Introduction
In this paper, therefore, I will assess and analyze the case of the family of Mr. John Mark and Mrs. Charlotte Mia, who has a daughter named Sophia. These family members live together as they share a close relationship. John met Charlotte in his late twenties and formed a family “system,” These two did not stop at that point of being together. They, the two, then went ahead to have one beautiful daughter, Sophia Mark, who later joined their family structure, making the family grow. This family of John, Charlotte, and Sophia makes up a nuclear family type familiar globally. Christians widely practice this nuclear family as people draw the teachings about marriage from the “Holy Book.”
Families have different challenges that keep changing depending on the situation and the family members’ vulnerability to particular challenges. Families face global challenges, ranging from women and child abuse, hunger, poor health system, poverty, and unfavorable environmental conditions. In the case of Mark’s family, the dominant challenges it faces are abuse and financial challenges. As the head of the family, Mark will always strive to ensure that the family gets the most basic needs to sustain the family members. John Mark is facing financial challenges even though he still feels safe and does not feel scared at anything at all. However, he feels emotionally withdrawn because of his financial status and feels like, as a man, he needs to have his financial muscle back. His physical state shows how he is well-groomed and clean, and it is hard for someone to notice that he is facing financial problems. The individual priority of John Mark should be that of getting financial assistance from the well-wishers or friends of goodwill to enable him to provide for the family. Charlotte, wife to Mark, does not feel safe anymore when she recalls the past ordeal she underwent about the abuse she went through at the hands of her husband directly. She lives a fearful life and feels she can go through the same abuse she went through in the past at any time. Her physical outlook is no longer appealing; she does not pay keen interest in whatever clothes she puts on and does not appreciate herself.
In this case, therefore, Charlotte needs Doctor’s attention due to her deteriorating physical health. Sophia, the daughter, feels aggrieved due to the mother’s challenges. Challenges have affected her indirectly, causing more fear in her, feeling unsafe at all times, and affecting her general health, prompting the mother to seek medication for her. Generally, there is no motivating factor in this family. The couple is not happily married since they have patterns of crisis that are not easily controllable at their level because they have not always been reaching a consensus on several issues. So most of their arguments often turn out to be ugly, eventually destroying family ties. Furthermore, the immediate needs cannot be sorted out in this family because both the husband and the wife do not have a steady incoming generating activity, thus plunging the family into a financial crisis.
Social work practice is the professional application of the values of social work, principles, and techniques to helping people obtain tangible services, counseling, and psychotherapy with individuals, families, and groups; helping communities or groups to improve their social wellbeing in society. Social work practice is often broken down into micro, mezzo, and macro concepts of the social work practice. The four practices of the social work intervention include the change agent system, client system, target system, and action system. Furthermore, there are seven casework principles, including individualization, acceptance, self-determination, controlled emotional involvement, confidentiality, non-judgmental attitude, and purposeful expression of feelings. There are also seven core values of the social work profession, which include service, social justice, the dignity of the person, the importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence. These social work core values and codes of ethics form an integral part of the social services that the social workers offer to a particular population of individuals. The social services provided without applying the seven core values automatically undermine the social work practice standard nationally and internationally (Heimer et al., 2018). Social work practice often promotes social change and development, social cohesion, the empowerment and liberation of people who majorly have a low social standing in the society that the vulnerable in society; thus, the need for principles of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility and respect for diversities of humankind.
The most important aspect of the social work practice is its ability to confront social issues in all facets of life, from providing support to family welfare to shaping to providing the legal framework policies that aim at eradicating the system of injustices that negatively affect the welfare of human beings. Social work’s principal mandate is to assist others in overcoming various challenges from life’s social, economic, and political aspects. Often, people tend to go through many untold sufferings just because of the poor systems in place to advocate for the interests of the individuals in modern society (Heimer et al., 2018). Children and families tend to go through sufferings, many of which are untold stories and go unnoticed despite the need to protect each individual’s interest without discrimination.
Current situation and challenges affecting child and family wellbeing
The history of Mark’s family, especially the story of Charlotte and Sophia, has not been that good one to go by. Charlotte as a wife, has gone through hard times in her lifetime and the most traumatized life experience with her daughter, Sophia.
