The Social Worker's Function in Divorce Proceedings

T HIS paper is motivated by the conviction that current marriage and family counseling is a social practice in need of a guiding theory. Such a theory is needed to give to counseling a more scientific orientation and to aid its advancement toward a more certain status as a profession. The paper is further stimulated by the belief that role theory, in its most recent developments, provides a potentially useful approach to marriage counseling practice. It is also believed that this body of theory about human conduct offers a fruitful source for the derivation of hypotheses for research related to counseling practice. The subject of theory and practice in marriage counseling is highly important at this time for several reasons. In the first place, there is a widely recognized need for a coherent set of general principles to provide bases for explaining observed facts related to marriage and family counseling. A set of valid generalizations would serve as a guide to action and to significant research. If this branch of counseling is to become a profession, its practitioners should be able to operate within a common conceptual frame of reference. Only when such commonality is achieved will workers in this area be able to communicate effectively with one another and to establish comparable training programs for counselors. Theory for counseling is significant not only for the professional counselor but for the client and for the public as well. Marriage counseling has been widely publicized in textbooks in marriage and family living and in popular and semi-popular literature in this area. In these writings counseling is generally proposed as a major program for the conservation and development of family life in times of major social change. It behooves the students of American family life to begin making good on the proposals they have suggested. Currently American society is undergoing unprecedented degrees of social change and transition centering around mobility and urbanization. These changes are exerting tremendous impacts on patterns of marriage and the family.' Frequently their effects introduce severe difficulties into marriage and family circles. They are often devastating in their impacts. More and more troubled people may be expected to seek the services of those who claim professional competence in marriage and family counseling. Those who counsel will need to explain to their clients and to the public as well as to their professional colleagues what they are doing and why. The rationale for practice is made communicable on the basis of clearly stated definitions, concepts, and principles that make sense to all concerned. Finally, a valid theoretical approach to marriage counseling is needed to answer a current criticism. A negative evaluation is stated by those who observe that some who practice marriage counseling do so without benefit of a coherent theory of personality to serve as a basis for their activities. Much marriage counseling is practiced as a common-sense, rule-of-thumb undertaking. A factbound, and blindly empirical approach leaves the practitioner and his clients without any central hypotheses to unify and give meaning to the procedures used. It seems obvious then that there exists a need for a valid body of systematic concepts and principles to provide a solid foundation for counseling those who are troubled with unsolved interpersonal problems. Role theory is believed to be particularly relevant to practice in this area. This theory conceptualizes human behavior in terms of group life and group participation. Marriage and family problems for which counseling is indicated are interpersonal or group problems. They arise from what goes on between persons rather than what goes on exclusively within their separate skins. Such interpersonal processes may be described rather clearly in terms of the interplay of social roles. The discussion which follows is offered as a summarization of the central tenets of role theory which seem pertinent to marriage counseling practice.

Working with families is one of the most important tasks for the social work profession. In primary prevention, the most crucial task is to develop humane relationships among marital partners. Additionally, an essential segment of preventive social work involves educating and preparing youth for marriage and family and educating them about responsible parenthood. In secondary prevention, an important task of social workers is to help overcome marital conflicts. This highlights that family and marital counseling is one of the key tasks of social workers. Using QCA, the capacities of five centers for social work in Bosnia and Herzegovina in conducting marital and family counseling were analyzed. The experiences of counseling experts (N=10) were compared through semi-structured interviews. Various challenges and problems were identified that prevent centers for social work from being leaders in counseling. Family and marital counseling represents a complex and responsible task that requires expertise and competencies. The lack of systemic solutions, inconsistent norms and standards, and limited capacities of centers for social work slow down the development of quality counseling in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The data indicates that serious progress is needed in organizing the service, multi-sectoral cooperation, and institutional promotion for family and marital counseling to gain the place it deserves in social work

