Understanding the broader context of individual families
Dr Paul Prichard | February 2025
Read more from the Reflections on Relational Practice blog series:
- What is relational practice and why is it important?
- 'Hard to reach' families or difficult to access services?
- Listening to speak or listening to understand?
- Understanding the broader context of individual families
- How our interpretation of experiences might get in the way of helping families
- Building and sustaining effective relationships: why first meetings really matter
As discussed in the relational practice blog post, a critical component of working together is an ability for the practitioner to build trust, rapport and safety through exercising relational expertise. This blog begins to explore the importance of understanding and valuing the broader context in which families live and how this information can contribute significantly to the shared work between practitioners and families.
When to be an expert and when to be curious
In some instances, a practitioner needs to immediately exercise their technical expertise. Think of a child being admitted with a critical injury to an emergency department in a hospital. The most useful immediate response is for medical practitioners to tend to the injury and ensure the child returns to full health.
However, in another scenario, a child is displaying disruptive and challenging behaviours within a school setting. Rather than a surface reaction to the new behaviours, the child might be better served if the teacher is curious about why this is occurring and explore what other actors or events within the child’s broader ecological context could be contributing to the child’s behaviour. In this scenario, the practitioner is thinking ecologically. They are working from a premise that the root of the issue may not be immediately obvious within the school environment or inherent within the child themselves.
The things that make humans tick
There are a variety of things that influence the way all humans think, feel and react to what they experience. This is also true for what leads parents to respond to their children in the ways that they do. All of us come from environments and family contexts that are unique. The contexts in which we live (our homes and local communities) and parent (cultural norms, our own upbringing) can significantly influence the way we think, behave and care for those around us. Parents also bring to an encounter with practitioners their personal experience which emanates from their unique context.
When supporting families experiencing difficulties or complex needs, practitioners are equipped with their own technical/clinical knowledge and experience. It is not uncommon for this body of knowledge and expertise to cloud professional assumptions and judgements, and determine the advice and support provided to parents. While, in some cases, this may be useful, other potentially important information that could support a more sustainable solution may be overlooked.
A way forward: understanding family contexts
In my experience providing training for practitioners in Australia, a common dilemma they share is finding themselves working in ways that are primarily focused on problem solving and prescribing solutions due to being ‘time poor’ or ‘under the pump’ and bound to external requirements like funding requirements or key performance indicators. Efficient in the short term, such practices can result in parents being more dependent on professionals, and lead to solutions that do not address the underlying issues or take into account families’ complex contexts or needs. A more sustainable approach to helping parents can be found in working in ways that seeks to understand what might be causing a parent or child to be experiencing a particular issue or concern.
Uri Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of human development (1979) helps us understand the factors that we are exposed to in various environments that may have an effect on us and our behaviours. This model draws attention to the complex network of influences on individuals from their immediate families, social relationships, local communities, service contexts and even the broader environmental, cultural and political contexts. These spheres of influence, and the various actors within them, can help or hinder families, and influence the decisions and behaviours of parents. Therefore, to support families effectively, practitioners require the skills and qualities to enable parents to feel safe to openly share information about their broader ecological contexts.
If parents feel comfortable and safe to share information about their ecological context, practitioners and parents are likely to be able to arrive at a more complete picture of the family, their resources, and their challenges and strengths (risk and resilience factors). Understanding a family’s broader ecological context, and the multiple influences on the family, can help the practitioner to draw on their own suite of skills, knowledge and expertise and also bring into play other complementary resources available from other individuals and services. This obviously relies on the practitioner being able to easily identify, access and mobilise other resources, individuals and services.
Thinking and exploring ecologically with a family is an influential, strengths-based practice that can enable parents and carers to feel valued and heard. This way of working requires discipline, practice and an ability to step away from top down, expert-led outcomes that dismiss the value of the knowledge and skills of those they are attempting to help.
Contact
If you would like more information about working from an ecological perspective you can contact us at [email protected]. We provide training for practitioners on a variety of topics and can tailor workshops to meet the specific needs of your service.
Reference
Bronfenbrenner, U., Moen, P., Elder G.H. (Jnr), Luscher, K. (Ed.) (1979). The ecology of human development: experiments by nature and design: Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press.