The family health maintenance demonstration : a controlled long term investigation of family health. Proceedings of a round table at the 1953 Annual Conference of the Milbank Memorial Fund.

  • Milbank Memorial Fund.
Date:
1954
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: The family health maintenance demonstration : a controlled long term investigation of family health. Proceedings of a round table at the 1953 Annual Conference of the Milbank Memorial Fund. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    problems to one spot and not have to go to several agencies, and they can also give them the satisfaction of services rendered at a more ex pert level. Dr. Downing: I am struck with the readiness with which the pro gram is accepted. The consideration of emotional problems in the whole family structure, in the first place, I thought was being sort of pushed on these people, but apparently they had a need which was unsatisfied which this step met. Is that true? Dr. Cherkasky: If we think about ourselves for a moment, we will recognize, that we have much the same problems as do the families in the Family Health Maintenance Demonstration. We all have emo tional and interpersonal problems and frankly, we do not have easy access to places where we can get help with these problems. Dr. Clausen: I think it was pointed out that there was a certain amount of hostility directed toward the social worker and perhaps toward other members of the team. I wonder if we could have some indication of how often there are areas where there is real resistance to your going in. Mrs. Stiber: I say that actually in the initial interview they are not too interested in giving information. When it comes to actually doing something about the problems that they have outlined, that is a dif ferent matter. They are not so readily accepting of the idea that they should come in and talk with us, thinking that everything will be all right. What we have found is that, given time, they will come. Some times it takes a year for someone on the program to finally accept the fact that what we have seen in the beginning and pointed out to them as a problem is really a problem. They now want to come and can get some help with it. It is not that they are so happily accepting the offer of help. They are not. Dr. Evans: I don’t know whether this question is in order or not, but I would like to back up a moment. We have heard a great deal this morning about the team from the members of the team. I would like to know something about the original plan of the program, and why the team was designed as it is, how the membership was determined, and what its functions are con