NCJ Number
102235
Journal
Clinical Social Work Journal Volume: 12 Issue: 1 Dated: (1984) Pages: 78-84
Date Published
1984
Length
7 pages
Annotation
This paper conceptualizes a community of agencies as a multiproblem family in an account of how one agency, The Family Center, tried to integrate community services to multiproblem families.
Abstract
The Family Center was funded for three purposes: to provide data on alcohol-using parents who abuse or neglect their adolescent children; to evaluate two approaches to family treatment with this population; and to serve at least 100 families in the Little Rock, Ark., area over a 3-year period. When agency referrals came in at a very low rate, the Center pursued various strategies to increase its caseload. The author uses a family history format to describe these efforts, characterizing the county public child protective services agency as mother, the family court system as father, and other agencies in the service delivery system as siblings. Whining to mother and father, complaining to the relevant state agency, and competing with siblings only inspired family deterioration and failed to increase referrals. In a change of tactics, the Center halted its direct solicitation of referrals, but spent more time in the sibling agencies noting what it could and could not do. It also became a staunch defender of the mother agency, supported parental decisions regarding case distribution, and promoted meetings in which disengaged agencies were involved. 8 references.