User:TheAlexRodriguez/School-Based Family Counseling

Addition to "Challenges of SBFC"

Although the SBFC approach urges for a strong family and counselor connection in hopes to ultimately perform better in school, it fails to see the invisible barriers that, in practice, do not allow the SBFC approach to reach low-income, minority students and their families. This approach primarily tries to serve some of the problems dealing with school violence, immigrant families, and trauma, however, most students who face these issues, are those who do not have family members that may be readily available to go to workshops, sessions, and trainings to learn how to help their family members due to various circumstances.

Immigrant families

Immigrant families often work robust hours due to the lack of opportunities they hold. Although most immigrant families would be open to helping their children deal with certain issues, their constant work hours deny the experience of meeting with a counselor to get trained in order to help. These families rarely have time, or the language, to help their children in these school institutions, let alone, talk to the counselor and form a partnership. Another facet to this interaction that can impede this approach's impact can be the lack of possible culture acculturation these families may have, which can also include the lack of language they hold. The processes of acculturation and assimilation can be slow and delicate process which can hinder the impact of SBFC as these families might not be able to fully understand the Western practice of multicultural, progressive school counseling. Lastly, immigrant households often have different traumas and experiences that can push certain family members away from dominant institutions, such as schools. Certain family members may be in certain phases in their life in the United States where they feel lost or stagnant -- causing depression and hopelessness. These people, usually holding more years in residing in the U.S, shed them away from forming a connection with a local school counselor due to past traumas and emotions they have, or are, facing.

School Violence

Similarly enough, school violence is also a response to an already lack of present household family members due to the current economy demanding constant work to make ends meet. Low-income families have to be constantly working which leads to less active participation within their children's schools and their households. In studies observing low-income households, it was noted that many low-income communities lack active figures to stress the importance of schooling, which in turn, correlates to an increase of violence in schools due to a lack of engagement amongst the students to their school institutions. This lack of engagement amongst community members translates to lack of parent involvement to schooling institutions alongside the busy work schedule these parents have. Moreover, in these low-income and minority communities, the high numbers of population turnover rates and lack of strong, well-funded institutions create a disconnection of parents and their local communities. Many parents and students' goal is to move out of their low-income neighborhood, which not only increases school violence amongst students, but also creates a lack of interest in parents in participating with local institutions, such as schools as a whole, which can decrease the impact of this SBFC approach. Moreover, due to the high crime rates in low-income, minority group communities, students are more prone to commit violence in their local schooling institutions. Due to this fact, parents will also be more prone to allow their students to commit violence in their schools due to the normalized aspect of violence in their communities.

Trauma/Mental Health

Regarding the issue of trauma, many low income households do not hold the students traumatic experience to be valid and important which leads to a lack of interest by the family to attend these trainings and meetings with counselors . This is because being low-income, in it of itself, produces various traumas that many low-income families merely shove aside which creates a culture of mental health negligence and lack of proper self care within these households. Also, this culture finds its root in the fact that minorities and low-income communities are often misdiagnosed and misunderstood with their trauma or mental healthcare in general. It is noted that although Hispanics and Blacks face lower rates of mental health problems in comparison to the White population, such as depression and trauma, the lack of help in medical services have, in some instances, driven away the importance of mental health in many minority and low-income households. As conducted by a survey in the United States, the mental health medical needs for the poor and low-income was often unmet due to the lack of insurance which reinforces the narrative that mental health is a problem that can only be cured for the richer populations. In the study taken place in 2015 stating that "48% of whites received mental health services, compared with 31% of blacks and Hispanics, and 22% of Asians", these minority groups have often given up on the need to address these issues in their households and do not hold any importance to the households values. Due to these facts, low-income and minority households have less participation with school counseling programs as, once again, these parents are accustomed to be being denied in mental health assistance and support.