African centered family healing: an alternative paradigm

African centered family healing posits an alternative paradigm that can be used as a model for family healing. Effective intervention begins with the recognition that what we have been doing has not been working for African American families (Boyd-Franklin, 1989; Kambon, 1998; Logan, Freeman and McRoy, 1990; Owusu-Bempah, 1999; and Weaver, 1992). Social work intervention efforts must integrate mental health constructs that exist in the communities we are attempting to serve. One such concept is communal knowledge. Another such concept is communal values. When one joins communal knowledge and values, one begins to restructure the understanding of mental health in the African American family. The family unit must be viewed as interdependent. This understanding is requisite to family healing. It is therefore necessary that we change our thinking and then our actions. This article posits that social workers must become social healers.