A Systems Therapist Looks at Transference: Widening the LensShirley BravermanShirley BravermanAssociate Professor, Department of Psychiatry and School of Social Work, McGill University, and Department of Psychiatry, Sir Mortimer B. Davis-Jewish General Hospital, Montreal, Quebec.Sir Mortimer B. Davis-Jewish General Hospital, Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry, 4333 Cote Sainte Catherine Road, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3T 1E4Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:July 2017https://doi.org/10.1521/jaap.1.1993.21.3.327PDFPDF PLUS ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations AboutReferencesAichorn A. (1963), Wayward Youth, Viking Press, New York. Google ScholarBateson G. (1962), A note on the double bind, Fam. Process, 2, 154–161. Crossref, Google ScholarBraverman S. (1981), Family of origin: The view from the parents’ side, Fam. Process, 20, 431–437. Crossref Medline, Google ScholarDare C. (1986), Psychoanalytic marital therapy, in Jacobson N. S. and Gurman A. S. (Eds.), Clinical Handbook of Marital Therapy, Guilford Press, New York, pp. 13–28. Google ScholarDicks H. V. (1967), Marital Tensions, Basic Books, New York. Google ScholarFerenczi S. (1990), Introjection and transference, in Esman A. H. (Ed.), Essential Papers on Transference, New York University Press, New York and London, pp. 15–27. Google ScholarFramo J. L. (1972), Symptoms from a family transactional viewpoint, in Sager C. and Singer Kaplan H. (Eds.), Progress in Group and Family Therapy, Brunner/Mazel, New York, pp. 271–308. Google ScholarFramo J. L. (1982), Explorations in Marital and Family Therapy, Springer, New York. Google ScholarFreud A. (1936), The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, International Universities Press, New York. Google ScholarFreud S. (1905), Fragment of the analysis of a case of hysteria, Standard Edition, Vol. 7, pp. 1–123. Google ScholarGuttman H. (1991), Systems theory, cybernetics and epistemology, in Handbook of Family Therapy, Vol. 11, Brunner/Mazel, New York, pp. 41–62. Google ScholarJackson D. D. (1957), The question of family homeostatis, Psychiatr. Q., (Suppl.) 31, 79–90. Google ScholarKernberg O. (1987), An ego psychology object relations theory approach to the transference, Psychoanal. Q., 56, 197–221. Crossref Medline, Google ScholarLeites N. (1977), Transference interpretations only? Int. J. Psychoanal., 58, 275–287. Medline, Google ScholarMain T. F. (1966), Mutual projection in marriage, Compr. Psychiatry, 7, 432–439. Crossref Medline, Google ScholarMeissner W. W. (1978), The conceptualization of marriage and family dynamics from a psychoanalytic perspective, in Paolino T. J. and McGrady B. S. (Eds.), Marriage and Marital Therapy, Brunner/Mazel, New York, pp. 25–88. Google ScholarNadelson C. C. (1978), Marital therapy, in Paolino T. J. and McGrady B. S. (Eds.), Marriage and Marital Therapy, Brunner/Mazel, New York, pp. 101–164. Google ScholarSatir V. (1971), Symptomatology: A family production, in Howells J. (Ed.), Theory and Practice of Family Psychiatry, Brunner/Mazel, New York, pp. 663–670. Google ScholarScharff D., and Scharff J. (1987), Object Relations Family Therapy, Jason Aronson, Northvale, NJ. Google ScholarSlipp S. (1984), Object Relations: A Dynamic Bridge Between Individual and Family Treatment, Jason Aronson, Northvale, NJ. Google ScholarSkynner A. C. R. (1976), One Flesh: Separate Persons, Constable, London. Google ScholarWiener N. (1954), The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, Doubleday, New York. Google ScholarZinner J. (1976), The implication of projective identification in marital interaction, in Grunbaum H. and Christ J. (Eds.), Contemporary Marriage: Structure, Dynamics and Therapy, Little, Brown, Boston, pp. 293–307. Google Scholar Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Cited byCited by1. The integration of individual and family therapyOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar Volume 21Issue 3Sep 1993 Information© 1993 The American Academy of PsychoanalysisPDF download

