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Supportive services include child guidance clinics, the family service agency programs, and the work of child protective agencies. Supportive services are the first line of defense in dealing with actual or incipient problems in child welfare, when the family and the parent-child relationship system are structurally intact but subject to stress. If the stress is permitted to continue, it might result in a structural break: divorce, separation, desertion, and so op. Supportive services are designed to use the family's own strength to work toward a reduction of strain in the parent-child relationship system.
The child who is disobedient, rebellious, and incorrigible may be beyond the normal parent's capacity to socialize. In such a case, the child guidance clinic may effectuate sufficient change in the relationship between rent and child so that the child becomes more responsive to the parent's teachings.
Supportive services are designed for children living in their own homes. In these instances, both parents are generally present and show some willingness and capacity to enact their roles effectively. However, there may be difficulties in the parent-child relationship as a result of parent-child conflict or as a reflection of marital conflict. Supportive services is logically, the first service to use when a family needs help with a parent-child problem.
In making use of these services, the family remains structurally intact. The child can remain, and be maintained, in his own home despite some malfunction in the parent-child relationship system. In offering supportive services, the agency does not take over the responsibility for discharging any of the role functions of either parent or child. The service always remains external to the family's social structure. Supportive service is different from supplementary services, for instance, where some significant aspect of the role is performed by some other parental figure, such as a homemaker, or by some social institution, such as the income maintenance programs.
The two principal agencies offering supportive services are the family service agencies and the child guidance clinics. The family service agencies intervene more frequently through service to the parent; the child guidance clinic, through service to the child. Both agencies hope to effect changes that will enable parents and child to live together with greater satisfaction and less friction. The aim is to lessen the danger of family disruption by improving the social functioning of family members. The work of family service agencies and child guidance units is one significant component of services to children in their own homes, designed ultimately so that the child can continue to live in his own home.
Group Service Approach
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Participants