ABSTRACT
In recent years, there has been increasing emphasis on family-centered child welfare services in contrast with a more narrow focus on child safety. This is an approach that focuses on the family as the unit of attention. It is built on the premise that “human beings can be understood and helped only in the context of the intimate and powerful human systems of which they are a part,” of which the family is one of the most important (Hartman & Laird, 1983, p. 4). How the family is defi ned has important implications for practice, including eligibility for service, distribution of resources, and helping approaches. By family we mean “two or more people in a committed relationship from which they derive a sense of identity as a family,” thus including “nontraditional family forms that are outside the traditional legal perspective...families not related by blood, marriage, or adoption” (Nunnally, Chilman, & Cox, 1988, p. 11). As Gambrill (1997, p. 571) observes:
Families may be defi ned by biological relatedness and/or living arrangements. There are many kinds of families including step-families, nuclear families, extended families, gay/lesbian families, single-parent families, families without children, families with grown children, and bicultural families.
