Areas of Social Work Practice II (Families and Children): Family Functions, Developmental Stages and Patterns, Family Dynamics and Olson's Circumplex, the McMaster and Structural Models; Child Development and the State of Children in India; and Policies, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Female Foeticide, Adoption, Foster Care, Guardianship and Child Marriage

The syllabus's "Circumflex model" is the Circumplex Model of Marital and Family Systems developed by David Olson, Douglas Sprenkle and Candyce Russell (1979). It describes families on two central dimensions. Cohesion is the emotional bonding among members, ranging from disengaged (very low) through separated and connected to enmeshed (very high). Flexibility, earlier called adaptability, is the capacity to change leadership, roles and rules in response to stress, ranging from rigid through structured and flexible to chaotic. Crossing four levels of each gives sixteen types; the model's central hypothesis is that balanced levels of cohesion and flexibility (the middle levels) are the most functional, and extreme levels on either dimension problematic, especially over time. Communication is a third, facilitating dimension that helps families move on the other two. The model is measured by the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES).

The McMaster Model of Family Functioning, developed by Nathan Epstein, Duane Bishop and Sol Levin (1978), originally at McMaster University in Canada, assesses six dimensions: problem solving (the family's ability to resolve problems in a way that maintains effective functioning), communication (whether it is clear or masked, direct or indirect), roles (whether necessary functions are allocated and accountability is maintained), affective responsiveness (the ability to respond with appropriate feelings), affective involvement (the degree of interest members take in one another, from lack of involvement to symbiotic) and behaviour control (the patterns for handling behaviour, rigid, flexible, laissez-faire or chaotic). It is measured by the Family Assessment Device and applied in problem-centred systems therapy. Salvador Minuchin's structural model (Families and Family Therapy, 1974) sees the family as a system organised into subsystems (spousal, parental and sibling), separated by boundaries that may be clear, rigid (producing disengagement) or diffuse (producing enmeshment), with a hierarchy in which parents hold authority. Problems arise from dysfunctional structure, such as a cross-generational coalition between a parent and child against the other parent. The therapist joins the family, maps its structure, uses enactment to see interaction in the session, reframes problems, and restructures boundaries and hierarchy.

Social work interventions with families include family casework and counselling; family therapy using these models; family life education, premarital counselling and parenting programmes; crisis intervention after bereavement, illness, violence or disaster; family preservation services that support families to keep children safely at home; and counselling in family courts, which the Family Courts Act 1984 established with counsellors to promote conciliation. The worker assesses the family's structure and functioning, respects its culture and its own definition of the problem, protects vulnerable members, and avoids pressing reconciliation where there is violence.

Childhood is both a biological stage and a social construction. Philippe Ariès argued in Centuries of Childhood (1960) that medieval European society had no separate idea of childhood and that the modern conception emerged gradually; Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Émile (1762) treated childhood as a stage with its own nature. The philosophy of child welfare moved from charity and child-saving through welfare and development to rights. Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children (1919), drafted the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child adopted by the League of Nations in 1924; the UN adopted a Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959 and the binding Convention in 1989. In India, policy moved from welfare in the early plans to development with the Integrated Child Development Services (1975) and to rights from the 1990s, with the Convention, the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights Act 2005, the Right to Education Act 2009 and the POCSO Act 2012.

Children under 18 made up about 39 per cent of India's population, some 472 million, in the 2011 Census, which recorded a child sex ratio (ages 0 to 6) of 918 girls per 1,000 boys, a figure that reflects sex-selective practices. The National Family Health Survey 2019–21 (NFHS-5) found that 35.5 per cent of children under five were stunted, 19.3 per cent wasted and 32.1 per cent underweight, and that 23.3 per cent of women aged 20 to 24 had married before the age of 18. In education, near-universal enrolment has been achieved at the elementary level since the Right to Education Act, but learning levels, dropout among adolescent girls and children with disabilities, and the gap between private and government schools remain concerns. In protection, the 2011 Census counted about 10.1 million working children aged 5 to 14; child trafficking, sexual abuse, child marriage, children in street situations and children in institutions remain major issues, and online risks are growing.

