Family Systems Flashcards
7 cards from real SSW practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Family Systems flashcards as text
Which of the following BEST describes the concept of 'family resilience' in a school social work context?
Answer: The capacity of a family to rebound and adapt positively from adversity
Family resilience (Walsh) refers to the family's collective ability to withstand, adapt to, and grow from challenges, leveraging shared strengths and resources.
A school social worker is meeting with a family from a collectivist culture where extended family has significant decision-making authority. The MOST culturally responsive approach is to:
Answer: Include relevant extended family members in assessment and planning
Culturally responsive practice recognizes that family boundaries and decision-making vary across cultures, and extended family may be appropriately central to the system.
Which of the following is a KEY principle of systems theory as applied to families?
Answer: A change in one family member affects all other members
A foundational systems principle is that family members are interdependent — a change in one part of the system reverberates throughout the entire system.
A school social worker is working with a family where the father has recently lost his job. The family is struggling to adjust. This is BEST understood as:
Answer: A horizontal stressor disrupting family equilibrium
Horizontal stressors (Carter & McGoldrick) are unexpected events — like job loss — that disrupt current family functioning, as opposed to vertical stressors passed down through generations.
In solution-focused brief therapy with families, the 'miracle question' is used to:
Answer: Encourage the family to visualize a future where the problem is solved
The miracle question invites the family to imagine how life would look if the problem disappeared overnight, helping to clarify goals and preferred futures.
A school social worker identifies that two siblings have formed a coalition against a stepparent, and the biological parent supports the children. This represents:
Answer: A stable cross-generational coalition
A stable cross-generational coalition (Minuchin) occurs when a parent consistently aligns with children against the other parent, undermining parental hierarchy.
When a school social worker involves the entire family in developing an intervention plan for a student's school refusal, this reflects which systems principle?
Answer: Reciprocal determinism within the family context
Reciprocal determinism recognizes that the student's behavior and the family environment mutually influence each other, so intervention must address the system, not just the individual.