A revolution has been brewing for some time now, in the social sciences, in the helping professions, and social work. Since the late 1950s and 1960s, social workers have been exploring the potential of general systems, cybernetic, and ecological theor...
A revolution has been brewing for some time now, in the social sciences, in the helping professions, and social work. Since the late 1950s and 1960s, social workers have been exploring the potential of general systems, cybernetic, and ecological theories for principles and concepts that might help to better understand people in their contexts.
During this same period, and perhaps not just coincidentally, we have also witnessed a heightened concern about the family and its future as a workable social institution. As social workers have once again been shifting their primary unit of attention from the individual to the family the have been arming themselves with new theories and new techniques being generated from models of helping based on systems principles and concepts.
Family centered practice is a model of social work practice, especially, special care for the disabled, which locates the family in the center of the unit of attention or the field of action. Based on a systems framework, the approach to helping described in this study grows out of the basic premise that human begins can be understood and helped only in the context of the intimate and powerful human systems of which they are a part. One of those powerful systems is the family of origin which has developed through the generations over time and which has deep and far reaching effects on all of its members. Another is the current family system or network of intimate relationships as it exists in the present and which play such a vital role in the lives of most people.