ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we extend the lessons we have learned from family members, service providers, and our own experience of putting these ideas into practice, and describe the training implications we see. These training ideas are directed to educators who are training new professionals, as well as in-service trainers providing ongoing training for more advanced professionals who have been working in the fields of family violence, child welfare, and family safety for a longer period of time. We also discuss in this chapter our ideas about providing support for service providers across organizational systems.
As an educator working in a post-secondary educational institution and training master’s level family therapists, I find the fit between what we learn from practicing within the Culturally Integrative Family Safety Response (CIFSR) model and a relational/systemic approach to working with individuals, couples, and families to be very exciting. Tailoring interventions to a marginalized and minority-status community’s cultural context is a key step in attending to the broader systemic influences on persons’ and families’ lives. Widening that cultural lens to incorporate the ways in which collectivist principles and values may run up against more prominent individualist approaches in a North American and specifically Canadian context is, I believe, particularly informative. It is important to understand the ways in which the mainstream or more established community-based system is organized to privilege certain ways of working, based on the primacy of individual rights. For example, this lens influences how interventions with victims and perpetrators of violent acts, persons struggling with the effects of pre-migration trauma and the disruption of extended family and community relationships, and members of specific religious communities or ethno-cultural groups are constructed. This is a prime example of how to explicitly identify systemic influences on our practices at organizational as well as face-to-face levels. Unpacking these assumptions and practices is valuable for early professionals as they consider their own approaches to working with various populations. Developing new ways of forming what I like to think of as
“collectives” of practitioners and community leaders (collaborative groups oriented to working with collectivist practices or principles and surrounding a family with formal and informal supports and services) as implemented by Mohammed Baobaid and his colleagues and partners over the past decade or more, provides an excellent example of expanding organizational and professional practices in response to these challenges. I see these shifts in practice as pointing to new best-practice options for individual practitioners and organizations. As a family therapist training new systemic and relational psychotherapists, I appreciate the object lesson in the importance of relationship building at the organizational level and across communities, as well as explicit attention to the relational context, pre-and post-migration influences, and the social fabric of the families with whom we work. The ideas informing CIFSR practices specifically lend themselves well to
teaching new professionals. I write here primarily with regard to training relational and systemic psychotherapists who are working with newcomers and members of non-mainstream communities with collectivist traditions and roots, and with particular emphasis on concerns related to family violence, pre-migration trauma, and child welfare. I’m sure that you, the reader, will see ways in which these ideas can be extended to training in related professions associated with child welfare, immigrant and refugee settlement, health care, employment services, education, court-related supports, domestic violence programs and shelters, and community development. The CIFSR model provides an excellent scaffold for teaching and learning
relational, culturally sensitive practices with families and individuals. In particular, the Four Aspects Screening Tool (FAST) assessment can be used to ensure full attention to various aspects of a person’s and family’s relationships and interactions with others. These include ethnic, cultural, and religious background and influences; factors based in the local and broader community that are affecting family safety; alongside historical and current experiences related to collectivist perspectives, pre-and post-migration history and context, local social interactions, and connections with leaders/champions who support family safety. Similarly, the Coordinated Organizational Response Teams (CORT) constellation of relevant organizations and community/ family supports provides a framework for considering the structural and systemic elements of a person’s or family’s day-to-day life and safety. As a family therapy supervisor and professor, I have taught students how
to use genograms and systemic mapping tools collaboratively with clients over many years. Working together with the Muslim Resource Centre for Social Support and Integration (MRCSSI) and the broader range of community service providers involved in working with families within the CIFSR model has allowed me to see the value of using genograms and mapping systemic influences visually with a group of service providers aiming to support a family’s safety and well-being. I have appreciated the opportunity to see broader applications of these tools in helping to contextualize individual family members’ struggles and behaviour, and to consider the broader family
system and interactions with the collectivist community. Particularly when a service provider may be engaged with only one person or one context in which the family operates, this richer description of how the overall family interacts and what supports or hinders positive change can be a real asset to group support for family safety. Similarly, providing examples of how other professionals may view a
family or an issue of concern can be quite instructive for novice or early-career professionals. Consider, for example, the potentially divergent perspectives of a school social worker involved with adolescent children, a physician working with their mother, and police or court personnel involved with charges pending against their father, alongside a more comprehensive picture of family interactions in a cultural context provided by the CIFSR. This reflection on various perspectives allows for a fuller understanding not only of the family interactions and individual actions, but also of how and why various systems may be responding in the way that they are. Consideration of case assessment and interventions at this broader macro level provides excellent opportunities to think about how one might, as a service provider, collaborate with others in assessment and intervention for family safety and well-being. It is evident in what we have written so far about the CIFSR model that
one of the unique aspects of working in this way is the relationship building across organizations and service sectors in the mainstream and mentors and champions in the more marginalized collectivist community. Highlighting the importance of these relationships, and the time required to build and sustain them, is, we believe, a valuable exercise in understanding and intervening to support families in collectivist and non-mainstream communities. It does, at the same time, provide new learning opportunities in training programs for early professionals. Considering the challenges of bridging cultures, sectors, professions, and communities is an important aspect of culturally integrative practices. This should be incorporated into early training and ongoing professional development, and provides an opportunity to extend learning beyond cultural sensitivity to actions that promote crosssector and cross-cultural dialogue, and sensitive support for change and enhanced safety from a collectivist perspective. Building awareness from the beginning about the time commitment that will attend this practice, and appreciation for the value of investing this time, will augment professional training and development in a culturally integrative manner.