The children always enjoy close ties with their families worldwide, which has immense benefit to both the families and children. Every just society must protect and promote the child and family’s wellbeing. The family is the backbone of the community or the society that needs complete protection at all times, regardless of its social standing. The current situation of child and family well-being can be worrying and, at some point, beautiful depending on the issues considered as far as the child and family well-being is concerned (Kaakinen et al., 2018). Society can continuously promote the well-being of a child and family through understanding and addressing pertinent issues that affect children, families, and caregivers, including physical, behavioral, social, and cognitive areas. When it comes to preventing child abuse, addressing child and family needs related to wellbeing is crucial in reducing risks and increasing safety and factors of protection for the well-being of children and families (Earls et al., 2019). There are some of the sub-topics that I would discuss in this section that will effectively discuss the current situation and challenges affecting child and family wellbeing, and they include the following sub-topics:
- Family makeup
No family or any individual can always leave without any support base like friends or extended family members. We all need each other to live and co-exist. In the family structure, there is a solid or positive relationship, weak family relationships, and stressful family relationships. The three ways the family relates have different impacts on how the family members can relate moving forward.
This section’s family makeup is considered parents, caregivers, children, and household members’ demographics. There are some of the biggest challenges currently facing family makeup, especially children. They include children living in conflict zones who usually fear their safety all through, global hunger, which significantly affects the children globally, and disrupted education due to some pandemics. One of them is Covid-19 which significantly interrupted the school calendar worldwide, climate change which has currently subjected children to harsh weather conditions, and the increased child mortality rate due to COVID-19. This manifestation of a myriad of challenges that helpless children face makes it possible to group children under the vulnerable group of our time. Some factors that directly undermine a child’s health include exposure to violent areas, family stress, inadequate housing, lack of preventive health care, poor nutrition, poverty, and substance abuse. Better health of a child often leads to excellent outcomes in every activity that such children get engaged in their lives (Spinelli et al., 2020). Some challenges families face today include child and family abuse, drug addiction, divorce, poor parenting, and poor communication and interaction among family members.
It is evident that in this family system of John, Charlotte, and Sophia, it is expected that John, as the head of the family, would always make significant decisions in the family and act as a more excellent link for the family members to the rest of the population including the community and friends in place. The Ecomap or the Genogram of the family of John and Charlotte represents the family system, friends, and the community. As I mentioned, this family has three household members: the husband, the wife, and the daughter. Furthermore, some close friends are considered family friends whom, at some point, I got a chance to interview about the situation in this family; these friends were Michael, Amia, and Steve. These three family friends helped me carry out my assessment of the family, which eventually helped me when I was writing my analysis report. The community, the family, lived in also played a crucial role in ensuring I got the necessary information concerning the family of John and Charlotte, together with their daughter’s status. The community that served this particular family included the church since they were Christians, health clinics that provided the victims of the domestic violence with the proper medication, the school which their daughter, Sophia, was attended by the time I was visiting the family, and finally the work environment in which the husband, John, was working in before his retrenchment. All these played a crucial role in ensuring that I quickly did my perfect assessment and case analysis report on the family.
- Living situation or arrangement of families.
Before I visited the family, the living arrangement of this particular family was that of a husband, wife, and daughter that is John, Charlotte, and Sophia, respectively. It comprised three families. They shared a close relationship even though they had differences, which later led to domestic violence, affecting their daughter indirectly. The living situation after I assessed that the family no longer stay together as before since I recommended they get separated as they undergo the healing process making the husband, John, get to separate with his wife, Charlotte, and his daughter, Sophia. This was done for the betterment of all three family members.
- Context and background of family
The family context, in this case, is that the family practices American culture; all three family members are white as per their race and practice Christianity as their only religion. The sexual orientation of this particular family context is that it comprises John as a male, Charlotte as a female, and Sophia as a female; the family is thus one male and two females.
The family background was an interesting one since before John lost his job, the family was financially stable since John was a banker. However, Charlotte was jobless, reduced to a “housewife.” Both John and Charlotte had university degrees and a better social standing in society. Because of their outstanding educational background, they were determined to give their daughter excellent education for a brighter future.
- Presenting issues of the family
The issues that led to the bad blood between John and Charlotte were the different personalities between John and Charlotte and the domestic violence between the two. These two issues made John and Charlotte have mental issues, thus leading to their separation for their healing to take place effectively.
