SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete
SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete
GC SOC 386 Week 1 Examining the Social Work Core Competencies Latest
Details:
In a 500 words reflection, select and discuss research-informed practice and three additional core competencies that align with your identity as a generalist practitioner.
Include the following in your reflection:
1. Which of the competencies do you think will be most challenging for you and why?
2. How does the strengths perspective inform your role as a generalist practitioner?
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide.
Complete “The Role and Value of Theories in Social Work Worksheet” according to the instructions in the worksheet.
While APA format is not required for the body of this assignment, solid academic writing is expected, and in-text citations and references should be presented using APA documentation guidelines
Directions: Applying Theory to Generalist Social Work Practice.(Langer & Lietz, 2014, Figure 2.1) Reflect on your life and the micro, mezzo, or macro systems that affect your life. Make a list of all the systems and place them in the correct category. You do not have to fill all the boxes, however complete at least four in each section. Langer, C. L., & Lietz, C. (2014). Applying theory to generalist social work practice. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
List of System:
1. General system (Dale & Smith, 2013)
2. Ecological theory (Dale & Smith, 2013)
3. Functional theory (Dale & Smith, 2013)
4. Symbolic Interaction theory (Dale & Smith, 2013)
5. Role theory (Dale & Smith, 2013)
Dale, O., & Smith, R. (2013). Human behavior and social environment: Social systems theory. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Micro Mezzo Macro
SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete
GC SOC 386 Week 2 Evaluating Social System Structures Latest
Details:
Human Behavior and the Social Environment Social Systems Theory and review the Families and Work Institute website. Read the case example in Chapter 3: “The Strengths Perspective” in the e-book Applying Theory to Generalist Social Work Practice. This is the case example from chapter listed below.
In a 500- to 750-word paper, do the following:
1. Evaluate and discuss the case relative to each of the following concepts: client/social worker boundaries, roles, suprasystems, interface, inputs, outputs, structures, and feedback. Give examples from the case for three of these elements.
2. What interventions from the strengths perspective would you use to assist the family?
Provide a minimum of three to five scholarly sources to support your content.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide
Rubric
Evaluating Social System Structures
GC SOC 386 Week 3 Application of Psychosocial Theory to Gerontology Systems Latest
Review all the resources for this topic and watch the video Alzheimer’s Patient Case Study. Write a 750- to 1,000-word essay that includes the following:
1. What do you think the role of the generalist practitioner would be for the caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients?
2. Include your recommendations for coping with the following challenges for the Alzheimer’s patient and the caregiver: biological, social, cultural, psychological, and spiritual development.
3. Based on the competencies from the Geriatric Social Work Competency Scale II, discuss what skills you would most like to gain as a beginning practitioner in the field of aging/gerontology?
4. Reflect on the knowledge that you gained from watching this video. Analyze why or why not you might have an interest in working with seniors or the elderly.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide
Application of Psychosocial Theory to Gerontology Systems
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GC SOC 386 Week 4 Behavioral and Cognitive Theory Worksheet and Analysis
Directions: There are two parts to this assignment.
Part 1 is to complete the chart.
Part 2 is a brief analytical narrative summary.
Part 1: Theory Overview Chart
Directions:
Provide a brief overview of each of the following theories in the box next to the theory. List what you view as the key components of each theory.
Theory Overview and Key Component of the Theory
Behavioral Learning Theory
Social Learning Theory
Cognitive Behavioral Theory
Cognitive Development Theory
Moral Development Theory
Humanistic Theory
Person-Centered Theory
Part 2: Brief Analysis and Summary
Directions:
In a 300- to 500-word brief analysis, discuss whether you prefer the process models of behavioral theorists or the stage models of psychoanalytic theory discussed in Topic 3.
Which theoretical model do you most identify with in your role as a generalist social worker? Why?
References:
SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete
Topic 4: Behavioral and Cognitive Theory Worksheet and Analysis
Scoring Guide
Grading Category
Points Comments
The worksheet includes a brief overview of each theory included in the table 0/15
The worksheet includes a key component of each theory included in the table 0/15
The worksheet includes a brief analysis of whether the process models of behavioral theorists or the stage models of psychoanalytic theory is preferred 0/15
The worksheet includes a brief analysis of the theoretical model the student most identifies with and why 0/15
The worksheet is well structured and organized 0/5
The content in the worksheet is accurate and placed in the corresponding theory 0/15
The worksheet includes at least three to five scholarly resources to support the content 0/10
Total 0/90
SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete
SOC 386 Week 5 Assignment Latest
Details:
Read and evaluate “Case Study 2-4” from Case Studies in Social Work Practice, “Using a Family Systems Approach with the Adoptive Family of a Child With Special Needs.” Listed below.
