New Approaches to Family Practice: Confronting Economic Stress

New Approaches to Family Practice: Confronting Economic Stress

In her book, New Approaches to Family Practice: Confronting Economic Stress, Vosler offers a significant and timely paradigm for understanding the many challenges faced by today's families. Vosler presents a multilevel approach to assessing and intervening with families based on the premise that too often human service practitioners emphasize the internal or micro problems of families without considering macro issues that are also impacting family functioning. In ten chapters, Vosler reviews and condenses a vast amount of social science research and theoretical concepts related to family systems theory and ingeniously incorporates these insights into tools for practice. Still, the book is easily readable and absorbing considering the breadth of material covered and the wealth of information presented on families.

Vosler has written a well-organized and thought-provoking book that addresses crucial issues facing families in this age of Welfare Reform and retrenchment in human service programs. The author precisely maps out the format of the book and goes on to provide an excellent foundation for analysis of working with today's diverse families. Vosler broadly defines the family and explores family rules, roles, beliefs, communication, structure, family life cycle, and other family dynamics from a social systems perspective.

New Approaches to Family Practice is centered around three major macroeconomic themes -- employed and family work, unemployment, and poverty - and provides a chapter on each giving concise theoretical and statistical information about how today's families are affected by these major challenges. Each chapter on theory and research is followed by a chapter entitled "Applications and Tools for Practice," which offers substantive discussions about how to apply these theoretical concepts into actual practice situations with families. Direct and policy practice methods are further elucidated by graphs and charts depicting genograms, ecomaps, family stressor variables, multilevel intervention factors, and a family budget model. Vosler addresses pragmatic issues and dilemmas facing dual wage earner families, such as role overload and priority-setting, and challenges professionals to consider the far-reaching effects of unemployment and poverty on lower income families, including the working poor. The author provides special insights into women's roles within the family and considers unique family issues related to family structure, family definitions and perceptions, and intergenerational stressors. Moreover, in-depth case study materials are presented at the beginning of each chapter addressing intervention strategies.

In the final chapter, the author uses a powerful metaphor that remarkably synthesizes her major theme, which is that social workers and other human service professionals must become increasingly more aware of multilevel and multisystem issues impinging on families at local, state, federal, and global levels. Also, the appendix offers intake-assessment research forms that should help family practitioners develop broad-based understandings of internal and external stressors that might place families more at risk for problems.

In summary, New Approaches to Family Practice is a major contribution to our understanding of family theory, research, and practice. I believe Vosler has compiled a considerable and rich cadre of information about families and integrates this material into concise and innovative techniques for multilevel family practice. Vosler explores multiple family stressors by reframing assessment approaches and by offering fresh and inspiring new ways to approach work with families. The author utilizes a strengths perspective throughout and encourages practitioners to move away from a "blaming the victim" mindset in family assessment and instead to become more collaborative and proactive with families in mobilizing larger systems for problem-solving. The book should serve both educators and practitioners interested in working with families in direct and policy practice in today's progressively complex and changing world.

Lonnie R. Helton, Ed.D., MSW Department of Social Work Cleveland State University Cleveland, OH

Copyright Family Service America Mar/Apr 1998
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