The constitutional provisions for children include Article 15(3) (special provisions for women and children), Article 21A (free and compulsory education for children aged 6 to 14), Article 23 (prohibition of trafficking and forced labour), Article 24 (no child under 14 in factories, mines or hazardous employment), Article 39(e) and (f) (children not to be abused or forced by economic necessity into unsuitable work, and to be given opportunities to develop in freedom and dignity), Article 45 (early childhood care and education for children below six), Article 47 (nutrition and public health) and Article 51A(k) (the duty of parents to provide opportunities for education). The syllabus's "National Policy on Children" is the National Policy for Children, adopted first in 1974 and revised in 2013. The 2013 policy defines a child as anyone below 18, treats children as rights-holders, and sets four key priority areas: survival, health and nutrition; education and development; protection; and participation. It was followed by the National Plan of Action for Children (2016). The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, set up under the Act of 2005, monitors children's rights, and Mission Vatsalya is the umbrella scheme for child protection services.

The syllabus's "UN convention an rights of children" is the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 20 November 1989 and in force from 2 September 1990; India acceded to it on 11 December 1992. It has 54 articles and is the most widely ratified human rights treaty, the United States being the notable exception. Its four general principles, identified by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, are non-discrimination (Article 2), the best interests of the child as a primary consideration (Article 3), the right to life, survival and development (Article 6) and respect for the views of the child (Article 12). Its rights are often grouped as survival, development, protection and participation rights. Two Optional Protocols of 2000, on the involvement of children in armed conflict and on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, were ratified by India in 2005; a third, of 2011, on a communications procedure, India has not ratified.

Female foeticide, the sex-selective abortion of female foetuses, is addressed by the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act 1994, renamed by its 2003 amendment the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act. It prohibits sex selection before or after conception and the determination or disclosure of the sex of a foetus, and regulates ultrasound and other diagnostic facilities through registration and appropriate authorities. The Beti Bachao Beti Padhao campaign, launched in January 2015, combines enforcement with awareness and education for girls. Social workers support the campaign and help distinguish the lawful termination of pregnancy under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act 1971 (amended in 2021) from sex-selective practices, which the law prohibits.

Adoption in India runs on two tracks. The Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act 1956 governs adoption by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs, and makes the adopted child a full member of the adoptive family. The Juvenile Justice Act 2015 provides a secular procedure open to persons of any religion, through specialised adoption agencies, with the Central Adoption Resource Authority as the statutory body regulating in-country and inter-country adoption under the Adoption Regulations 2022; in Shabnam Hashmi v Union of India (2014) the Supreme Court held that any person may adopt under the juvenile justice law whatever their personal law. Since the 2021 amendment, adoption orders under the Juvenile Justice Act are issued by District Magistrates. India ratified the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption (1993) in 2003. Non-Hindus whose personal law does not recognise adoption may otherwise become guardians under the Guardians and Wards Act 1890, which confers guardianship, not the status of a child. Foster care places a child temporarily in another family's care by order of a Child Welfare Committee under the Juvenile Justice Act, with kinship, individual and group foster care guided by model guidelines of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, and sponsorship supports children to stay with their own families. Guardianship of Hindu minors is governed by the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act 1956; in Githa Hariharan v Reserve Bank of India (1999) the Supreme Court read the father's priority as natural guardian so that the mother can act as natural guardian during the father's lifetime in appropriate circumstances.

The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006, which replaced the Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929, defines a child as a male below 21 or a female below 18. A child marriage is voidable at the option of the party who was a child, who may petition for annulment up to two years after attaining majority, and is void in certain circumstances, such as where the child was trafficked, enticed or sold. The Act punishes an adult male who marries a child and those who perform, conduct, promote or permit a child marriage, provides for maintenance and residence for the girl, and requires states to appoint Child Marriage Prohibition Officers. In Independent Thought v Union of India (2017) the Supreme Court held that sexual intercourse by a man with his wife aged between 15 and 18 is rape, closing an exception that had protected child marriage. Social work interventions include community mobilisation, keeping girls in school, working with families, religious leaders and panchayats, supporting Child Marriage Prohibition Officers and Childline, and rehabilitating girls who leave or annul child marriages.