ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the concept of family—its definition, meaning, and place within the contemporary social context—and the process of engagement and assessment with families from a biopsychosocial-spiritual perspective. It shows that theoretical perspectives for working with traditional and contemporary family structures as well as the dynamics, skills, and tools for working with a range of families. The chapter provides students through strategies for understanding the impact family issues can have on students and students clients. Focusing engagement, assessment, planning, intervention, termination, and evaluation and follow-up on the family itself, social work practice with single-parent families can use the family's strengths to create and stabilize coping skills. The responsibilities reflected emphasize, not only the functional roles of individual family members and their needs and identities, but also family members' connection to their communities and to the overall societal environment. Most families establish family norms, or rules of conduct, related to boundaries and subsystems.
