Social work issues

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511543838.019

17 - Social work issues

from Part IV - Specific treatments and service needs

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 August 2009

Edited by

Jeni Webster and

David Clodman: Affiliation:
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Canada
Michael Göpfert: Affiliation:
Webb House Democratic Therapeutic Community, Crewe
Jeni Webster: Affiliation:
5 Boroughs Partnership, Warrington
Mary V. Seeman: Affiliation:
University of Toronto

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Summary

Introduction

This chapter is written from the perspective of a mental health social worker serving women diagnosed with schizophrenia. The Women's Clinic in which I work operates out of the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Canada. It offers assessment and individual and group treatment, with a special focus on women who are mothers (Seeman & Cohen, 1998).

Clinic participants come from varying backgrounds and present with a range of needs and experiences. Importantly, they vary in their awareness of the degree to which mental illness has compromised their ability to perform adequately as parents. The connection between acknowledgement of illness, adherence to a medication regime, participation in a treatment programme and maintenance of child custody is self-evident to some and not at all to others.

Some refuse to take medication because they are not convinced they are ill. Some understand that they require treatment in order to prevent recurrence of acute mental illness, but do not make the connection between illness exacerbation and the need for the child to be taken into state custody. As a social worker, I am often caught between the immediate best interests of the child and the crucial importance to the ill mother of retaining a close parental bond with her child.

In the Province of Ontario, the Family and Child Services Act provides the legal mandate for Child Welfare Agencies to either monitor or apprehend (remove) a child from parents or caregivers under specified conditions (Province of Ontario, Child and Family Services Act, 1990); the best interests of the child normally trump the rights of parents.

Keywords

child welfare agency mental health system mental illness schizophrenia social worker

Type: Chapter
Information: Parental Psychiatric Disorder
Distressed Parents and their Families
, pp. 249 - 256

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511543838.019 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2004

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References

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Book contents

17 - Social work issues

Summary

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