Treatment in the Home

Much has been written and said about lowproblem family in ways they may be able income, multiproblem families and about to use. This experiment tries to reduce their apparent resistance to social agency their alienation and unfamiliarity by in services, especially to mental health clinics, traducing a new learning experience — The reasons given run something like this: learning from going through a treatment These are uneducated people who are process together, a process tailored to what socially and culturally impoverished, who they can understand and accept, rather know hardship, even brutality, who are than one that demands that they fit into often teetering on the edge of hunger and the ways in which clinics operate, despair. They feel alien to middle-class The primary technique used is demon values and are alienated from the rest of stration, in contrast with discussion alone, society. to help people reduce conflicts in intra Social workers know many of the reasons familial relationships. It is combined with for these conditions but too little still about provision of concrete services. The essen ways of combating them so that these tial elements in this technique are activity, people can use the resources the community intervention, and discussion, has to offer in order to improve their lot. While treatment in the is in some Perhaps this is so because, despite the sharp respects similar to the familiar technique contrast in standards and values, social in social casework practice of visiting, workers nevertheless expect this group to it differs sharply in method and objectives, make the big leap from one milieu and its Among various points of similarity, both values to another that is wholly unfamiliar, serve a diagnostic purpose in that they pro to which they feel hostile, and which is vide a picture of environmental influences hostile toward them. and family interaction. Hence, insights in the home is an approach are gained through observation and ex being used in an experimental way by the ploration. Both are used as follow-up Mental Hygiene Clinic of Henry Street when office appointments are not kept. Settlement in an effort to bring mental The differences in this experiment are: health services to the low-income, multi1. Treatment is shifted from the clinic to the and takes place with con tinuity of regular appointments, system RACHEL A. LEVINE, MS, is Executive Director, MentaI atically sustained Hygiene Clinic, Henry Street Settlement, New York g jn r Q? discussion w;th ntg City. Families discussed in this paper are the sub■ , ,, , , , ., 1 . y , , ., . . , j , , .... only, all members of the family are present; iects of a three-year pilot protect undertaken m thu ... , , .i