Marital Check-Up Kit: Theoretical Basis for the Assessment Tool

MARITAL CHECK-UP KIT
[Learner Name]
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[Professor Name]
Abstract
At the current rate of divorce, marriage counseling is becoming a necessary element in the society to save the basic unit, the family. Counselors have at their disposal various tools that they can use to help the clients achieve desired results. Marital Check-Up Kit, is one of the assessment tools that counselors can use to achieve results in the family counselling sessions. The tool is designed into a two page program and has six sections that clients are supposed to fill out. According to the reviews, the tool can be applied in relationships with sexual orientation other than just the marriage couples.
Marital Check-Up Kit
As the rates of divorce continues to continuously grow exponentially, the need and elemental necessity for marriage counselling is eminent. More than often couples will have issues that require the insight of the third party with professional experience rather than mere opinions (Gladding & Newsome, 2010). Counselors have a number of tools at the disposal that they can use to assess the situation with the clients. These are designed programs that help the clients to ease into the therapy sessions and open up, helping the counselors understand the underlying problems (Bienvenu, 1980). They also play a vital role in helping the clients read into their emotions, reactions, character, value systems, personality, habits and perceptions that could be affecting the relationship.
The Marital Check-Up Kit (MCK) is an assessment tool developed by Frank Bernt, who at the time developing and publishing of the article on the assessment was an associate Professor of Health Services at the St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia (Bienvenu, 1980). The assessment tool was designed with the potential to help couples recognize and iron out complications in the relationship and enhance their communications skills, before they overrun the relationship. A review of the program reveals that, it is in line with some of the marital therapies that help enrich relationships and bring about consistent positive effects to an otherwise broken relationship (Bienvenu, 1980).
Upon review the assessment tool does not have any information data that can affirm the reliability of the same along with validity. The MCK tool is thus a set of exercises that can be allowed during the establishment of a relationship’s weaknesses and strengths.
Theoretical Basis for the Assessment Tool
The tool is designed in a way that, it helps couples establish some of the issues that could be affecting their relationship, before they blow over and destroy the relationship. This is a simple tool that counselors can use to try and identify the weak points in the relationship, before commencing with any therapeutics works on the couple (Bienvenu, 1980). Couples taking part in the assessment also get a chance to assess their relationship from an individual point of view. This is a crucial stage in the counseling sessions, as the couples have to understand the elemental aspects affecting their relationship before they can make the efforts to change (Gladding & Newso...