Families Facing Multiple Challenges
Modern society offers increasingly more choices, including those related to the organisation of family life. New opportunities also bring new demands, tensions and challenges. Family life has always implied a constant search for a way to meet individual and family needs, making room for various roles, connections and negotiations, as well as the challenges of handling conflicts.
However, the opportunity to choose is not available to everybody. The growing inequalities in today’s society that restrict seemingly abundant choices to more and more people bring additional challenges to family members. Many children, adults, elderly people, whole families and even communities suffer from poverty, which severely limits their opportunities. We know that few life contexts bring more adversities and affect people’s health, family relationships, and the role of the family in the community, etc.
When families or family members face multiple challenges, they are often not getting the support needed. Despite interventions by a range of professionals, there is often little change in their lives over time due to the need for a more holistic approach. We need to establish services that are sensitive to new circumstances and strengthen individual and family resilience.
We will address various connected topics:
- The multiplicity of choices and new opportunities in everyday life in a society of growing social inequalities.
- The role of the family and other informal structures in handling numerous opportunities as well as restrictions (due to inequality) in modern society.
- Multiple challenges as part of the life story or permanent reality, often inherited through generations.
- From the problem of multiple labels and the dispersion of help to the development of a holistic and integrated approach.
Key lecturer for the topic:
Gabi Čačinovič Vogrinčič, University of Ljubljana