The first family courses at American colleges tended to be of the dating and mating variety, premarital and family education. As scientific sociology emerged from its American origins in social work, re ligion, reform, and marriage counseling, the family courses given by sociology departments often became highly theoretical. The family was analyzed within a cross cultural, institutional, structural-functional, or other framework. In many colleges and universities today, the family courses are an advanced elective in sociology and important training for sociology majors and those preparing for professions, such as teaching and health careers where the sociological perspective may help. Sociology professors, smarting under the reputation of sociology as easy courses and non-science, tend to assign rigorous reading in the literature of the family. The courses are certainly valuable for students able to absorb this rigor. However, it often happens that courses enroll many students who are in programs not remotely connected with social science or, for that mat ter, much intellectual content. Some of these students complain that the courses are beyond their understand ing and irrelevant to their lives. Many non-academic types fill our colleges as degrees became necessary for social and occupational success. Great numbers of stu dents take the family course expecting help in their fu ture families or in resolving issues with their families of orientation. This is intensified by the current crises in family life and generational conflict plus the tendency to look to experts. The sociologist's challenge is to offer a course with a solid sociological approach but within the interests and abilities of the students. The task also is for sociologists who (despite student confusion)are, after all, not psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, or so cial workers, to avoid being pushed by students or their own omnipotent fantasies into dispensing guidelines and advice. This can sometimes be dangerous since students have a tendency to disregard much of what professors say yet selectively seize on something as revealed truth that a professor had not so intended. Perhaps one way out of this dilemma is to enlarge the understanding of students about families by letting them observe the variety of family life styles, problems, and ways of relating to other institutions. Some students will then move beyond personal concerns and ethnocen trism and read in order to answer the questions raised by their own research. This way seemed to work in one of my classes at Northeastern University where of the 35 enrolled (soph omores through seniors) only a third were social science majors, seven were nurses, and the rest were in business, engineering, various para-medical programs and assorted other majors. In response to a questionnaire asking what they wished from the course, practically all non social science majors said, in one way or another, an un derstanding of the family that would help in their own lives or in helping others. The social science majors gen erally said this plus that they wanted increased knowl edge of sociology or psychology. In an open class dis cussion as to students' expectations in the course, non social science majors voiced concerns about competing with the majors for grades, while the majors complained that the course would be watered down because of the majority of non-majors. Asked if they wanted to write papers or take examinations, practically all non majors and lower classmen expressed feelings of in adequacy regarding papers. Yet all students agreed that it would be worthwhile to do some research of their own.

Communication Problems in Marriage and Marriage Counseling

This special issue in the Journal of Social Work Education is a forum for professional and scholarly discourse on military social work education initiatives developed to educate and train social work professionals and students for practice with military personnel, veterans, and their families across the micro–macro continuum. Special emphasis was given to educational and technological trends, innovations, and challenges related to educating the next generation of social workers to provide evidence-based services to a new generation of veterans that incorporate the CSWE’s (2010) advanced knowledge and practice behaviors in military social work and NASW’s (2012) practice standards. Additional focus was given to university–community and university–military partnerships, collaborations, and initiatives that involve community and military stakeholders. Quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, and conceptual manuscripts from researchers, educators, and practitioners on military social work education and practice were solicited from the professional social work community. In this special issue we highlight select exemplars of the social work profession’s unique contributions to military social work education. The issue is divided into two sections: (1) discourse on the integration of military social work into professional social work education and (2) innovative military social work education and training programs for doctoral and master’s students, student veterans, and licensed social work professionals—many including program evaluation and other research components. Each section is described in following paragraphs, including a brief overview of representative manuscripts. Integration of Military Social Work Into Professional Social Work Education Four manuscripts highlight military social work as a field of practice requiring specialized knowledge and skills, teaching strategies based on the CSWE competencies and advanced practice behaviors in military social work, the inclusion of military and veteran culture in social work education curricula, and adapting social work field placements for training in military social work practice. Wooten presents a rationale for military social work as a specialized field of practice, the need for military social work education, and opportunities and challenges for professional social work education. She delineates foundation and advanced knowledge in military social work and concludes by proposing an integrated model of intellectual capital to guide strategic planning for professional military social work education in addition to professional infrastructure needed to develop intellectual capital in military social work. For social work educators unfamiliar with military and veteran culture, Daley provides examples of teaching strategies based on CSWE’s advanced practice behaviors in military social work for integration into social work courses, specifically focusing on their application to CSWE’s Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS; CSWE, 2008). He identifies foundation and advanced year military social work educational goals based on EPAS 2.1.1 to 2.1.10 and suggests that the infusion of military social work across the social work curriculum will assist students and faculty in becoming more sensitive to the issues faced by military service members, veterans, and their families. Continuing the application of CSWE’s EPAS to military social work education, Canfield and Weiss proposes the inclusion of military-related material into the foundation courses of undergraduate and graduate social work education because social workers providing services in civilian settings not focused on military-related difficulties may encounter military personnel, veterans, and families who seek services outside of the DoD and VA. Key issues, military examples, and resources are recommended for the integration of military culture into human behavior in the social environment, generalist practice, research methods, and social policy core curricula. With a focus on field education as the signature pedagogy of social work education, Selber, Chavkin, and Biggs advance a promising field instruction model in military social work with the growing student veteran population on American campuses. This innovative approach to field education expands placement opportunities beyond the VA for professional training in service delivery to current and past military cohorts.

