The Social Work Team At Asymca - 1531 Words

At the Armed Services YMCA we service military personnel and their dependents, a resilient and diverse population. At this point in time I have not met with individual clients; instead the focus has been to gain a better understanding of the population’s unique culture. In supervision we review archived cases with presenting problems such as marital conflict, parenting, bereavement and grief, adjustment into civilian life, overall military lifestyle stress that has lead to anxiety or depression, and special needs family members, to name a few. The social work team at ASYMCA has helped me to gain insight that many of our clients will be dealing with a stressful lifestyle in addition to deficient or traumatic pasts. Extensive research on appropriate support for military families is lacking and though the effectiveness of current programs is mostly unknown, evidence recognized displays that a strengths based approach rather than a focus on prevention of problems leads to more positive prognoses (Park, 2011). From personal experience I have awareness that coping with military lifestyle stressors such as financial fluctuation, deployment cycles, and continual relocations help to build resiliency. Some of the sturdiest men, women and children I know are those I met as a military spouse, myself. A report from the Mental Health Advisory Team-Operation Enduring Freedom (2009), told that service members relied on healthy family relationships as a source of strength and