Families and Children

Almost two million cases of child maltreatment are reported and investigated in the United States annually. That is just the number reported. How many go unreported and unnoticed? A range of factors poverty, homelessness, alcohol and drug addiction and child abuse and neglect make today’s families more susceptible than ever to splitting apart (Kirst-Ashman, 2013). In this chapter there is so much information to try and share. Social workers bring their unique skills to helping two increasingly vulnerable groups: children and families.
Families structure is the “the nuclear family as well as those nontraditional alternatives to nuclear family which are adopted by persons in a committed relationships and the people they consider to be ‘family’ (Kirst-Ashman, 2013)”. My experience with families is they come in all different sizes and shapes. The family that I grew up in was very traditional family with six kids. After being married for thirteen years and having a traditional family of my own it changed with a sudden divorce. So now I have the nontraditional family which is becoming the norm. The second concept of family from the book it states family involves having obligations for each other, which means a sense of mutual commitment to and responsibility for other family members. (Kirst-Ashman, 2013)Then we have the concept child welfare and the supportive services, which help families. The term child welfare is defined as the traditional term for the network of policies and programs designed to empower families, promote a healthy environment, protect children, and meets needs. Supportive services involve the provision of external support to enhance family functioning while children remain in home. Substitute services assume all aspects of parental responsibilities on a temporary or permanent basis (Kirst-Ashman, 2013.). While reading the different ways to empower a family the one that stuck out as a powerful great experience for a family would be the Family