Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services

The resources of family service and public agencies are combined to help parents work toward the return of children in placement. This family life education group provides these at-risk parents with alternative parenting skills and may be the first step the family takes toward counseling.

This article delineates interventions that a therapist may use in interviews with couples to help them identify, own responsibility for, and modify problematic interactional communication. Early removal of these negative communication patterns tends to accelerate the couple's progress in therapy.

The concept of client resistance is redefined in dynamic systemic terms to provide a new framework for assessment and intervention with resistant families. This reformulation should help the clinician and the agency to strengthen and redirect transformation forces in the client-family system.

The director of professional service is a leader charged with improving and integrating clinical service and developing administrators' skills. The multiple roles of the DPS, and the bearing these tasks have on the quality service delivery for which family agencies are noted, are outlined and discussed.

A hospital-based perinatal coaching program fosters communication between first-time parents and their infants. Support provided includes learning about babies' individual differences, normal responses, bonding principles, modeling techniques, early childhood development, as well as realistic expectations of new parents.

A theoretical model is presented that attempts to integrate sociological and psychological views of spouse abuse. Distinction is made between violent incident and abuse syndrome. How an individual is led from a violent incident to the cycle of abuse is conceptualized, and specific phase interventions are suggested.

Various dimensions of the concept of parent-child attachment, including the impact of separation on attachments and factors which contribute to change in attachments are reviewed. Emphasis is given to early designation of the foster child's expected, permanent caretaker, and to frequent, regular parent-child visitation.