Working with Families of the Poor

This eagerly awaited volume draws upon the authors' many years of experience in the inner city to provide vital guidance to therapists working with poor families. While standard counseling models are often limited to individual persons and their problems, this book emphasizes the importance of understanding individual needs within a larger family framework, and considering the family itself within broader organizational and community contexts. Weaving in numerous case histories and examples of practical interventions, the authors demonstrate how their inventive approach can be used to draw out clients' strengths and to make the most of limited social service resources. Readers will learn new techniques to gather information, reframe family assumptions, handle conflict, and explore alternative patterns of interaction. In addition, the authors show therapists how to increase the level of collaboration between poor families and the multiple agencies that provide assistance with foster care, substance abuse counseling, perinatal programs, residential and psychiatric centers for children, and home-based services.