Write a 500-750-word reflection about the case that includes a discussion of the child and family subsystems, boundaries, social systems, and cultural influences of the family described in the case. Make a list of the micro, mezzo, and macro systems. (Ecomap Example: See Figure 2.1 in Applying theory to Generalist Social Work Practice, 2014 by Langer & Lietz). 
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide. Please include a introductory paragraph with thesis statement and a conclusion paragraph.
Case Study 2-4 Using a Family Systems Approach With the Adoptive Family of a Child With Special Needs
T his case study illustrates the use of a family systems approach to working with a new family constellation that has been created out of tragedy. This therapeutic intervention, informed by family systems theory and practice, incorporates elements of attachment theory and the dynamics of kinship adoption, an understanding of the effects of complex trauma on individual and family functioning, recognition of the impact of culture, class, and immigration status, as well as contextual social factors such as racism and sexism, on the functioning of the family system in relation to its individual members, as well as on the functioning of the family in a larger context of community and the dominant culture. Questions 1. How can family systems therapy help a family newly formed through adoption learn how to meet the emotional and social needs of each of its members? 2. Can a family system that has been formed as a result of grievous loss create a new, more positive identity for the future?
3. 4. What is the best way to help adoptive parents of a child with serious emotional and behavioral challenges manage their child’s needs while still attending to their own? What are the special concerns, if any, when working with a family from a different culture than one’s own? Even though I have been a social worker for nearly 40 years and a family systems therapist for almost that long, every time I explore a case using a family systems lens, I feel a kinship with the very first professional social workers— like Mary Richmond— who understood well the importance of the family system in interpreting the psychosocial dynamics of the individual. Although in the 21st century we know a great deal more than our professional foremothers and forefathers did about the biological basis of human behavior, these early professionals recognized the importance of observing family members together “acting and reacting upon one another” (Richmond, 1944/1917, p. 137). SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete.
The family in all of its dimensions has historically been the purview of social workers (Carr, 2009; Dore, 2012; Walsh, 2011). Whether working in child protection, adoption, child guidance, family services, eldercare, or in a specific setting like a hospital, school, or community mental health clinic, social workers have recognized that the individual could only be truly understood in interaction with his or her environment, the most essential element of which is the family. The Family The particular case I have chosen to use to illustrate family systems therapy is that of the Laurent family. The family consists of the father, André, age 36; mother, Marie Clothilde, age 32; and their adopted son, Michel, age 10, who is also Marie Clothilde’s nephew. André Laurent immigrated to the United States as a young teenager when his parents fled Haiti after the first overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the early 1990s. They settled in the greater Boston area, where André attended school and learned to speak English fluently.
He graduated from a technical high school, where he studied information technology, and since graduation he has been consistently employed in IT services in the pharmaceutical industry. Marie Clothilde immigrated more recently, coming to the United States in 2005 to stay with an older sister in the hopes of finding work to help support her family back in Haiti. Because Marie Clothilde spoke very little English, her employment options here were limited. She worked primarily on a cleaning crew that maintains office buildings at night. Shortly after she arrived in this country, she met André through a cousin. They married in 2007. Even though André had a goodpaying job, Marie Clothilde continued to work after their marriage so that she could send money back to her poverty-stricken family in Port-au-Prince.
The Presenting Situation: Everything changed for André and Marie Clothilde on January 12, 2010, the date of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. Marie Clothilde spent frantic days after the disaster trying to find out what had happened to her family. Eventually, through a family friend, she learned that her entire family in Port-au-Prince had been killed, with the exception of her sister’s son, Michel, who was dug out of the rubble of the extended family home still alive two days after the earthquake. With the aid of her priest, who is also Haitian, she was able to locate Michel in a makeshift orphanage in Port-au-Prince and arrange for him to come to this country. Michel, who lost his only parent and grandparents in the earthquake, along with his uncle, aunt, and two young cousins, was still in shock when he arrived at Logan Airport in Boston in April 2010, to begin a new life in a strange country with adoptive parents he hardly knew. Marie Clothilde was struggling emotionally as well.
