• 가정과삶의질연구
• /
• 제34권3호
• /
• pp.147-163
• /
• 2016

Multicultural Family Support Centers (MFSC) have provided five program areas including family, gender equality, human rights, social integration, and counseling since 2015. It is important to examine the MFSC staff's perceptions of the family programs and program needs for multicultural families to improve the effectiveness of these programs. In this study, we aim to explore the staff's perceptions of the family programs and to assess multicultural family program needs based on the family life cycle. A total of 130 MFSC staff were recruited through 128 MFSCs across Korea. Descriptive statistics were conducted for data analysis. Our findings revealed that MFSC staff have increasingly recognized that their target audiences are not only marriage immigrants and their families but also foreign workers' families and families from North Korea. In addition, the MFSC staff identified the importance of family programs instead of only programs for individual family members and multicultural families' different program needs based on their family life cycle. Contrary to the positive perception of the family programs, they described challenges of the family programs including a shortage of funds, difficulty recruiting family member combinations (e.g., couples, parent-child) for family programs, a lack of a program manual, and a heavy workload. This study provides insights into the family programs including their development and delivery.