Family Development Theory: Family Assessment

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Pages: 3

The family I assessed was my own family of five; husband, me, with three children. My family is above poverty level; we do have health insurance, and able to buy food and clothing. According to the Family Development Theory, my family is in two stages. The stage we are in is families with school children (child is aged 6-13 years) and families with teenagers (children 13 to 20 years) (Office of Family Science Education, 2016). I believe we are in 2 stages because of the wide spread we have between our children. At this time my family does not have any health issue. My husband did have replacement knee surgery in August 2016.
My family lives in a four-bedroom home in Coon Rapids, MN. We have a sidewalk running along the front of our
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I used the Home Safety Checklist for Older Adults by Minnesota Department of Health because I felt the questions would give us things to think about as we planned for our future. Comprehensive Home and Safety Checklist was used because of the way the checklist was laid out. The questions on the checklist were yes or no with a recommendation after each question. I picked the My Fire Inspection Checklist because it was written for children. I felt like the children needed to be included in the assessment to make them part of the assessment process. I carried out the assessments with my husband. I gave all my children a copy of the children assessment and ask them to circle the ones we do and leave the others statements.
I identified fire safety and preparedness as health risk factor that need to be modified or eliminated. We do not get our furnace or fireplace inspected yearly. The children are not aware of any fire safety; example of this would be none of them knew to crawl under smoke if there was a fire or were to meet outside if there was a fire. In addition, they leave their shoes, coats, and backpacks on the stairs as they come in the door. It was pointed out to me by my youngest that my hairdryer is always plugged in along with the fact that we do leave the kitchen with pots and pans cooking on stove
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Interventions that will be used are: using family centered when teaching children and adolescents (Dunn & Board, 2011). We had a family meeting where everyone took part in the goal of preventing fires in our home. Making everyone aware of the things that my husband and I do so that the children did not feel attacked and stop listening when I told them that they must not leave their things on the stairs. We then came up with an escape plan that includes the many ways to get out of our home in case there is a fire and where to meet outside. We assigned tasks to everyone: my husband and eldest daughter are making and keeping up-to-date a first aid kit, my son is testing the fire alarms and making sure they are within the recommended wall measurements, my youngest daughter will love to tell everyone when they leave their things on stairs so that will be her job and my job will be to call and have the furnace and fireplace