Family counseling approaches and practices

¶ … counselor assess a single-parent-led family using the problem-Appraisal checklist for the custodial and non-custodial parent?

No chart can give a full determinacy of any family's essential competency, whether led by a single parent or by two parents. Thus, when assessing a single parent-led family a counselor must be especially careful of seeming non-judgmental towards such families deemed non-standard by society, such as single-parent families, and not use an assessment chart as a kind of laundry list of competency. A counselor, regardless of his or her personal approaches, must use any problem-appraisal schema in a helpful rather than a harmful fashion. The aim of counseling is to empower both the custodial and non-custodial parent to move on in their respective family, personal, and professional lives, not hold them to unrealistic standards.

When first assessing both parents, the counselor should also remember that in addition to the traditional nuclear family, a single parent could still competently lead a household. However, the family may need some extra help in getting started anew. Also, the single-parent family may not have begun as a traditional family -- a remarried couple may have formed a family that is now breaking up and even a co-habiting heterosexual couple or the gay or lesbian couple could have done so as well -- all of these different families may decide to have children, and thus, with the inevitable possibility of divorce, all of these families may become broken.

Thus the first step to any assessment is what was the family like before the parents were split? Was it traditional or non-traditionally nuclear in structure? What was the cultural or ethnic background of both original family members, and was it the same? Did both family members work? What is the relationship between the family members now, and also between the respective families of the former spouses or partners -- for example, if it was a mixed marriage or a difficult breakup or divorce, are the grandparents at odds as well as the parents.

Then the counselor must determine why the split occurred, for counseling purposes -- was it because one of the family members passed away, or because of a divorce? Or were the family members not married at all, and only tangentially involved? Was sexual orientation a factor? These questions and answers will affect how the children view the absent parent, as well as the ability of the split parents to cope with the situation. A family that was once closely knit may exhibit difficulties in dealing with the grief children experience at the fact the non-custodial parent is no longer residing with them. Families of traditional cultural or ethnic backgrounds may offer little support for the woman who has broken away from her marriage, regardless of the reason. Death or even divorce may come unexpectedly, and result in the mother's unexpected need to economically provide for her child in the complete absence of expecting to do so -- or the break may be expected, and a relief for the woman, and result in a new-found sense of freedom on her part, that the children are little prepared to cope with.