Certified Healthy Family Specialists' Job and Working Conditions from the Insiders' Perspective

Abstract

The number of Healthy Family Support Centers has dramatically increased during the past eight years since the Framework Act on Healthy Families was enacted. This phenomenal growth is largely credited to Certified Healthy Family Specialists (CHFSs). Despite their contributions, the job and working conditions of the CHFSs have rarely been explored from the insiders' perspective. In this study, we aim to delineate CHFSs' job and working conditions from their own narratives in order to improve an understanding of CHFSs' profession and work environment. We conducted in-depth interviews with nine CHFSs and a focus-group interview with five CHFSs. Our findings revealed that CHFSs took pride in their professions, internalized their professional mission of enhancing family strengths, and highlighted CHFSs' unique professional role in comparison to other human services professionals. In conclusion, CHFSs showed a strong professional identity consisting of rich professional knowledge, solid career goals, and integrated socio-political values. Contrary to the positive perception of the CHFSs' job, CHFSs expressed challenges in their working conditions in terms of small-scale organizations at local Healthy Family Support Centers, a heavy workload, hierarchical relationships with local government officers, and the unsatisfactory payroll and promotion system. This study contributes to a better understanding of CHFSs' job and their working conditions and provides insights on how to enhance professionalism among CHFSs and their work environment. As for policy implications, we suggest advancing qualifications for CHFSs, improving professional training programs for current CHFSs, and expanding small-scale organizations.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 6 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.