Family Systems Stressor-Strength Inventory
with families. It focuses on identifying stressful situations
occurring in families and the strengths families use to
maintain healthy family functioning. Each family member
is asked to complete the instrument on an individual form
before an interview with the clinician. Questions can be
read to members unable to read.
Following completion of the instrument the clinician
evaluates the family on each of the stressful situations (general
and specific) and the available strengths they possess.
This evaluation is recorded on the family member form.
The clinician records the individual family member’s
score and the clinician perception score on the Quantitative
Summary. A different color code is used for each family
member. The clinician also completes the Qualitative
Summary synthesizing the information gleaned from all
participants. Clinicians can use the Family Care Plan to
prioritize diagnoses, set goals, develop prevention/intervention
activities, and evaluate outcomes. Before using the following guidelines in completing
family
assessments, two words of caution. First, not all areas
included below will be germane for each of the families
visited. The guidelines are comprehensive and allow depth
when probing is necessary. The student should not feel
that every subarea needs to be covered when the broad
area of inquiry poses no problems to the family or concern
to the health worker. Second, by virtue of the interdependence
of the family system, one will find unavoidable redundancy.
For the sake of efficiency, the assessor should
try not to repeat data, but to refer the reader back to sections
where this information has already been described.