A multi-disciplinary approach to family growth

The Little Sisters of the Assumption, a Family Health Service, has been working with high risk families in the East Harlem community for the past twenty-seven years. Using an innovative multidisciplinary model, it combines a home health agency staffed by nurses, a Medical Social Worker, Physical Therapist, Homemaker/Home Health Aides, and a Pastoral Minister; a grandmother program staffed by women from the community, a social worker and a child development specialist; and a Family Life Program offering parenting classes, high school equivalency, sewing and a variety of other programs. Its primary emphasis is on working with the family in their own homes, developing a relationship with an older experienced woman from the community, and eventually moving out to classes at the center and the playroom for the children. The team works with the young childbearing families to deal with illness, isolation, poverty and depression, all of which lead to child abuse and neglect. By reparenting the parent as well as nurturing the children, the agency attempts to break the cycle of deprivation which is prevalent in its neighborhood. Through a case presentation of a mother who herself had been abused as a child, we will demonstrate how our center works and then highlight what we have learned about poor disorganized families, the interventions we have found to be successful and what we continue to have questions about.