Estrat egias de intervención socioeducativa con familias: Análisis de la orientación familiar en los servicios especializados de atención a la familia e infancia de la comunidad valenciana

Abstract

This article intends to study the professional use of family orientation at the Specialized Care Services for Children and Family. We want to discover the differences between family orientation, mediation and therapy. We analyze the parenting competences addressed in this strategy. In order to clarify, define the terms of «instrumental competences» and «relational competences» and try to find significant differences in the work with families in conflict and vulnerable families. The study arises from the family concept as a system, differentiating key concepts for the family intervention such as functionality/ disfunctionality, situation of vulnerability or conflict, capacity and parental ability. Regarding methodology, and due to the complexity of the study object phenomenon, work has be done from a complementaritys approach using quantitative analysis as much as qualitative. We study, in depth, the competences worked on with the families from family counseling, taking care of «relational» and «instrumental» competences, and trying to clarify if there are manifest divergences in work with «families in situations of conflict» and «families in vulnerable situations». The data indicates that the family counseling is used most frequently within the families in vulnerable situations, preferably taking care of the relational competences and, to a lesser extent, instrumental.