S W 332 Chapter 15: Chapter 15
Document Summary
Throughout the history of social work profession, social workers have engages families as a routine part of their interventions. These early texts bring to the fore two themes that have permeated social work with families to this day: families as a target of change, and families as a support system for individual clients. On the other end of the spectrum are programs that treat family members as a caregivers or as sources of social support. Social workers who work with families adopt a distinctive view of client engagement, in which the social worker establishes working relationships with each member of the family as well as with the family as a whole. In some respects, family engagement or joining is a matter of language and semantics. Social workers who work with and families who employ collective language purposefully to establish simultaneous relationships with individuals within a family as well as with the family as a whole.
