Family Justice

Question: What is so unique about family-focused methods? Why not take separate and specialized approaches to children, mothers, fathers, etc?

Response: By focusing on the family member within an individualized framework, it limits our understanding of the context in which a child, or mother, or father exists. More importantly, focusing on one family member looks to improve only the well being of just that person. A family focused approach, on the other hand, aims to improve the well being of the whole family, strengthening existing supports within the family, and making it easier for a mother to support her own son, or a brother to support a sister in a sustainable way.
Question: All families are not the same. Many families resist participating. How can they be part of the process?

Response: Many family members are "burned out" from past mistreatment: the family may be a victim of a loved one coming home, a family may have been evicted from public housing because of a loved one's criminal justice involvement, etc. Family members may also blame themselves for "the problem." They have been asked or required to participate in treatment or other services only to find they are being blamed by "the system" for their loved one's misbehavior, or that "the system" is trying to "fix" the family in an often futile attempt to improve program outcomes. They may also believe they've already tried everything that they could to help their loved ones so there's no point in collaborating. Respecting and reframing these attitudes and experience helps win the family's cooperation.
Question: What do family-focused methods have to do with policy making? It might be important or useful for a treatment provider, but why the law?

Response: State and national policymakers are recognizing that many families with a loved one under community justice supervision are involved in multiple government systems - criminal justice, welfare, housing, child welfare, human services, health (including substance abuse) and mental health, education, and foster care. Yet each government system tends to tackle only the problem presented and has no way to reach outside its immediate jurisdiction. Mental health is one system, housing another; and criminal justice yet another. Budgets are separate and each source of funding can only be used to pay for a particular category of services. Family members spend an inordinate amount of time navigating each system with its different caseworkers, forms and requirements.

A family-focused coordinated response to service delivery, and the laws effecting service delivery, allows government to blend funding from the multiple systems that must work together to improve the outcomes for people under community justice supervision. Blended funding from different sources enables government to maximize its resources.
Question: Isn't working with families supposed to be a "clinical" practice? How can treatment providers be expected to understand the ins and outs of work that would essentially require a family systems degree to understand?

Response: "Clinical" practice suggests that there is something wrong with the families that they need to be "clinic"-ed, often from a deficit based perspective. Family focused methods are based on the strength-based assumption that families can serve as great resources. With the proper support and training, treatment providers can learn how to tap that resource, gaining allies from family members who often want to.
Question: Aren't families the ones that begin many of these problems? How can they possibly be seen as the solution?

Response: It is true that for many individuals, partnering with their families is not realistic given histories of violent internal conflict. But family focused methods simply propose that in many cases, the family CAN play a positive role in a loved one's life whether that be helping connect them to a job, or getting them in touch with someone in the local church, or even providing a temporary and familiar place to live after they leave jail or prison.

Many professionals have been trained in both academic and work settings to focus on ways family may exacerbate an individual's problems. However, most professionals can also provide examples of ways families have been helpful, even essential, to the recovery process.
Question: What if no family exists?

Response: To the untrained eye this may seem the case at first glance. Death, abandonment, and estrangement can reduce participants' options. However, recent research indicates that "we are hardwired for relationships." Almost everyone has at least one person who is a positive influence - a support that serves the role of a family. People can be trained to elicit strengths and resources where the untrained eye may not see them. People can also learn to help participants gain insight into their supports by engaging them in seeking solutions.