The Importance Of Family Intervention

When trying to figure out where most of the issues we face as adults stems from there is often one common denominator. Most of these issues can be traced back to how your family functioned. The values that were emphasized, the roles each member played and the interactions that occurred all play a significant role in how we function as people. At the core of most of our distress and accomplishments is our family dynamic and ultimately what occurred within your family has the ability to impact your future. How can we ensure that parents or guardians are making the right choices when it comes to the best way to raise a child? For decades in psychology one topic that has always sparked an interest with researchers are the inner workings of the family dynamic. As a result of that interest a significant amount of research has been done. From this research psychologists figured out the best interventions, which can be implemented in order to improve the life of a child. Two of these approaches are cognitive and behavioral treatments, which can be used to help parents where maltreatment of the child is an issue. Studies have shown that this type of treatment can involve the individual parent, the child, the parent-child relationship and parent groups in both a clinic and home setting. All of which is dependent on the needs of the family (Azar, Wolfe, 1998). Cognitive and behavioral therapy deals with shifting the thought process of an individual into a more positive pattern. When dealing with abusive parent/child relationships this type of therapy focuses on changing the dynamics of the relationship, helping with stress, anger management and neglect (Azar, Wolfe, 1998). The bulk of which is accomplished with training in child management skills, role-playing and feedback (Azar, Wolfe, 1998). One type of cognitive and behavioral treatment that is also used to treat abusive parents is child management skills training. This type of intervention teaches parents about the proper way to deal with a child by changing patterns that would otherwise negatively affect the child. This is done through modeling, role-playing and feedback in addition to homework and reading assignments (Azar, 1998a). Unfortunately this type of therapy comes with certain obstacles that need to be dealt with in order for treatment to be successful. These include the mental intellect of the parent and their inability to understand how to apply the techniques, a resistance to role-playing and misuse of techniques (Azar, 1998a). Another type of intervention is interdisciplinary programmatic intervention, specifically the FAST Track program. This program is designed to improve communication between children with behavioral problems, the family and the school. It is also used to advance peer relationships, increase social, cognitive and problem solving skills as well as to decrease disruptive behavior (Fried, Reppucci, 2002). This program specifically targets kindergarten-age children who are in the top 10% of conduct problems and includes parent training, home visiting, social skills training, academic tutoring and behavioral classroom management (Fried, Reppucci, 2002). A third type of intervention is cognitive restructuring and problem solving training. Again this targets the parents of the abused child and deals with changing the parent’s unrealistic expectations of their child. Once that link has been made the clinician is able to decide if the parent’s reaction to their child’s behavior is appropriate and cognitive restructuring can start to challenge the parents unrealistic beliefs (Azar, 1989a). Parents should see the children …show more content…
This treatment is family focused and works on enhancing family functioning in order to reduce the odds of the teen repeating their illegal behavior (Lesson Commentary). It uses a home-based model where participants have access to therapist 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (Letourneau, Henggeler, Borduin, Schewe, McCart, Chapman, Saldana, 2009). The goal of this treatment is to give parents the skills needed to handle raising an adolescent and to provide the adolescent with the skills needed to deal with family problems by using behavioral parent training and cognitive-behavioral therapy (Letourneau, Henggeler, Borduin, Schewe, McCart, Chapman, Saldana, 2009). One study showed that MST was more effective at maintaining desired outcomes through a 1-year post recruitment of juvenile sex offenders than more typical services provided to such offenders (Letourneau, Henggeler, Borduin, Schewe, McCart, Chapman, Saldana,