In your Empowerment Series: Direct Social Work Practice: Theory and Skills text, read the following:

• Chapter 15, "Enhancing Family Functioning and Relationships," pages 455–483.

• Describe briefly the first step to engaging a family or couple.
• Give one example of either a problem-solving approach or skills  training approach that you would use working with a couple or family.
• Describe how you might identify and describe misconceptions or  distorted cognitions to the couple or family you are working with to  assist in modifying communication patterns.
• Describe how culture may influence your engagement with the  couple or family as a social worker and how a cultural perspective may  dictate communication patterns and acceptable intervention strategies  when working with a couple or family.

In this discussion, you will describe ways for working with families and  couples, including engaging them, providing problem-solving approaches  or skills training, and identifying misconceptions or distorted  cognitions and helping to modify communication patterns. You will also  examine how cultural factors may influence your work with couples or  families.