Social Work and Counseling Strategies to Work with the Families of Intermittent Employees in Oil Industry (Qualitative Study)

In the case of intermittent employment, a two-week periodic work away from family, creates specific and challenging type of family life. Therefore, the present study aims to develop strategies of social work and counseling regarding the ambi-guity on how to provide these services to these kinds of families. 
The method of this research is qualitative in the form of content analysis and focus group discussion and 29 people were selected through purposeful and voluntary sampling including intermittent staff, spouses, family experts and managers; data were collected to theoretical saturati-on using semi-structured interviews, then the data analysis led to the appearance of the three main abstract categories that includes individual empowerment, conso-lidation of family dynamics and expansion of support networks, consisting of a total of 10 subcategories. Results show, these strategies can be helpful in guiding the roles of professional social assistance and counseling such as education, counseling, intervention, and institutional and non-institutional support to maintain family health and adapt to their specific circu-mstances.