Are you prepared to deliver effective services to a wide range of families and family situations? Diverse Families, Competent Families provides human service professionals with a portrait of the real lives and practical challenges of our nation's families as they face a new millennium. It examines family adaptation and competence in a variety of contexts and situations such as, day-to-day issues of coping and survival, as well as major milestones such as sending children off to school and becoming a caregiver for a family member. This unique book also spans multiple levels of families’existence, examining home, school, and the larger community to provide you with an understanding of the societal dynamics that can have an influence on families. With Diverse Families, Competent Families, you'll explore: the need to reexamine the ways that single parent families are viewed, and the risks inherent in over-generalizing about this type of family ways that men can make the most of their experience as fathers the relationship between parents’perceptions of teacher behavior and how willing they are to become involved at school the ways in which changes or disruptions in a family's functioning can influence their children's academic skills the results of an innovative intervention for “sandwiched” generation mothers who must simultaneously care for an older family member and attend to the needs of their own children ways to help Mexican immigrant parents feel more effective in their parenting roles In Diverse Families, Competent Families, you will discover new, and positive ways to view families, particularly ethnic minority families, low-income families, immigrant families, and families who are coping with specific life stressors such as financial loss, unemployment, divorce, and death.

The CRAF-E4 Family Engagement Model: Building Practitioners' Competence to Work with Diverse Families lays out how mental health practitioners can best engage parents in their children's education for the child's best educational outcome. The book presents several different engagement strategies, allowing for differences in socio-political, cultural, and parental beliefs and understandings. Topics include information from early childhood, family processes, efficacy, racial socialization, and social capital. While of interest to educators and parents, this book is written primarily for the clinician, in particular clinicians working with vulnerable child and parent populations, who may be struggling with learning or developmental disabilities. - Concise, practical guide - Useful to psychologists, educators, and parents

Family Life Education with Diverse Populations is a T2 for courses in Family Life Education. Family Studies and Social Work students often go through the additional certification of becoming Family Life Educators (FLEs). As a family life educator, the student will help educate families in and outside the traditional classroom environment on how to strengthen relationships in the home and foster positive individual, couple and family development. Such education comprises many topics, including marriage education, parenting skills, anger management, to strategies in adjusting to divorce. This book takes the content delivered in courses on FLE a step further by examining and presenting key strategies for working with diverse populations. Diverse is defined broadly in terms of race and ethnicity, but also by setting, such as military families, rural families, families with loved ones in prison, and more. The book is unique in defining the group and presenting their strengths, and then prescribing treatments and strategies for working with each group. In addition, the book takes an evidence based practice approach and demonstrates proven strategies in working with the populations listed above. Sharon M. Ballard, Ph.D., CFLE, CFCS: is an Associate Professor in the Department of Child Development and Family Relations at East Carolina University. Alan C. Taylor, Ph.D. CFLE: is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Child Development and Family Relations at East Carolina University.

Are you prepared to deliver effective services to a wide range of families and family situations?Diverse Families, Competent Families provides human service professionals with a portrait of the real lives and practical challenges of our nation's families as they face a new millennium. It examines family adaptation and competence in a variety of contexts and situations such as, day-to-day issues of coping and survival, as well as major milestones such as sending children off to school and becoming a caregiver for a family member. This unique book also spans multiple levels of families’existence, examining home, school, and the larger community to provide you with an understanding of the societal dynamics that can have an influence on families. With Diverse Families, Competent Families, you'll explore: the need to reexamine the ways that single parent families are viewed, and the risks inherent in over-generalizing about this type of family ways that men can make the most of their experience as fathers the relationship between parents’perceptions of teacher behavior and how willing they are to become involved at school the ways in which changes or disruptions in a family's functioning can influence their children's academic skills the results of an innovative intervention for “sandwiched” generation mothers who must simultaneously care for an older family member and attend to the needs of their own children ways to help Mexican immigrant parents feel more effective in their parenting rolesIn Diverse Families, Competent Families, you will discover new, and positive ways to view families, particularly ethnic minority families, low-income families, immigrant families, and families who are coping with specific life stressors such as financial loss, unemployment, divorce, and death.

This book was designed to facilitate ... awareness of other cultures and awareness of diversity. The intent was to choose articles from research literature that address myriad facets of cultural diversity and families ... The book's purposes are to counter a vast amount of misinformation based on fallacious thinking with facts garnered from the research literature and to educate regarding cultural differences of families by informing people what those cultural differences are ... [the editors] have chosen to accentuate the human development and family life-span perspectives ... The four most prominent minority groups in the literature are blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asians ... Articles were chosen to provide an overview of each of these four groups and, in some cases, to provide cross-comparisons ... [the editors] have focused on family functions, not family dysfunction, on differences, not deficiencies. [They] have listened for the voice of ethnic and racial minorities speaking for themselves. -Introd.

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Part 1: Theory Base and Contextual Issues: Metatheories for Working with Families at Four Levels of Need. 1 Levels of Family Need. 2 An Ecological Systems-Social Constructionism Approach to Family Practice. 3 Contexts of Helping: Commonalities and Diversities. 4 Ethical Issues and Spiritual Dimensions. Part 2: First Level of Family Need: Basic Survival Issues. 5 Interventions to Meet Basic Needs in High-Risk Families with Children. 6 A Family Case Management Approach for Level 1 Needs. Part 3: Second Level of Family Need: Structure, Limits, and Safety Issues. 7 Structural Family Interventions. 8 Social Learning Family Interventions. Part 4: Third Level of Family Need: Problem-Focused Issues. 9 Solution-Focused Family Interventions. 10 Family Systems Interventions. Part 5 Fourth Level of Family Need: Family and Personal Growth Issues. 11 Narrative Family Interventions. 12 Object Relations Family Interventions. Part 6: The Family in the Community: Ecosystem Implications. 13 The Family in the Community.