Case Study 3:

The Bakula Family

The case

Filip is 17 years old and he has been in the UK with his family for six years. He lives with his grandparents, dad (Ivor) and younger brother (Jakub). Filip attends school, likes it and is doing well in his A levels. He has thought about going to university, but he also thinks it would be better to be earning money.

His younger brother is different from him. Jakub is 13, doesn’t like school and often stays at home, helping his dad and other men from their community mend cars, and sell and buy things.

Filip sometimes spends time with Jakub and the other men when they are working with the cars, but he does think it would be better for his brother to go to school more frequently. However, when two community police officers approach the group of men, Filip hides his brother behind him, because he is worried about the police realising that he should be at school.

Additional information:

The Bakula family are Roma Slovak

Father: Ivor is 37.

Sons: Filip, 17 years old and Jakub, 13 years old.

Grandfather: Jan is 62 years old.

Grandmother: Anna is 58.

Although Jakub and Filip both speak English, Ivor only speaks a little English. The boys' grandparents live with them in a small terraced house and neither speak much English.

Filip works, but Jan is not in good health and Anna cares for him and the boys.

Reflecting on 'working with people from different national and cultural backgrounds': Using the case study

N.B: Case studies can be used by an individual, or to facilitate a group exercise for a team of practitioners.

Read the case study and write down:

How you would come into contact with the family, or members of the family, in your professional role.
Your immediate thoughts about the situation described in the case study.
Your immediate thoughts about Jakub and the response of family members to him not wanting to go to school.
Your initial thoughts on how you might try and engage with this family to discuss any issues identified.

Then consider:

If there is anything about the family’s national and cultural background that might have influenced their responses?
If and how your initial thoughts about the family’s response to issues raised were influenced by your own cultural and national background?
Reconsider how you might approach the situation with your responses to questions 1 & 2 in mind.

Links to other themes

The focus of this exercise is to explore how a person's national and cultural background can impact on practitioners, and the families they support, having a shared understanding of services available and why they are provided.

Each case study is also likely to prompt reflections related to the other themes considered on this website. The themes that may be of particular use for this case study are:

Page updated