NUR212 Task 1b: Reflection on Family Strengths and Healthcare

This assignment is a written reflection exploring the central role of families in child development and healthcare practice. The author examines the family's function in socialisation, procreation, and providing for children's needs. The reflection draws on personal experiences to emphasize the importance of family in meeting basic needs, fostering emotional and social development, and providing financial security. It also highlights the application of a strength-based framework in healthcare, where the author, as a healthcare professional, recognizes family strengths such as communication, support, and resilience to improve patient outcomes. The assignment concludes by emphasizing the crucial role of family in a child's emotional, developmental, and cognitive growth, and how understanding family dynamics can empower patients and enhance their capacity to address health issues.

Running head: WRITTEN REFLECTION
NUR212 Task 1b
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1WRITTEN REFLECTION
Families have been identified to play a central role on the development of children.
Regardless of the composition, families are subject to different social forces that govern
whether they are able to meet the needs of the children (Asakawa 2017). Although
socialisation is found to occur during different stages of the life, four of the major agents that
govern socialisation are the family, peers, school and mass media. This essay is a written
reflection on the role of family in the society and healthcare practice.
My personal experiences have helped me understand that families have the primary
goal of ensuring continuation of the society, socially in the form of socialisation and
biologically, in terms of procreation. Thus, the role of a family keeps on changing over time.
Thus, families refer to groups of people who are affiliated by co-residence, affinity or
consanguinity. It acts as the principal agency of socialisation and the values that are
inculcated in a child during childhood are considered vital for development (Raj and Raval
2013). In other words, families play an important role to socially locate the children. It instils
a value of orientation and engages in procreation by adopting or having children. Procreation
is not the only function of a family in the contemporary society. While marriages establish
the legal parents of children it also facilitates the formation of joint funds that benefit the
future of the children and help in the realisation of an economically prolific household.
Parenting is an essential component of family structures and encompass an exhaustive
process related to the promotion of the emotional, physical, intellectual and social
development of children, right from their infancy to adulthood. An analysis of the role of
families helped me realise that families are imperative in meeting the basic needs of an
individual followed by love and belonging needs. Furthermore, a well-functional family is
crucial for providing financial security to the household by creating provisions for everyone
to contribute share of their earnings to meet the basic needs (Collins, Olive and O’Rourke
2013). An analysis of my personal experiences also emphasise on the fact that healthy

2WRITTEN REFLECTION
families are able to find satisfaction in the tasks that they do together, and also encourage
children to have healthy meals and obtain prompt medical attention as and when required.
This can be established by the theory proposed by Michel Montaigne that elaborated on the
organisation of family life to enable young people live separately and along with their parents
(Schutzenberger 2014). This allows children to learn from elders and enhance their emotional
and social links with family members. Furthermore, a family operates on biological,
economic and psychosocial levels in the contemporary society.
My role as a healthcare professional requires me to draw on the strengths of a family
in primary healthcare and health promotion. The strength based framework encompasses a
positive approach that helps to unravel the ways by which families promote and succeed
resilience. Some of the most common strengths of families that help them to rebound from
adversity and crisis include togetherness, communication, affection, acceptance, support,
commitment, sharing activities, and resilience (Smith and Ford 2013). I adhere to practices
where I recognise the strengths of my client families by listening to their stories.
Determination of the shared beliefs and activities where families participate together helps in
gaining a sound understanding of their togetherness. I usually ask questions present in the
Australian Family Strengths Nursing Assessment Guide in order to gain a sound
understanding of the needs of the clients. Following the identification of qualities that create
a sense of empowerment in the families, therapeutic intervention strategies are formulated in
a way that enhances their strength and relationships. This is facilitated by demonstrating
respect towards their beliefs, culture and religious background, in addition to providing them
information about different treatment methods, and including them in shared decision
making. Furthermore, family strength framework can also be utilised to help families cope
with illness of their children, by offering praise, comfort and encouragement (Svavarsdottir,
Sigurdardottir and Tryggvadottir 2014). Furthermore, during my practice, I also utilise the

3WRITTEN REFLECTION
strength based framework to meet the needs of the clients and their families in a way that
addresses their lifestyle.
Thus, families can be stated as groups of individuals living in close association, by
marriage or blood. In other words, it is a social group that is basically characterised by
economic cooperation, common residence and reproduction. I conclude that empowering the
patients by understanding about their family relationships and strengths helps them gain a
control over their lives and also enhances their capacity to act on health issues that are
considered important. To conclude, the role of a family is intensely essential to the emotional,
developmental and cognitive growth of a child.

4WRITTEN REFLECTION
References
Asakawa, K., 2017. Family socialization practices and their effects on the internalization of
educational values for Asian and White American adolescents. In Conditions for Optimal
Development in Adolescence (pp. 184-194). Psychology Press.
Collins, J.M., Olive, P. and O’Rourke, C., 2013. Financial coaching’s potential for enhancing
family financial security. Journal of Extension, 51(1), p.1FEA8.
Raj, S.P. and Raval, V.V., 2013. Parenting and family socialization within a cultural
context. Journal of Communications Research, 5(2), pp.57-78.
Schutzenberger, A.A., 2014. The ancestor syndrome: Transgenerational psychotherapy and
the hidden links in the family tree. Routledge.
Smith, L.M. and Ford, K., 2013. 'Family strengths and the Australian Family Strengths
Nursing Assessment Guide', in M. Barnes and J. Rowe (eds.), Child, Youth and Family
Health: Strengthening Communities, Elsevier, Australia, pp. 98-105.
Svavarsdottir, E.K., Sigurdardottir, A.O. and Tryggvadottir, G.B., 2014. Strengths-oriented
therapeutic conversations for families of children with chronic illnesses: Findings from the
Landspitali University Hospital Family Nursing Implementation Project. Journal of Family
Nursing, 20(1), pp.13-50.