive outcomes even in the face of adversity.

When parents learn that their child has a disability or a chronic illness, they begin a journey that