ABSTRACT
One of the more difficult obstacles on the path to a career as a human service worker is dealing with the disillusioning effect of success rates that are less than we would wish, often with clients who are in the greatest need. Faced by situations that test our personal and professional resources and regularly prove them lacking, we may be tempted to blame families for our inability to be helpful (defining them as unmotivated, unworkable, or unreachable, for example). Alternatively, we can decline to treat them, perhaps referring them elsewhere and letting someone else take the responsibility for failing with them. Another defense is to determine that the problems in question are a consequence of such fundamental structural arrangements in our society that anything short of a revolution is inadequate.
