Re: Strengths Assessment for African American Families

["Beth Bryant" <nebryant@xxxxxxx>]

At 11:28 AM 7/8/99 -0700, Jeff Norman wrote:
>I am looking for any instruments to help assess strengths of African
>American families who are referred to Children's Protective Services.  If
>you know of any, please let me know.  Thank you.

Hamilton McCubbin has published a book on resilience in African American
Families, which likely addresses this issue. The reference is:
	
McCubbin, Hamilton I., Ed; Thompson, Elizabeth A., Ed; et al Resiliency in
African-American families.
Resiliency in families series, Vol. 3. Sage Publications, Inc, Thousand
Oaks, CA, USA 1998, p 329-351

I am not sure about their use in a child welfare setting, but there is also
a group of instruments by Dr. McCubbin that looks at the family from a
risk/resilience standpoint.Some examples of these instruments include the
Family Hardiness Index (FHI), the Family Inventory of Resources for
Management (FIRM), the Family Crisis Oriented Personal Evaluation
(F-COPES). They are available in a book by McCubbin, Thompson, and McCubbin
called "Family Assessment: Resiliency, Coping and Adaptation: Inventories
for Research and Practice." The book is available from the University
Bookstore at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Center for Family Studies
Ordering, University Bookstore, 711 State Street Madison, WI 53703) for $72
including shipping. The book contains, I believe, about 27 instruments that
cover variety of stress and adaptation topics, and many have both adult and
youth versions. The purchase of the book allows the owner to request usage
permission, and once those are given, you can use as many copies as you
like. If you want to review a copy of an instrument without buying the
book, you can send $5 per instrument to the Family Stress Coping & Health
Project, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1300 Linden Drive, Madison, WI
53706. The Research Program Manager for the project is Kelly Elver
(kelver@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx), and I found her very helpful when I had
questions. Their website is http://sohe.wisc.edu/CfFS/CfFS_main.html.

I hope this helps.
Beth



Beth Bryant
Doctoral Candidate
Clinical and Health Psychology
University of Florida
nebryant@xxxxxxx