SOCIAL-WORKERS VIEWS OF PARENTS OF CHILDREN WITH MENTAL AND EMOTIONALDISABILITIES

In response to concerns expressed by parents of children with emotiona l and mental disabilities about professionals' attitudes and beliefs, the authors surveyed the views of a sample of clinical social workers. The majority of respondents in a national random sample endorsed stat ements expressing validating attitudes toward parents, agreement with open information sharing, and agreement with providing specific guidan ce to parents about how to help their children. However, the views of a substantial minority of social workers were antithetical to a parent -friendly perspective. The most problematic area was the prevalence of parent-blaming beliefs reported by approximately half of the social w orkers. me view that medication was helpful correlated positively with validating views of parents and correlated negatively with blaming th em for their children's problems. me belief that research-based knowle dge is important for practice and that medical journals are a good sou rce of information about emotional problems correlated with support fo r open information sharing and the view that medication was helpful. S eeing a child as the identified patient in a dysfunctional family, per ceiving parents' views as useful primarily as clues to family dynamics , and seldom feeling the need to refer to other disciplines, correlate d positively with blame, negatively with the use of medication, and ne gatively with validating attitudes.