Structural Family Therapy for Enmeshed Family

Social Work with Families and Children

Part 1

A. Summarize the research and your reason for choosing this population group. Identify limitations in the research and need for additional evaluation.

The study aimed to determine the effect of extended foster care on older youth aging out of foster care. The study utilized the NYTD Outcomes survey to determine the association between utilization of extended care and positive adult outcomes (Rosenberg & Abbott, 2019). The researchers used a logistic regression to analyze young adult outcomes and extended care utilization. The aim was to determine if extended foster care was beneficial to the older youth. It was established that allowing older youth to stay in care past 18 years is associated with better outcomes for young adults. Extended foster care is similar to the care youths receive when they have support from family as they begin their adulthood journey. Therefore, youth aging out of foster must receive comparable support to make better decisions, and some even manage to attain a high school diploma (Rosenberg & Abbott, 2019). Older youth aging out of foster care face numerous challenges since most do not have family support, and they no longer receive foster care. The abrupt disruption of their lives at an age where they need to make a critical decision leads most to live on the streets or even engage in negative behaviors. However, if they can receive support until they are 21 years of age, they will have better outcomes as they can make guided decisions and have people they can talk to regarding what they can do with their lives (Rosenberg & Abbott, 2019).

Additional research is needed to understand the unique experiences of older youth of color. The data collected by the NYTD is low and cannot be generalizable to the population of older youths exiting foster care (Rosenberg & Abbott, 2019). Therefore, there is a need to increase the response rate and collected data. For better understanding, we need more details on the youths’ experiences in care. It should become mandatory for reporting on older youth still in foster care. Without it being compulsory, many foster centers do not report on young people in extended foster care, making it hard to determine the actual number and impact of the extension. Follow-up should be done after the youth exits foster care to examine the efficacy of the additional time in foster care.

B. Provide one evidence-based approach for working with this population, and summarize the intervention. Share your interest in working with the identified population.

Mentoring the older youth has been shown to have positive outcomes for the youth. Mentorship programs can be implemented to influence, guide, and direct the youth once they leave foster care. The shock they face when they leave foster care forces most of them to engage in criminal behaviors, and they prefer to stay in prison to receive food and education. With mentors assisting the older youth in making the right decisions, the youth receive the support they need and vital guidance on what to expect and how to survive once they exit foster care. Youth not in foster care receive support from their parents or grandparents. However, youths leaving foster care are allocated a house, and they have to fend for themselves (Rosenberg & Abbott, 2019). Without guidance and someone they can rely on, most find it hard to get a job or even continue with schooling. They need assistance in moving past foster care and navigating and surviving in the real world.

Mentors will guide them, and some might even offer financial support to the youth to pursue their education. Young minds need guidance since they cannot make life decisions independently. A mentor will work with the youth to offer assistance and advice. The youth can have someone they can call when they need advice about something, which is lacking once they leave foster care. When youth transition from adolescence to adulthood, they learn decision-making and coping skills as they become independent (Rosenberg & Abbott, 2019). Older youth exiting foster care do not have family they can rely on for support as they transition. Therefore, they need assistance from professionals willing to spare their time to guide and mold them during the transition phase.

After seeing the youth’s potential and how much they need assistance as they age out of foster care, I became interested in supporting and mentoring them. Most of them leave foster care seeking independence without guidance, and they are not aware of the harsh world waiting for them. However, they can make better decisions and have positive outcomes with guidance and support.

Part 2

1. What challenges did the youth have in achieving the goals? What assistance did the youth have?

The significant challenges the youth faced with achieving their goals of getting a good education, having a safe and stable place to live, and managing their life responsibly (Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, 2016, December 16). Getting a good education was Mykell’s overall goal. She discovered that she had to choose between working and schooling. Combining school and work is overwhelming for Mykell because they are tasking and demanding her time. She was forced to quit her job since the employer was not respecting her school schedule. Also, she did not have the assistance her friends had, and she had to work and still attend school. It was hard for Mykell not to have a job without parental help. Her priority was schooling, and she understood that she could not attain much without proper education.

Having a safe and stable place to live was challenging for Mykell and Corey. For Mykell, most places were unwilling to accept her. Being a full-time student, it is difficult for her to get housing since most landlords state she receives tax breaks for being a student. Also, she is eligible for financial aid, which puts off most of the landlords. Corey has the same challenge in housing since he has a criminal record. Everywhere they look for accommodation, they are not willing to accept him when they learn he has a criminal record. Some people are unwilling to accept the section 8 voucher. Even when people are willing to recommend his character, he is still not accepted. Corey’s foster dad helped assist him in securing an apartment. Reaching out to an agency that administers people with felonies to get housing allowed Corey to get an apartment finally. Mykell can rely on her uncle for assistance, and he is willing to offer her the assistance she needs. She lived with her uncle until she managed to get her apartment. She eventually was accepted into an apartment, and she moved out of her uncle’s place.

Managing life responsibly was a challenge for Corey and Mykell since they did not know their birth parents. They were both brought into foster care from a tender age, and they struggled to connect with their parents. Corey did manage to meet up with his mother through Facebook. However, Mykell never reconnected with her mother since she passed away before meeting. The good thing was that she connected with her uncle through the foster system.

