V. Family Strengths, Resiliency

V. Family Strengths, Resiliency
Despite the situation they are currently in, the strengths the Deeds’ family have are that they are still a family unit regardless of their brief separation. The children both still love their mom tremendously and communicate with her all of their life events, school achievements, and in return she gives them praise. Another strength for the family is successfully maintaining unsupervised 2 hour family visits, which helps the birth mom have leverage on her side to demonstrate to the DC court and the agency that she is in fact competent enough to gain reunification with her children and does not need to be supervised during visits for 1 hour time intervals at the agency. I would also argue that a few other strengths in the family are the mother’s cooperation with the agency, which allows the case to move along without possibly having the goal of the case changed and the birth mom’s
She explained that at one point in time, her mother hit her over the head with a lamp and from that point on her and her mother’s relationship diminished. She never confronted the abuse experienced from her mother that happened on a few occasions. Her spouse also was given a psychological assessment and she disclosed that she had never been abused or mistreated by her grandparents (guardians), but did refer to her grandfather as being an alcoholic. The family functioning revolves around the actions of the spouse, as she acts as the dominant person within the family system. The family in question is definitely is a nuclear family and displays the nuclear family process as indicated within Bowen’s Family Systems theory. The step-mom (wife) is the “outsider” within the family structure and her presence creates conflict within the family between individuals and the family as a