Possibilities and Limitations of Therapeutic Interventions When Working with Children and Their Families in the Settlements for the Homeless

The article raises the issue of socio-therapeutical help for homeless children and families in Germany. The causes of homelessness and its consequences for families and children are considered by the author in connection with the social, political and even historical context of lives of such families. Based on the studies by well-known German and American scholars and his own psychotherapy practice, the author analyzes different approaches to identification of areas and strategies of therapeutic intervention in the family problems of the homeless in terms of psychoanalytic, psychodynamic and systemic models of psychotherapy. In the situation of post-crisis reduction of the social and economic resources for social help to the needy, the author considers the capabilities of family therapy when working with the homeless families as the most adequate form of preparing them to the limited life perspectives and to overcoming the destructive and auto-aggressive intra-familial processes.

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