2. Who supported the youth and what role did the social worker play in the lives of the youth.

Corey received the most support from his foster dad Joe. Mykell received support from his uncle. Joe is seen taking Corey to get household items and guides him on what to think about when picking out things for his house. The guidance offers to Corey assists him in thinking about his home and what he needs, plus what is essential. Without the assistance of Joe, Corey would not have managed to pick out household items, and he might have picked the wrong things. Mykell gets support from his uncle, who offers her accommodation as she searches for an apartment and attends school. When she was placed in foster care, Mykell lost contact with her family, and her uncle never knew where she was taken. Rekindling this connection is beneficial to her as she can now be with her family though her mother is no longer alive. With support from her uncle, she could quit her job and still have a place to stay and food to eat. While it could be challenging to come from foster care, Mykell relied on her uncle after leaving her foster home and was still searching for an apartment.

The social workers offered guidance and support for the youth to assist them in transitioning from foster care to the real world. Corey received additional assistance from the agency that assists people with records to get housing. Without the help, it had become difficult for Corey to get an apartment. It was vital for the youth to get an apartment before their vouchers expired. However, they faced numerous challenges based on their past and current life. Mykell connecting with her extended family was vital for her since she could now interact with her family and receive some semblance of support. Having a person one can rely on is beneficial for foster youths exiting foster care. The external support they receive will assist them as they transition from adolescence to adulthood.

Part 3

A. Does solution-oriented therapy ignore people’s pain (as some critics of the approach suggest) or does it facilitate clients’ positive experiences, which in turn empower them to change what is painful in their lives?

Solution-oriented therapy does not ignore people’s pain, as some critics suggested. It focuses on the client’s positive experiences to empower them towards change. In most therapy sessions, we focus more on the pain the client is experiencing, as that would be the best approach to treating them. However, focusing on the pain increases the client’s pain and denies them a chance to make changes based on their tools. Focusing on the pain the client is experiencing makes it hard to uncover the tools they have inside of themselves and what they can rely upon immediately to manage their symptoms. Solution-oriented therapy places more emphasis on solutions and not problems (Trepper et al., 2012). It aims to reduce the amount of time a client spends in treatment by implementing a solution to their problem as soon as possible. With a quick solution, the time spent by the client suffering is reduced, and they can begin healing immediately. Focusing on the pain experienced by a client means the client spends more time suffering, and while they will eventually get better, they might have to suffer more before they can begin to heal. According to Trepper et al. (2012) solution-oriented therapy is geared towards offering a realistic and workable solution.

The solution offered is mainly related to something the client has been doing in the past or from an exception they have in their life. For example, a shy client might not have an issue interacting with their coworkers. Therefore, their work interactions would become an exception that the therapist could target. The idea is to find out why the client can comfortably interact with her coworkers without an issue, but they will struggle to do the same with others. The exception is used as a basis for formulating a solution (Trepper et al., 2012). The client can then set goals and implement a solution based on the solution developed with the therapist. The assumption made by solution-oriented therapy is that every individual has a motivation that could address their current problem.

While the intervention does not focus solely on the client’s pain, it works towards overcoming the pain. Solution-oriented therapy is grounded in the belief that clients might have the required skills to overcome the challenge or pain they experience. However, the issue they face is how to identify these skills and develop them to implement them when needed. Therapists will assist the client in identifying a situation where the problem they face was not bothering them and identify the different factors. Using the differing factors, they can develop a solution that the client can use to overcome the pain they suffer. When clients see that they can function in one situation and struggle to function in a different situation, they become motivated. Empowering the client to change what is painful is the aim of therapy. The client already has the skills needed to overcome their pain. Therefore, they do not need to learn new competencies. The client only needs to formulate the exact strategies they use in some situations to the other painful situations.

For the shy client, it becomes easy for them to see they can overcome their shyness by treating other people the same way they treat their coworkers. With such a view, they can overcome their shyness when dealing with people. Solution-oriented therapy encourages the client to do more of what was working, and in the process, the client learns how to overcome the painful situations. The questions asked by the therapist are geared towards uncovering solutions the client has used in the past, and they might not have realized it. Using such a strategy allows the client to see their resiliency since they have managed to overcome the problem in the past. The therapist then demonstrates to the client they can cope with the challenge.

B. What problems might this family present with? What concepts and techniques would you use to treat this family using a structural family therapy framework? Being a therapist, would it be more difficult to work with a disengaged family or an enmeshed family?

An enmeshed family is one where there are no boundaries between family members. A well-functioning family unit will have strong bonds, but for an enmeshed family, the family bonds are unhealthy emotions. Enmeshment takes place due to trauma or illness. The parent will typically overshare personal information with the children, there is no respect for privacy, children are not allowed to make their decisions and mistakes, and parents rely on the children for emotional support. The problems such a family might present include feeling emotionally responsible for caring for the parents, feeling guilty for putting their needs first, being overly involved in their child’s life, and having no privacy between children and parents. To the outside world, the family looks like a typical well-functioning family with close bonds. However, on closer examination is, when the unhealthy relationships are uncovered. Close families support each other as they pursue their dreams, but they do not use family closeness to get what they want. In an enmeshed family, children are made to feel guilty if they choose to pursue their dreams and move far away from their homes. Therefore, the family members might have separation anxiety, low self-esteem, difficulty developing balanced friendships, and lack of self-identity.