Ecological Perspectives Essay

3270 Words14 Pages
It is reasonable to make the assumption that at some point in an individual’s life they may show behaviour problems or have difficulty coping with the demands that life brings to them. This ultimately impacts on the family unit and subsequently means that a social worker will have to be aware that families are all unique and have various complex needs (Wilson, Ruch, Lymbery and Cooper, 2008). This in turn means that a social worker may have many different approaches when working with and assessing various families. For the purposes of this assignment I aim to assess the family in the case study and video by taking an Ecological (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) and Life Course (Green, 2010) approach to understand the complex needs of the family. In doing this I have assessed the family under several different headings which are ecological and life course approach, ethics and values in practice, parenting capacity, the community, attachment, developmental psychology, new sociological studies of childhood and assessment and intervention. Assessing the family through these various headings I have made many assumptions which are linked to the case study (see appendix 1) and the video (see appendix 2). The Ecological Perspective and Life Course Approach The ecological perspective was developed by Bronfenbrenner in 1979 and is a holistic approach to human development which analyses interactions between an individual and various nested environments (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Bronfenbrenner (1979) proposes that the developing child (the individual person) is in the centre of the nested structures and each layer interacts with each other and the individual. The ecological perspective reiterates that children do not develop in isolation (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). However, despite the obvious strengths of the ecological model one weakness is that it does not look at biological influences and
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