Emotions play a crucial role in mediating human social relationships (Davidson, Scherer,& Goldsmith, 2003). Whether articulated through body movements, voice, deed, or through the ways we justify our actions, human relationships are laden with emotion. Emotion can act as a signal, communicating information about the sender's mental state, indicating his or her future actions, and indirectly inducing emotions in the mind of observers. Emotion can also act as a mental process, altering how people see the world, how they form decisions, and how they respond to the environment. In our work we seek to develop testable computational models that emphasize the relationship between emotion and cognition (Gratch & Marsella, 2001; Marsella & Gratch, 2003). In this chapter, we focus on emotions that have a social component: the rage arising from a perceived offence, the guilt we feel after harming another. Such emotions arise from social explanations involving judgments not only of causality but intention and free will (Shaver, 1985). These explanations underlie how we act on and make sense of the social world. In short, they lie at the heart of social intelligence. With the advance of multi-agent systems, user interfaces, and human-like agents, it is increasingly important to reason about this uniquely human-centric form of social inference. Here we relate recent progress in modeling such socio-emotional judgments.

the agency, characteristics of the agency clientele, and the training and activity of the priest-counselors themselves. For many years, Catholic couples in the Archdiocese who found themselves involved in marriage problems ordinarily had recourse to the ministrations of their local pastor or curate. In the course of such counseling encounters, a wide variety of approaches would be employed in accordance with the skill, experience, and competence of the individual clergyman. However, a good many of these couples, caught up in the heat of mutual recrimination and emotional involvement, would request referral to the Marriage Court of the Chancery Office. This was done with the idea that some more punitive action might be taken against the alleged offending party, and also, in many cases, in the hope that per mission for separation or even legal divorce might be granted. Anyone familiar with the entanglements and complexities of con temporary marriage problems will realize what a mass of material these marriage judges had to handle. The judges were essentially ordained clergymen with some special training in Canon Law, but with no special sophistication in the many other matters with which they were con fronted. In effect, they were being asked to make complex judgments in matters of neurotic behavior, psychosis, family finances, child rearing,

Team-based learning (TBL) is an innovative and highly structured pedagogy with promise for millennial students in social work programs. Through a reliance on team exercises and active learning, TBL encourages critical thinking, leadership skills, and coordinated learning activities. Incorporation of TBL can also directly relate social work courses to the appropriate Council on Social Work Education core competencies. TBL is presented as an effective method for educating millennial students who are accustomed to high stimulation and creativity in the classroom. This article provides an overview of TBL and examples of TBL assignments for social work courses, including research, human behavior in the social environment, and social welfare policy.

Target Complaints as Criteria of Improvement

This research is qualitative descriptive research. Qualitative descriptive research aims to describe the form of moral values in the form of words and language from research results in a novel. The novel's data is in the form of quotations of words, sentences, and paragraphs in the novel Dear Allah by Diana Febi. The results show moral values, namely moral values in human relationships themselves, human relationships with other human beings in the social sphere with the natural environment, and human relationships with God. The moral value of a human relationship with oneself is patience, sincerity, responsibility, and courage. The moral value of a human relationship with other human beings in the social sphere with the natural environment is social care, friendship, compassion, forgiveness, help, and tolerance. The moral value of man and his God is gratitude, faith, and prayer.

