The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Department of Social Work

Placement Proposal

Parallel Group Proposal:

我與孩子更親近

Rationale:

For children with disabilities, they have different degrees of inadequacy in various areas such as speech, social skills and academic performance. The presenting difficulties make the disability seem obvious and parents will tend to focus more on the children’s problem and overlook other aspects of the children. Parents may accept their children’s disability though they may over-emphasize the seriousness of the disability and ignore the abilities of their children, which shows positive discrimination towards their children. Moreover, the conventional practice in rehabilitation settings is more problem-focused and labels the service users with negative comments such as unstable, inattentive, which focuses much on the children’s weaknesses (Lo etc, 2002).

Moreover, Hong Kong focuses on achievement and academic performance. Other fields, such as personality development and character building, are ignored. This puts the disabled children in an unfavorable situation as the performance of children, encountering difficulties in learning, is assessed in normal standard or the parents do not believe in their children’s capacity. Having such norms in understanding strengths, most of the children’s potential and strength cannot be easily uncovered. Giving the above conditions, the children’s disability is more easily identified and their strengths are easily overlooked or neglected.

The way people understand disability is a process of socialization in which people and their world is defined and explained by themselves. Therefore, what we regard as disability and the seriousness of the disability are indeed subjectively constructed by us. Hence, parents’ belief in their children’s disability may be influenced by the society in which strong sense of weakness is placed.

On the other hand, the difficulty for the children to deliver their ideas makes the parents feel discouraging because of a lack of recognition. The children may not be able to understand or appreciate what their parents do. Besides, they may not able to express their recognition or thankfulness to their parents. This shows that the children do not have adequate recognition to their parents’ strengths.

Theoretical Base:

There are different types of strengths. Apart from talents and other forms of capacities, strengths include personal qualities, traits, and virtues that people possess. It is easy to understand clients have their own strengths but what contributes more is exploring and recognizing their strengths. One important element of strengths-based practice is to stimulate the discourse and narratives of resilience and strength. The goal of this perspective is to move towards normalizing and capitalizing upon one’s strength.

“The supposition of disease assumes a cause for the disorder and, thus, a solution.” (Saleeby, 1997) Any weaknesses though indicate the inadequacies; they cannot be the resources to help the person to overcome or encounter the obstacles, however, strengths can do. Conversely, strengths are people’s resources in facing difficulties and hence it is significant to emphasize on strengths rather than weaknesses.

Rather than focusing on how to deal with the weaknesses of the clients, strengths perspective puts more emphasis on exploring clients’ strengths and mobilizes their strengths to help themselves. It is believed that every individual has strengths and each one’s upper limits of capacity are unknown. The approach, according to Saleeby, honors the innate wisdom of the human spirit, the inherent capacity.

In this case, group work is an appropriate approach in helping the parents and children. In the sharing among members, some may be able to achieve their goals in the group and this achievement encourages other members that they are able to attain it. The installation of hope, according to Yalom (1995) is much more effective than persuasion from worker only because the attainment of peer indicates that it is not only a set of theory but they, themselves, can do so. For example, when some parents give feedback on how the relationship become better with strengths perspective, other members will be stimulated and more confident in this perspective. Moreover, the universality, the sense of being on the same boat, is a strong sense of support from peer. (Yalom, 1995)

Apart from the sharing, peer feedback can also be obtained when having various kind of learning opportunities in the group which cannot be found in individual counseling or treatment because people have an impulse to learn, as applying humanistic perspective, which focuses on the internal factors and strengths in personality. In this group, for example, parents can have role play, case study or experience sharing and therefore they can have exchange of ideas and opportunities to learn and try. For children, they can practise and experience how to appreciate others in the group.

In this group, there are sessions in which the parents group and children group will be combined and this provides the members an opportunity to engage in reality testing. (Rose, 1998) Though workers will help members to show appreciation to others, workers hope that the members can still practise this in real life. A joint group can serve this purpose as workers can observe, in reality, how members behave when they meet with their family members. A group is a social microcosm in which it serves like a laboratory where members can practise in a safe sense.

There are strong points in adopting parallel group.

The participation of parents can further help children to develop and remind them about what they have learnt in the group.

Also, this minimizes the labeling effect in which the situation or the problem does not focus on either group and the problem will be redefined as the result of relationship and interaction. According to System Theory, to attain an equilibrium status, systems have to interact and adapt one another. It emphasizes that it is not a single effort to attain an equilibrium pattern. This explains why a parallel group is preferable to enhance the relationship between parents and children.

