A Practical Study On The Intervention Of Structured Family Therapy In The Entanglement Of Parent-Child Relationship

Parent-child relationship is the first social relationship that children come into contact with during their growth,and a good parent-child relationship has a profound impact on the development of each family member and the family as a whole.The maintenance of good parent-child relationships in single-mother families faces more challenges than in two-parent families and single-father families.The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of using the structural family therapy model to intervene in the parent-child relationship entanglement of single mother families,draw conclusions and summarize the experiences and shortcomings of the practice.The case selected for this paper is a social work case of a single-mother family in which I was involved during my internship.I reviewed and combed through relevant literature,and assessed the family structure,family system,and parent-child relationship boundaries of the case family through interview,observation,and scales.We tried to solve the problem of parent-child relationship entanglement in the single mother family.The entire intervention consisted of 13 sessions,divided into three stages.Pre-intervention: joining the family and assessing and diagnosing the problem.Mid-intervention: restructuring the family.Post-intervention: review and assessment,closing the case.The middle of the intervention-restructuring the family;the end of the intervention-review and assessment,closing the case and withdrawing from the family.The middle stage of the intervention is the core stage of the intervention,following the four-step model of structural family therapy and conducting seven sessions,i.e.,reconstructing the poor family structure by expanding the client’s claims to focus on exploring problem-sustaining interactions,structurally focusing on the past,and exploring relevant ways to change,thereby alleviating the entangled parent-child relationship and repairing family functioning.Ultimately,formulating the conclusions and reflections of the case study,the structural family therapy model is effective in intervening in the entangled parent-child relationship problems of single mother families,and the main strengths of the model in this case study are:the model looks for essential problems from the family structure;focuses on family structure changes to address individual problems;and the four steps of the structural family therapy model have the advantage of flexibility.In addition,the author has developed her own thinking in three aspects: the application of social work to the structural family therapy model,the intervention of the structural family therapy model on parent-child entanglement problems in single mother families,and the local adaptation of the structural family therapy model applied to families in Chinese mainland.