Analysis of Genogram and Eco map (diagrams) of the family
A genogram is the graphic portrayal of the composition and structure of one’s family and how much family members are related to one another and their medical history. The Genogram allows the patient to see the hereditary behavior patterns of medical and psychological factors that run through the particular family lineage (Cattani et al., 2020). The importance of a genogram is that it helps one to tell the critical people in an individual’s life and their relationship with such people. This makes it possible for the professionals to identify where issues and concerns come from within the family. On the other hand, the ecomap is a graphic portrayal of personal and family social relationships, and this serves as a visual representation of a family’s social environment which may include school setup, friends, extended family members, community engagement, social services, and social clubs among others (Amazonas et al., 2021). The importance of an ecomap is that it helps show whom a child sees as important to them, their close associates, and how they view the adults around them.
- Patterns and trends of family
John and Charlotte’s attitude toward each other is negative, and poor emotional tone toward John towards his daughter, Sophia. The family members should always accommodate each other and have a positive attitude toward each other at all times. The trend of this family is such that the husband and wife got used to a situation whereby they were intolerant towards each other and less accommodating.
- Themes and values of family
The family of Mark lacked better themes and values that could guide every decision they were making, thus leading to disagreement every day.
- Strengths of the family
The family of Mr. and Mrs. Mark lacked family strengths, such as not having their time together as a family due to a bad relationship between them, positive communication between them lacking, they had blame games that led to domestic violence and they were never free to share their feelings.
- Pathology of the family
At the time of my visit to the family, there was family discord since John and Charlotte had poor emotional competence and were not accommodating to each other. Their daughter, Sophia, suffered in silence due to her hostile environment.
- Supports the family
Friends supported the victims, Charlotte and Sophia, whom John thoroughly abused. Sophia and Charlotte sought refuge in the distant relevant, who offered to take them away from the hostile environment to facilitate the healing process.
- Resources of the family
This family of Mark and Charlotte did have enough resources to sustain them since the two did not have a job, John had lost his job during the retrenchment, and the wife, Charlotte, was still jobless cum housewife.
Strengths and needs of the family
As a strong woman, Charlotte tried as much as she could to protect her daughter, Sophia, from the abuse she received indirectly from her husband. However, it was not easy for Charlotte to walk out of this toxic marriage simply because she had no money to start her life as a single parent, making her persevere through all the torture she endured.
Goals of the family
The goal of any family setup is to see the growth in every aspect of life, from economic and social aspects to its members. Child and Family well-being can be attributed to a friendly environment, the safety of family members, and the general health of the family members, that is, both emotional and physical well-being of any family member (Winkor et al., 2018).
During the assessment of the situation at hand in John and Charlotte’s family, I learned that there had been domestic violence which has led to the abuse of Charlotte’s rights, affecting their daughter, Sophia, directly. The goal of my assessment reached after a thorough analysis of the situation in this family is to ensure that Charlotte and her daughter, Sophia, move to a safer place to prevent more torture they received from John every day and eventually connect the two with the therapist who will take them through healing process and Charlotte getting a qualified doctor to work on her physical health. Social work assessment for these two victims will eventually go a long way in providing intervention to ensure recovery from the past and live happily away from the usual torture free of fear. On the other hand, John should seek either formal or informal employment to help him get financial freedom so that he may not suffer from an inferiority complex. I realized that John had been behaving and handling his wife well before he lost his job. He began this bad character of domestic violence as a sign of frustration and stress soon after he lost his job, and he felt insecure as a man of the house because he lacked financial freedom, which he had been enjoying all along; thus, he too should be visiting a therapist even though they should not leave together for a while as they both go through the healing process.
Recommendations of the interventions on the child and family wellbeing
After assessing the family, I placed forth some of recommendations that could help bring change to the three family members. I recommended that legal action be taken against John, the husband to Charlotte, for repeatedly beating up the wife without seizing. The other recommendation was that the victims, Charlotte and her daughter, Sophia, had to separate for a while from John to facilitate the healing process. I also recommended that Charlotte visit a physician since her physical health was worsening and there was a need to improve her health status. The three of the family members were all to see a psychiatrist help them heal since Sophia was at the age of 15 and so could be counseled as a teenager.
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