Investigating Strength-based Practice: A Report for James Family (January 2003)
Group or Institution
University of Waikato
Author(s)
Wendy Drewery, Kathie Crocket and Tim Harker
Abstract
This document reports on an investigation into the effectiveness of strength-based therapeutic practices with families seeking help from James family, a non-governmental social service agency operating at nine sites in the upper North Island of New Zealand. The strength-based multi-systemic approach to working with children and their families for therapeutic purposes is relatively new in New Zealand, and the agency was keen to evaluate their own practices. In particular the agency was seeking to know whether families reported changes as enduring after receiving service, and whether any reported changes could be specifically related to the strength-based approach. In a sense therefore this project was an evaluation study of both the work of the agency and of the effectiveness of the strength-based approach.
The primary objectives of the project were to identify whether:
1. change had occurred for the family, and if so, what kinds of change?
2. any of this change can be seen as specifically related to the strength-based approach?
3. the experience of these families reflects the objectives of best practice in a multi-systemic strength-based approach?
The project was set up using methodologies congruent with the James family philosophy of strength-based, client-driven practice. These features of the research are manifested in
- consultative processes for project development
- the ways participants were engaged
- use of strength-based questions in interviews
- research stance of respectful curiosity
- the use of letters to check data with participants, and
- the language used in the report.
Members of eight families who had completed their work with the agency at least three months previously, and their agency workers, were interviewed.
Findings offer significant evidence for the positive value of strength-based practice with families who have run into difficulties. The families talked about their current situation as if they knew what they needed to do: and even if the “problem” was not “fixed”, they all held out increased hope for their family’s future. In summary, they had tapped into their own resilience, and built new capacities for living.
Relationships were significantly changed in four of the eight families. In one family the change that occurred was less dramatic but was very pleasing to the family. Each of these families had developed new skills in being a family. One family had left the service early, but had returned as this report was being prepared. Yet another family had successfully accessed a range of help for themselves. This family said they would come back if they needed to.
Parents had a range of new skills in parenting such as giving positive feedback, talking with and discussing issues with their children, and intentionally creating happy memories. Whole families have new skills in negotiating and in speaking and listening respectfully with each other. Families had identified and grown their strengths and now employed these in ways that had been previously unavailable to them, both within and beyond the family. Relationships between parents and children had been repaired and renewed. Children had learned new skills for relating with siblings and with their parent or parents, and parents had learned things they previously did not know about their children.
Ongoing or sustained change
The design of this study does not offer longitudinal information about the ongoing sustainability of the changes reported by families. What is clear is that up to six months after completing service with James family, six of the families were speaking about their difficulties in ways that suggested they had sustained ongoing improved and improving relationships within the family unit, and they knew how to go on. They had accessed their own resources. This analysis suggests that strength-based practice can have a profound and probably lasting effect on young children, adolescent children, and adults whose lives have previously been steeped in negativity or violence; and on previously very problematic family dynamics. It is also effective with families whose difficulties are not at crisis point.
The most consistent finding of this study is that family connections were restored: families moved from being a group of separate individuals, to a unified group identifying as a family. We believe this work is accurately described as reconstituting families. Only two families are “reconstituted” in the sense of bringing together new members, but in another sense, all these families were reconstituting themselves, as they found ways of living together that were more satisfying for them all.
Seeking service and client satisfaction
Some of the families had protracted experiences of seeking service, which in itself may be cause for concern. Some of the difficulty seemed to be in relation to referrals. We did not collect data to enable us to comment further on this, except to relay the experience of the families. The families who approached James family with most hope were those who accessed the service most directly. Families who were referred by GPs were often subjected to long delays as the GPs seemed to refer first to CAMHS. The families who were most satisfied with the service were those who did not have to wait long: indeed, the crisis response stands out as particularly successful. However all families said that they would use the service, if they needed to, again.