Service delivery style of family service workers and the helping relationship in Healthy Families America
Abstract
The service delivery style, defined as the emphasis the home visitor places on family goals versus the program goals and the social distance between the home visitor and the parent, was examined to determine the impact on the helping relationship between the home visitor and parent in Healthy Families America (HFA), a home visiting program. ^ The following research questions addressed the components of service delivery style and the demographic characteristics of home visitors and families in this sample. The questions were: (1) Does ethnicity, age of family, or number of home visits affect the helping relationship? (2) Does race, education level of the family service worker (FSW) and experience working as a home visitor affect the service delivery style? (3) Does a family-centered or program-centered emphasis impact the parent's perception of the helping relationship? (4) Does a formal (distant) or informal (close) approach to working with the family impact the parent's perception of the helping relationship? ^ The final sample was 35 family service workers, who worked with a total of 147 families in nine HFA programs. Measures of FSWs service delivery style were collected at the initiation of the study, and the Helping Relationship Inventory was collected 3-months after the enrollment of families. ^ The data analyses were conducted using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM), to account for variance in HRI scores among families (level-1), and variance among FSWs (level-2). The analyses indicated that 97% of the variance occurred at the family level and 2.3% occurred at the family service level. Family-Centered service delivery style approached significance. For every one point increase, in family-centeredness by the FSW, the HRI scores decreased by 1.03 points (p= .07). The current training of home visitors is influenced by the untested belief that family-centered style is more effective than others (Allen, 2007, Wasik, Bryant & Lyons, 1990). The findings of this research call into question these efforts.^
Subject Area
Social Work
Recommended Citation
Meada Daly-Cano,
"Service delivery style of family service workers and the helping relationship in Healthy Families America"
(2012).
Dissertations and Master's Theses (Campus Access).
Paper AAI1508310.
http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dissertations/AAI1508310