Her family had been decimated in the earthquake, and she barely had time to process the loss when she was confronted with an emotionally distraught child to care for. She assumed the role of mother, a new one for her, and relinquished the role of wage earner because Michel required all of her time and attention at home. André, feeling he needed to make up financially for Marie Clothilde’s lost income and not a little displaced in his wife’s attentions by his new son, began to spend more time at work. Marie Clothilde enrolled Michel in the neighborhood elementary school, but her inability to speak much English prevented her from fully communicating what had happened to Michel with school personnel.
Thus, school personnel, who placed Michel in a mixed class of children who were nonEnglish speaking, were totally unprepared for the problems he began to manifest. For one thing, Michel was unable to sit quietly at a desk for any length of time. He would begin to pace the classroom and, if requested to return to his seat, would begin screaming and thrashing about, pulling at his hair and babbling in Haitian Creole. If a teacher attempted to touch him to guide him back to his seat, Michel would shrink away, sobbing and crying, flailing his arms and shouting about petro loas (evil spirits) who were possessing him. SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete.
At these times, Marie Clothilde would be summoned to the school and told to calm Michel down or take him home until he gained better control of himself. One day Michel became so out-of-control, alternatively cowering under his desk, crying and shaking uncontrollably, and striking out aggressively, cursing at anyone who tried to come near him, that the school contacted the mobile crisis team from the child and adolescent inpatient psychiatric unit at the local hospital. In consultation with André, who had rushed to the school from his job, and Marie Clothilde, the mobile crisis team recommended that Michel should be hospitalized briefly for further evaluation. Although many Haitian people believe that the kind of serious emotional and behavioral disturbances that Michel was exhibiting are caused by a curse from a loa (sometimes spelled lwa ) or evil spirit who is upset at being disobeyed, André and Marie Clothilde recognized that Michel’s problems were likely related to the severe trauma and multiple losses he had experienced back in Haiti.
Fortunately, because the greater Boston area has the fourth largest Haitian population of any city, including those in the country of Haiti, the community hospital where Michel was admitted belongs to a behavioral health network that supports a mental health team of Haitian Creole– speaking professionals. The child psychiatrist on this team, Dr. Odette Jean-Baptist, evaluated Michel in the hospital and diagnosed posttraumatic stress disorder suffered as a result of the complex trauma he experienced during and after the earthquake in Haiti exacerbated by the process of immigrating to the United States and adjusting to a radically different life in a strange new family, school, and community. Dr. Jean-Baptist prescribed a short course of a mood stabilizer to help Michel manage his explosive outbursts and scheduled regular follow-ups to monitor his response to the medication. She also made a referral to the local children’s mental health agency, where I am employed, for ongoing family treatment to help Michel integrate into his new family and to help his adoptive parents learn ways to support their son as he mourns his former life and embraces his new one.
Joining the Family System: Through contracts with the state Department of Mental Health designed to prevent long-term out-of-home placement of children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbances, my agency offers family-based services to children and their parents in their own homes, in community settings, or in our offices, depending on the family’s preference. If a child is already in a psychiatric placement, as was Michel, then we meet with the family in the placement setting and include in our first session the mental health professionals working with the child there. In this case, Dr. Jean-Baptist joined us to offer her insights regarding Michel’s diagnosis, his current psychosocial functioning, and her team’s recommendations for his further treatment. SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete.
As if sensing my unspoken concerns about the Haitian culture’s belief regarding disability, especially mental disability, as something the individual has brought on himself, a punishment for offending the spirits or God in the case of Haitian Christians, and how this belief might affect Michel’s parents’ response to his illness, Dr. Jean-Baptist explained to them in lay terms in both Haitian-Creole and English how experiencing profound trauma can alter the functioning of a person’s brain, particularly in children whose brains are still developing and thus are uniquely vulnerable to the physiologic changes that take place in response to high levels of traumatic stress. This explanation helped alleviate André and Marie Clothilde’s expressed concerns about their ability to parent Michel, particularly when I explained how I would be working closely with them to figure out the best ways to help Michel manage his own emotions and behavior. I added that I would also be connecting them with community resources that could offer them support with Michel into the future.
Assessing Family System Dynamics: As a therapist working from a family systems perspective, it was important at this point to join with the parents to support their capacity to adequately meet their new son’s needs by becoming part of the family caregiving system so that they did not feel so alone and overburdened. Although Marie Clothilde had extended family ties to Michel that would help sustain her commitment to him during the challenging work ahead, André had no such ties, and I was concerned that his emotional investment in Michel might be more limited, particularly if he experiences Michel as coming between him and his wife. This dynamic is frequently seen in family systems when one parent, usually the mother, becomes so invested in caring for a child with special needs that other family members, often the father and the child’s other siblings, feel shunted aside with their emotional needs going unmet.
