The Impact of Changing Lifestyles on a Family Service Agency

Publication Date: March 1976

Publisher: Jewish Communal Service Association of North America

Author(s): Sophie Harris

Research Area: Social conditions

Keywords: Jewish Organizations; Social Work; Social Patterns

Type: Report

Coverage: United States

Abstract:

This article examines the need for the modernization of current practices in Jewish family agencies. The author suggests that Jewish agency staff often allow their own personal values to interfere with assisting clients. To help eradicate certain biases in Jewish agency staff, the author creates a seminar that focuses on three major areas: the effect on practices of changing social patterns; workers’ values regarding variant lifestyles; and an agency’s need and readiness to change its image in the Jewish community. The author looks at casework dealing with marriage problems, divorce rates, cohabitative relationships and homosexual relationships.

In Journal of Jewish Communal Service, 52:3