Goal:

1. To enhance the intimacy between the disabled children and their parents.

2. To enhance the communication between the disabled children and their parents.

Objective:

1. To discover the disabled children’s interests, potentials and strengths so as to let their parents recognize their abilities through different kinds of activities.

2. To explore the obstacles in their communication and discuss ways to enhance them.

3. To encourage the disabled children and their parents to admire each other.

Details of Group

Name: 「我與孩子更親近」平行小組

Target: Mental handicap and autistic children (6-10years old) and their parents

No. of enrolment: 6-8 pairs

Date: 14/3-18/4 (Every Friday)

Time: 6:15-7:15pm; 2:00-6:00pm(18/4)

Venue: Jockey Club Parents Resource Centre

Placement Workers In-charge: Kit Chau(周潔儀) and Angelie Chow(周惠鳳)

Ways of recruitment:

1.      PRC Newsletter

2.      Posters

3. If applicants are less than 6 pairs, we will invite suitable members of JCPRC to join.  

Pre-group plan:

A pre-group meeting for interviewing participants will be held a week before the group in order to understand their expectation on the group. The meeting also allows members to obtain a brief idea about the group.

Session plan:

Estimated budget:

*At the fifth session, members should pay the transport fee by themselves.

Special resources required:

1.      Video tape recorder in the third session of children group

2.      Video displayer in the forth session of the parents group

Anticipated problem(s) and proposed solution(s):

1. Problem: Parents may not see the strengths of their children.   

  Solution: We will give prizes or certificates to children in order to show emphasis on children’s strengths and good performance.  

2. Problem: Our members may come to the group with unstable attendance.

  Solution: We will give prizes to children and parents who come to every sessions of the group.

3. Problem: It is very difficult for a fresh placement worker to hold the group with 8 disable children.

  Solution: i) We may invite some volunteers to help us.

ii) We will do a good preparation before the group; for example, know more about the characteristics of our members, what their reactions in the group, etc.

iii) We should have more confidence.

4. Problem: Parents may not trust in a fresh placement worker.

  Solution: i) We have to be more confident.

          ii) We try to show our enthusiasm on being together with them

Evaluation methods:

1.      By the recording of workers

To assess

l          The progress of members individually

l          The interaction among members

l          The progress of the whole group

2.      By observation of workers

To aware of

l          The degree of the participants’ involvement in different activities

l          The response of the participants

3.      By the handbooks

4.      By the sharing of 「Tree of Wish願望樹」will let us know whether the expectation of parents have be met.

5.      By the drawings of children

To show the difference between children’s feelings towards their parents from pre-group to post-group. 

6.      By questionnaire (See Encl. 1 & 2)

l          See if we achieve the group objectives or not.

l          Let us know how parents’ feel toward the group

小組成效問卷：(給家長)

Encl. 1 (Before the group)

‘1’為非常不同意；如此類推 ‘10’為非常同意

1.我對小組很有期望                     1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

2.我和孩子有良好的溝通：

a) 我每天花很多時間和孩子傾計         1　2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

b) 我每天花很多時間和孩子玩耍         1　2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

c) 我和孩子的其他溝通形式__________________________________________

3.      我欣賞我的孩子，每日我都有稱讚他/她                                 

1        2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

4.      我孩子的長處和優點__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Encl. 2 (After the group)

1.小組可以滿足我的期望            非常同意 / 同意 / 不同意 / 非常不同意

2.小組可以滿足我的需要            非常同意 / 同意 / 不同意 / 非常不同意

3.我和孩子有良好的溝通：

a) 我每天花很多時間和孩子傾計         1　2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

b) 我每天花很多時間和孩子玩耍         1　2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

c) 我在其他家長身上學習到和孩子溝通的不同方法______________________

   ________________________________________________________________

   ________________________________________________________________

4.小組後我看到更多孩子的長處和優點

a) 我的孩子很聽話                1　2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

b) 我的孩子願意學習              1　2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

c) 我的孩子願意和人分享          1　2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

d) 我的孩子很有禮貌              1　2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

e) 我的孩子有其他的專長和優點_________________________________ 

5.我欣賞我的孩子，每日我都有稱讚他/她                                 

1        2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

6.我會推薦這小組給其他人                            會／不會／不知道

7.其他 ______________________________________________________________