This dynamic could be complicated by the patriarchal tradition in Haitian culture that lays the burden of caring for a child with a disability solely at the feet of the mother. There is a great deal of shame and stigma associated with having a disabled child in Haiti. If a child is born with a visible disability, the father may leave the home and take up with another woman, who will become pregnant and bear a child without a disability, thus proving that the father is not the cause of the child’s impairment. As a result, disabled children in Haiti are often raised by single mothers. Knowing this, it will be important for me to assess the degree to which André and Marie Clothilde ascribe to these beliefs and determine how to keep André engaged with his new son so that Michel’s care is not left entirely to his wife. SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete.
Strengthening the Adult Partner Subsystem: I knew I must also find ways to help André and Marie Clothilde communicate openly about their own needs and feelings so that Marie Clothilde does not begin to feel overburdened by Michel’s care and André doesn’t feel closed out of the mother-child subsystem in the family. A common strategy in practice informed by family systems theory is working to strengthen and develop what is called the marital subsystem in the traditional family therapy literature, but what could more accurately be termed the adult partner relationship , as it can also refer to unmarried same-sex or opposite-sex partners. This strategy is also important in a single-parent household, especially when the parent has formed a co-parenting alliance with one of the children, usually the oldest girl. The idea here is to establish and support a family hierarchy in which the adults are in charge, and to ensure that the adults have a relationship with one another that is separate from their roles as parents. Developing such a relationship requires open, clear communication of needs and feelings, as well as mutual understanding and support. Family systems therapists believe that a solid adult partner relationship is the key to a family system that responds adequately to the needs of all of its members.
The Impact of Adoption on the Family System: In addition to cultural and adult relationship considerations, there are issues around adoption, particularly the adoption of an older child with special needs, which I must be aware of in working with the Laurent family. At the point that I met with the family in the hospital, I knew nothing about the couple’s desire to have children of their own, whether this was something that they had wished for but had been unable to conceive, or whether they had decided not to have children, which I thought was rather unlikely given the high value placed on children in Haitian culture. In family systems practice in adoption, it is essential to understand a couple’s intentions regarding childbearing and what their efforts have been to have a child of their own. SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete.
For some people, the inability to conceive and/or carry a child to term is viewed as a personal failing with accompanying self-blame and depression, making the emotional investment in an adopted child more challenging. When a kinship adoption is thrust on a couple unexpectedly, as was the case with André and Marie Clothilde, there is little or no time for them to consider what the addition of a new member will mean to their family system and to prepare for likely changes. If one partner is more eager to adopt a child than the other, particularly if the lessinvested partner is simply going along with the adoption to please the other person or to salvage their relationship, then the addition of a child to the family system through adoption can result in a significant shift in the partner relationship. Adoption of an older child also brings its own challenges to the family system. SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete.
Although Michel is a member of Marie Clothilde’s extended family, she has not seen him since he was a toddler and can only surmise about his prior upbringing in an extended family household that included not only her sister, Michel’s mother and a single parent, but also her mother and her father who was an alcoholic, as well as her older brother, the only wage earner in the family, his wife, and their two young children. Like approximately 80% of Haitians, the family was very poor and lived in the section of Port-au-Prince known as Cité Soliel, an infamous urban slum.
Marie Clothilde knows from her own experience that the primary school that served Cité Soliel children before the earthquake was a ramshackle building lacking in basic resources such as electricity and running water. The cost of uniforms and textbooks made sending any but the eldest male child prohibitive for families like hers. She isn’t sure just how much schooling Michel actually had back home but, like many Haitian immigrant parents, she is anxious that he should be placed in a classroom based on his age rather than his prior educational experience or ability. She is unfamiliar with the special resources available to children with Michel’s challenges in the Boston-area community in which the Laurent family lives and, again like many immigrant parents, relies on school personnel to make the best decisions for Michel.
Helping the Family System Incorporate a New Member: Marie Clothilde’s unfamiliarity with the local education system provided me with the opening I needed to engage André, who, as a result of having gone to high school in the area, was more familiar with the system and at ease with school personnel. Appealing to André’s authority on the local education system not only increased his involvement with Michel and his special learning challenges but also brought him back into an alliance with Marie Clothilde on behalf of their child, as together, with my coaching and support, they worked with the special education staff at Michel’s school to obtain a full educational evaluation and design an Individualized Education Program (IEP) to meet his learning needs. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), parents are entitled to be considered full partners with special education personnel in contributing to planning the IEP.
