MYDLÍKOVÁ, E. 2018. Posudzovanie sociálnej rizikovosti rodiny. Trnava: Trnavská univerzita v Trnave, Fakulta zdravotníctva a sociálnej práce, 2018. 126 s. ISBN 978-80-568-0079-9

Author Eva Mydlíková, from the perspective of assessing social risk, e.g., in departments of social-legal protection of children and social curatorship, but also for other professionals working with families and children, significantly contributed through her publication to creating an appropriate perception for evaluating the family system. In her publication, she considers the aspect of family change and recognizes that the modern family functions differently than the family in the past. At the same time, based on interviews and analysis of case files, she describes the criteria that a professional working with the family should meet. The first chapter addresses the family as an object of assessment, which has a certain dynamics and functions that it must fulfill for its members and society. She describes the basic needs that family members have and that must be satisfied to maintain the functionality, safety, and satisfaction of family members. The second chapter contains the most essential part of the publication — a meta-analysis of three models of family therapy: Olson's circumplex model of family functioning, the McMaster model of family functioning, and Beavers' systemic model of family functioning. The starting point of this research, using the method of content analysis, was the assumption that family therapists and social workers working with families would have a similar view of risk factors in the family. The result of the research is five categories that we should pay attention to when evaluating the family, and which overlapped or were repeatedly mentioned in these models: communication, family structure, affect, conflicts, and need satisfaction. For each of these categories, she also described specific criteria that the family should meet so that we can assume its proper functioning, or identify risk if some deviation, unconventional, or risky behavior is identified in one of the categories. In the third chapter and also in further research, the author examined, through content analysis of documentation at the department of social-legal protection of children and through semi-structured interviews with social workers at this department, the indicators that are important for identifying the socially at-risk family, and what tools they use in their assessment. In the case of risk indicators in the family, she identified categories such as:

  • Saturation of basic needs and thus conditions related to housing, food, clothing, hygiene, and health.
  • Family functioning and communication: for this category, social workers noted the importance of observing the family's potential and the relationships of parents, children, and the family's relationships with the environment and vice versa.
  • Emotionality: Expressions of emotions, feelings, love, and bonds in the family.
  • Pathology: addictions, aggression, theft, immature parental behavior.
  • Economic situation: income, expenses, debts, money management, the property environment where the family lives.
  • School and upbringing: Attendance, homework preparation, child's behavior, parenting style, provision of food for the child.
  • Parent's personality and behavior.

There is no doubt that all these indicators or phenomena that we must observe in the family are important to register and pay attention to if we identify something that seems "off" to us. Often, misinterpretation of certain specific manifestations, or doubts and fear of incorrect identification and attaching an unjustified label to a given family, can be a reason for inaction by helping professionals or the wider environment of the family. Thanks to Eva Mydlíková, we can form an idea of what we should look at in the family, and I also perceive her work as an excellent way to become aware of things that are around us every day, that we actually perceive, but since we are cognitively engaged in various activities, we may overlook some things. The author thus contributed to orienting ourselves in the issue of evaluating the family system and the indicators that may be present in this system, and also contributed to specifying the indicators that we should observe in the family. As I mentioned, the author also addressed in her research how workers at the department of social-legal protection of children assess the social risk of the family. From the transcripts of interviews, she abstracted the basic ways in which social workers assess risk. The results show that the diagnosis itself begins already from the way the case is initiated and the level of cooperation they demonstrate. They further evaluate risk indicators through interviews, observation, and cooperation with other professionals and institutions, norms and guidelines, and based on ensuring impartiality in the given case, i.e., through acting from the position of the institution and in cooperation with a colleague. In the fourth chapter, she describes the competencies of a social worker working with the family through partial research, the aim of which was to identify the importance of professional competencies for working with a socially at-risk family. Also in this partial research, the author used the method of semi-structured interview and qualitative analysis of transcripts, through which she saturated the anticipated categories: having sufficient information to work with the family, having completed education authorizing work with the family, cognitive skills (setting realistic goals, systematizing work, being capable of reflection), and possessing interpersonal and communication skills that would ensure effective work with clients and cooperation on jointly set goals with the clients of the given case.

The entire publication addresses the family as a system that may find itself in problems that can be detected early through circumstances and behavior of family members that would predict risk for the family, the child, and also society. The author very thoroughly, systematically, and methodologically correctly obtained and described the presented information, and I believe that this publication is very valuable, especially for social workers working at departments of social-legal protection of children and social curatorship, but it is also a suitable stimulus and inspiration for creating specific methods of family evaluation based on the techniques and focus she presents. Her publication offers many findings that are essential for creating a system of evaluation of today's family, because they reflect and mirror the practice of the author and experienced professionals at SPOD departments in the territory of the Slovak Republic. Overall, I must highlight the conciseness, clarity, and necessity of the information she offers in the publication. This publication is suitable for anyone who is interested in how the family functions and interacts, what is essential for its functionality, and how it is subsequently recommended to work with and intervene. Family evaluation is a broad and complex matter; legal regulations, directives, norms that currently affect it are pertinent and substantive, but evaluating the family also requires something more — knowledge about the family and about how to purposefully and correctly work with people, also based on current findings of scientific research. Her qualitative form of research processing is, from my perspective, very well chosen for the profession of social work, whether in terms of the nature of the research or the specifics of the profession of social work itself. The knowledge we acquire after reading it concerns an overview of what risks threaten the family, but also conversely, what needs to be ensured for the family to function properly. In this publication, I even implicitly perceive guidance on what is necessary to do to prevent any risk from occurring, even in the case of unexpected situations in the family. Or, what protective factors in the family are important for neutralizing risk arising from behavior and circumstances that are not optimal in the family. I view the publication very positively and recommend it to all professionals working with families.

Author: Mgr. Roland Sivok

References

MYDLÍKOVÁ, E., 2018. Posudzovanie sociálnej rizikovosti rodiny. Trnava: Trnavská univerzita v Trnave, Fakulta zdravotníctva a sociálnej práce, 2018. 126 s. ISBN 978-80-568-0079-9