Working with families

This chapter provides a theoretical basis for working with families, and provides information that will encourage community nurses to reflect on and enhance their work with families. It draws on literature from the developing specialty of family nursing to highlight conceptual and practical ‘tools’ available for nurses who work with families in the community. While definitions help to provide a working framework for what is meant by family, nurses' beliefs about families are usually based on their personal and professional experiences of families. Family nursing takes account of different views of families and addresses the needs of individuals, family and community for the purpose of promoting, maintaining and restoring the health of families. The approach or combination of theoretical approaches for working with families in a practice setting will depend on which approach is the most useful in explaining a situation and setting goals.