Reflection Paper On The Family

These past six weeks of placement have widened my eyes and perspective to many things, including the complexity of foster families. While in the midst of my placement at the London-Middlesex Children’s Aid Society (CAS), I was given the opportunity to contact a family in which my partner and I would conduct four home visits with. These visits would allow us to complete a family assessment and work through any health-related issues they may currently be facing. The family my partner and I chose to work with, the Meyer family will be reviewed in this reflection, as I will be examining the experiences of my first interaction with the family’s matriarch and patriarch. For confidentiality reasons, the family’s last name was changed for this paper.

Our Community Advisor helped us with this process and found a family that she believed would be willing to help us gain some community-based experience. One week later, the matriarch and patriarch of the Meyer family as well as one of their foster children had an appointment at the CAS’s medical clinic and I was therefore able to meet them for the first time. Prior to this appointment, my partner and I meet with the matriarch and patriarch and thereby began to discuss the potential for home visits. Once they agreed to this process, we took them aside, before their foster child’s appointment, and began to develop a family genogram in order to gain a better understanding of the family. Moreover, as I had not been in previous contact with the family, I had to draw on my previous experiences of working with foster parents. These experiences taught me that foster parents are held to a very

In order to understand why the family adopted and foster as many times as they did, I addressed this aspect with the patriarch and matriarch. Their response was that they love children and helping those in need. I also inquired into possible health related concerns or illnesses affected various family members. I learned that the matriarch and patricians adopted son suffers from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder as well as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome while their biological son has severe anxiety. From this additional information, in conjunction with the other information gathered pertaining to the family’s structure and relationships, I was able to conclude that these next few upcoming months and family visits are going to be involve the development of many different individual and family-based goals that are to be achieved, or at least in progress by the time my partner and I have commenced our final