Family and Community: Relationships, Needs and Resources
Family and Community tests how families function, how relationships are maintained, and how needs are met with limited resources. Expect questions on family types, functions, communication, needs and the classification of resources.
Family and relationships
- Nuclear family: parents and children; joint family: several generations or siblings' families sharing a home; extended family includes relatives beyond the household.
- Functions: emotional support, socialization, economic production and consumption, protection, health care, education and recreation.
- Relationships depend on communication, role sharing, respect and fair conflict resolution. Authority may be patriarchal or egalitarian; roles change with employment and migration.
Needs and resources
- Needs are essentials for survival and development: food, shelter, health, safety, affection, education and social contact.
- Wants are desirable but not essential; confusing wants with needs strains a budget.
- Human resources: time, energy, skills, knowledge, attitudes. Non-human resources: money, land, tools, vehicles, community facilities.
- Community resources include anganwadi, school, primary health centre, panchayat, library, transport and self-help groups.
Worked example
A family must care for an elderly member on a fixed income. Reasoning: the health need is priority; the family can use human resources such as a member's time and a neighbour's help, community resources such as PHC check-up and anganwadi referral, and adjust non-human resources such as transport and diet cost. The plan should be recorded and reviewed, not decided once.
Traps
Treating money as the only resource; ignoring unpaid family work; labelling all desires as needs; describing family types without linking them to functions or relationships.