| hours each day. It is likely that the present trend toward an expansion of homemaker service will continue. Growing difficulties in finding foster homes and
growing dissatisfaction with the program of foster care will continue to provide
an impetus to explore alternative means of meeting the needs of the motherless
family. Developments in other areas are likely to reinforce the need for homemaker service. For instance, the trend toward community-centered psychiatric services, which help to keep more and more of the mentally ill in the community, requires--for its success--supplementary services such as homemaker service. | |
| 2. | There is also a trend toward a more imaginative use of homemaker service. For instance, California has used funds available through the Children's Bureau Crippled Children's Program to provide homemakers for the mothers of handicapped children so as to relieve them for a few hours a day. Homemakers have also been used with families charged with neglect "in homes in which standards of household management was [sic] so poor as to seriously jeopardize the health and welfare of children in the family" ( Shames, 1972, p. 12). The homemaker assisted these mothers in the care of their children and instructed them in better methods of child care. The reports of homemakers have also been found to be of great help in determining actual conditions in families suspected of child abuse ( National Council, 1965a, p. 59). And in families with very young retarded children, homemaker service has been used to relieve family pressures and tensions. It has been hoped that as a result, "energies might be released to work out not only appropriate planning for the retarded child, but also to examine and work through family problems created or aggravated by a retarded child" (Retarded Infants Service, 1965, p. 10). Homemakers have also been used effectively with families threatened with eviction from public housing because of poor housekeeping standards, as well as with migrant workers and American Indian families on the reservations ( National Council, 1965, pp. 61-62). |
| 3. | Homemakers have been taught the essentials of behavior modification approaches and have been given responsibility for observing, recording, and reporting behavior and implementing techniques for changing maladaptive behavior: "In essence the homemaker serves as the agent through whom the behavior change program is implemented" ( Talsma, 1970, p. 4; See also Steeno, Moorehead, Smits, 1977). |
| 1. | The mother is temporarily hospitalized. |
| 2. | The mother is in the home but is ill or convalescing. |
| 3. | The mother needs tutorial help in developing homemaker skills. |
| 4. | The mother needs assistance in caring for a handicapped child. |
-260-
Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: Child Welfare Services.
Edition: 3rd.
Contributors: Alfred Kadushin - Author.
Publisher: Macmillan.
Place of publication: New York.
Publication year: 1980.
Page number: 260.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.
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