Family Life Education Consider NCFR Substance Area # 8 - FAMILY LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY and Substance Area # 9 -- ETHICS. Compare and contrast these areas with particular focus on how they might conflict with teach other.

According to the National Council on Family Relations, Area Number Eight, Family Law and Public Policy refers to a comprehension of the legal factors, policies and pieces of legislation which can influence the well-being and general health of families in their entirety (2011). For instance, issues like family and the law connect to "marriage, divorce, family support, child custody, child protection & rights, & family planning; Family and Social Services; Family and Education; Family and the Economy; Family and Religion; Policy and the Family…" (NCFS, 2011). The issues encompassed by Area Eight are truly intensive and nuanced, and they are bound to come into conflict with professional ethics and practice as specified by Area Nine. For instance, the type of support that a family needs might simply be out of the scope of a practitioner's realm of professional practice. A family might need a more stable financial provider or a more balanced and health parent to raise the children. There's a definite boundary to the tasks that a practitioner can achieve. Truly, the practitioner can make available all the necessary resources for a given family, but that ultimately the task of self-empowerment will be left up to the family.

Furthermore, the practitioner might not simply agree with some of the policies in place that the family engages in, so that they can maintain homeostasis. For example, the legal working age in the city where the family lives might be 15 or 16; and one of the eldest children in the family might take on an after-school job so that he can contribute to the overall welfare of the family. However, the family care practitioner might see that this is added boost to the family is coming at a certain price: in this case the price might be the mental health and stability of the child. The child might not be able to participate as much with his own peer group or the child might start to neglect his own academic responsibilities. Regardless of what occurs exactly, the family practitioner might be the only one who is truly aware of the toll this is taking on the individual child. Thus, the family is getting much needed fiscal support but at a steep cost. In this case, the concerned family practitioner needs to be the one to maintain professional ethics and responsibility and be the one to think of a possible means of balancing or mitigating this unhealthy situation while still allowing the family to receive such fiscal support. This is just one example of many of how the various values can potentially come into conflict and how the practitioner will constantly need to find at way to mitigate opinions and help empower his or her clients towards a more harmonious lifestyle through professionalism and ethics.

2. The NCFR Substance Area # 10 - FAMILY LIFE EDUCATION METHODOLOGY.

Lists the following five activities related to the area: Planning and Implementing; Evaluation; Education Techniques; Sensitivity to Others; and Sensitivity to Community Concern. Identify and describe concrete examples of family life education methodology that exemplify these five.

Area 10 does indeed encompass five activities in connection with family life education methodology. Planning and implementation can be manifested through the following form of methodology which involves goal setting and pre-planning activities. Planning and implementation is an activity which involves a truly high level of organization. With the intensive organization required is the necessity of having a clear vision of what the end result needs to be. Educators need to be sensitive to the variety of learning...

Planning and implementation methodology needs to be presented in a manner which is more conducive to the wider variety of ways that people actually learn. Demonstrating how planning and implementation can be achieved using tactile tools and/or visual aids better caters to the wider base of real-time learners.
Evaluation can be achieved through a more communicative approach. Asking students to discuss and explain in their own words what they've learned or the main or most important parts of what they learned can be truly revelatory when it comes to assessing how effective the lesson has been and how fully the student has understood it. Discussing how and why religion can impact the dynamics within a family is also a significant topic for discussion (Coleman & Ganong, 2004).

Education techniques can be most strongly communicated through a presentation or "act out" of the most successful or popular ones. Just as a waiter explains the specials on the menu, the educator needs to be able to provide lucid examples of the most useful education techniques, so that learners aren't just aware of them in theory but have more of an innate command and comprehension of them. Many of the most crucial skills for parenting successfully actually do have to be taught (Duncan & Wallace, 2011).

Likewise, sensitivity to others can be conveyed in a variety of ways, but some might argue that the strongest way would be through example. If the educator demonstrates sensitivity to their students, learners can gently be able to pick that up. However, if learners having difficulty with this, the educator can point out what she is doing and give students examples of difficult situations in working with families, and how many other practitioners struggle to behave with sensitivity.

Finally, leading through example is yet another manner in which educators can illustrate the importance of behaving sensitively in the community. Fulfilling the needs of the community is something educators need to do more than just talk about -- though discussion is essential. Students need to have a clear understanding that their responsibilities are not simply confined to therapy rooms or offices; students need to see the very people who educate them and the very institution that they attend, give back to their communities with sensitivity and grace.

3. Imagine that you are a member of a committee in charge of putting together a day-long workshop for family and child development practitioners. List 6 workshop session topics you believe should be included, explain your rationale for choosing them, and describe the materials and procedures you would use in conducting each one. Assume that each of the 6 workshop sessions is one hour long.

If I was a member of a committee in charge of organizing a day-long workshop for family and child development practitioners, I would focus on the following as topics: communication within family, conflict resolution within family, parenting children of different ages, crisis management, single parent survival and nurturing.

The first workshop topic was chosen as communication in one of the most fundamental building blocks of a peaceful family and effective parenting. The materials and procedures I would use in conducting this workshop would be multimedia presentations of effective and ineffective forms of communication within a family group and techniques to help learners develop each one.

Conflict resolution within a family is an absolutely vital workshop to present on, since every family deals with conflict, but not every family knows how to deal with it adequately. Again, a multimedia presentation would be beneficial as it could help demonstrate the different types of conflict and the most effective ways that conflict can be dealt with in families. A multimedia presentation would also help educators demonstrate how conflicts can so easily get out of hand and how to stop them.

Parenting children of different ages is yet another essential aspect to discuss within the workshop, as so many parents have techniques which work well with their kids at specific age groups, but not with others. Parents need simply exposure to a wider variety of techniques. Role playing would be a truly beneficial technique for parents to explore in order to gain a higher level of mastery within this arena.

Crisis management is a pivotal workshop to present on because even the best families can be rocked from their foundation in the event of a serious crisis. This will be presented to learners through ha series of short narratives based on real live incidences. The group will discuss how they would have handled such a crisis and then the educator will discuss how the real family actually did handle such a crisis.

Finally the last workshop will be on nurturing as it takes place within a family. With the demands of parenting and the stresses that families can fall under within this modern-day society, it can be easy for parents to forget that they need to nurture their kids. Having a frank discussion about what nurturing means today and how parents can infuse their parenting skills with a higher level of nurturing is essential; role-playing and reading narrative about real families is yet another means of achieving this.

Fundamentally, marked interventions that are given in a consistent manner is important as well. "The Yale Project employed a multidisciplinary approach, including health care, monthly home visits for…