Social work evaluates an individual within her/his environment. As the individual is affected by the social environment she/he is also affected by the physical environment. Thus, social work also deals with physical problems caused by the physical environment of an individual. Climate and ecological factors are important determinants on human behavior and adaptation, for human and climate affect each other. In order to express the social work that treats the effects of the various environmental factors on human behavior with a holistic approach, the term “environmentalist/green social work” is used. Among these environmental factors; climate change due to global warming, increasing sea levels, floods, drought, desertification and deforestation can be seen. People are deprived from viable secure environment due to environmental degradation and climate change, and as a consequence are forced to displace towards viable countries. Those who migrate by necessary towards other countries are named as environmental refugees or climate refugees. According to the 1951 Geneva Convention, where those people who are outside their home-state due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership of a particular social group are named as refugee; environmental refugees are outside the scope of this definition. The social work with a preventative and holistic approach to the environment and environmental refugee problem, has to act in local, national and international levels to decrease the negative effects of environmental factors on people, consciousness-raising, mobilizing people and advocating at macro level towards protecting the rights of environmental refugees. Meantime it has to conduct psycho-social support services at micro-mezzo scale to those people who are affected by environmental factors and to environmental refugees.

Previous studies have found a link between the social disadvantage of families and child welfare involvement. Through financial support, a range of psychosocial problems in the families (or their escalation) can be prevented, although social disadvantage is a multifaceted phenomenon. This article examines Finnish social workers´ views on the significance of financial support in reducing the need for child welfare interventions. The study analyses the fundamental assumptions and issues of social work that social workers refer to when justifying their views on the matter. The study is based on a qualitative analysis of data collected by interviewing 23 social workers in different parts of Finland. Through the interviews, a diverse view of the significance of additional income support and child welfare services emerges. The interviewees raised matters related to concrete practices, family dynamics, and the principles of social work. The question of the use of additional income support as a means for preventing child maltreatment and the need for child welfare intervention appears to be controversial in the data. However, a shared understanding of the fundamental assumptions and issues of social work can be seen behind the different viewpoints. In particular, a shared view of the intertwining of families’ economic and psychosocial challenges, and the hidden nature of child maltreatment and social problems in families with children emerges. Overall, the research serves to emphasize the importance of professional discretion and long-term support in social work.

The article examines the current challenges that life has posed to social workers in Ukraine and the world in their activities in the context of combating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are faced with the task of making every effort to support social workers, and provide them with opportunities for safe activities in the provision of services. The article considers the functions and principles on which the organization of social workers in counteracting the pandemic is based. Aspects related to problems and risks in their activities are also considered. It is also important to develop priority actions in the context of their protection against infection. Due to the fact that the pandemic situation is constantly changing, there are changes in the priorities of action, there are also changes in the protocols of organization and provision of social assistance. In addition, the availability of testing, the level of health risks and the ethical consequences of social services interventions in situations related to social problems in families affected by the pandemic are assessed. This is based on the International Declaration of Ethical Principles for Social Work of the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW). The article considers the level of vulnerability of a social worker, client or population to severe clinical symptoms and increased risk of death from infection. The context of new challenges also considers models of remote service delivery and situations in which this is not possible. It is proposed for social workers to conduct training sessions and conduct regular remote supervision of their activities during their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Social workers are invited to create plans for social and psychological protection and self-care.

Despite the various forms of education for social work around the world some common guidelines and global standards for social work education and training are followed to some extent. Article presents the role of the research activities and research courses in social work education in Slovenia. In the first part short history of education for social work in Slovenia is presented. Two year high school of social work was established in the 1955 and after various reforms in the academic year 2009/10 Bologna program was introduced. After gaining an accreditation for faculty level programmes continuous self-evaluations have been conducted. The results of meta-analysis of self-evaluations presented in second part show both advantages (rising number of foreign students and teachers at the faculty; more hours for practical work; curriculum development following the needs of users and professionals) and disadvantages (no clear results about competencies and achievements of declared goals; prolonged years of the study). In the last part importance of research courses is pointed out from the students’ point of view and also importance of research activities of educators for contemporary curriculum development. Courses are mainly based on teachers own scientific and research activities. Academic research in social work and professionals who are competent of conducting research are needed to draw attention to the traps of neo-liberalism and its consequences. Social work practice should be constantly researched and reflected and therefore strong commitment to research courses (and their implementation in a way of teaching for doing research) is needed.