Strategies to Strengthen the Parental Subsystem: My experience in working with immigrant parents, many of whom come from cultures that place educators on a pedestal, is that they are often hesitant to question the decisions of school staff or to advocate for their child if they feel his or her learning needs are not being met. This seems to happen more often when the child’s learning is impacted by serious emotional and behavior disorders. As is true in most states across the country, we are fortunate to have a very effective educational advocacy group in Massachusetts, the Professional/Parent Advocacy League (P/PAL), for families whose children have mental health challenges. P/PAL can arrange for a legal advocate who is thoroughly familiar with education law to accompany parents to an IEP planning meeting if they are at all concerned that their child will not receive appropriate or adequate educational services from the school. If I am working with a family with a child with a serious emotional and/or behavior disorder, I routinely put them in touch with a P/PAL representative, who is usually an experienced parent of a child with similar challenges who offers support and information about local resources.
P/PAL also sponsors psychoeducation groups that meet weekly in specific locations throughout the state for parents whose children are struggling with mental health concerns. In addition, the organization holds picnics and other fun events for families who may feel more comfortable socializing with other families with similar childrearing challenges. One of the most significant changes in family systems practice in recent years is the recognition that the families we work with are embedded in networks of community supports and services that can be tapped to strengthen the family system in myriad ways. Family systems work used to focus almost completely on the nuclear family system, the constellation of dad, mom, and kids. As this constellation changed markedly over the past several decades to encompass a variety of family forms, family therapists recognized the need to broaden their purview, first to include extended family members and close friends in their therapeutic interventions, then to add to the family’s network in more creative ways. SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete.
Nowadays, rather than expecting the family to meet one another’s emotional and social needs exclusively, family therapists assess a family’s life cycle stage and locate resources that can support the family in their current developmental process. For example, in working with the Laurent family, which has suddenly moved from the couple stage, with its focus on the adjustment of the marital subsystem, to the addition of a new family member, a child with special needs, I looked for community resources that could support them in this process. In addition to introducing them to P/PAL to help them navigate the education system, I also put them in touch with Adoptive Families Together (AFT), which, as the name suggests, is a grassroots organization of adoptive families, many of whom have adopted children with special needs and challenges.
AFT not only offers parent support groups throughout the greater Boston area, but also sponsors an online discussion group, which adoptive parents can access for information, advice, and general support. Families who join AFT receive a free copy of In Their Own Words . . . Reflections on Parenting Children With Mental Health Issues: The Effect on Families , a book written and published by members of this organization. Because this book is available only in English, which Marie Clothilde is unable to read comfortably, we agreed that André would read a chapter to her each evening after Michel had gone to bed, and they would discuss issues the material raised, noting any concerns they wanted to bring to our by-then weekly meetings together. SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete.
Addressing Individual Member Concerns From a Family Systems Perspective: As I noted previously, there is a large Haitian population in the greater Boston area, which luckily means that many resources are aimed specifically at the Haitian community in the area where the Laurents live. Because I had concerns about Marie Clothilde’s response to the deaths of nearly her entire family in the earthquake, which I felt she had delayed facing because of her need to attend to Michel’s mental health issues, I hoped to locate a support group for Haitian women who had experienced similar losses in that tragedy. The Association of Haitian Women in Boston, an advocacy organization for Haitian women, was able to refer Marie Clothilde to a women’s group that met locally through the auspices of the Cambridge Haitian Services Collaborative.
I also learned of an extensive women’s literacy program offered by this organization, which could help Marie Clothilde become more fluent in English, enabling her to better negotiate the various service systems on behalf of her son. In making these inquiries and referrals, it was essential that I actively engage André in the process in order to maintain balance in the family system and to honor the role of the husband and father in Haitian culture. My agency runs an ongoing father-son group in our community for fathers of boys, ages 10 to 15, who are struggling with emotional and behavior challenges. Most, though not all, of the dads in the group live apart from their sons and are seeking ways to strengthen the attachment with their boys. It is primarily an activities-recreation-adventure group that draws heavily on the many arts, education, and sports-related resources in the greater Boston area. I thought since parent-child attachment is one of the ever-present themes in this group, it might also be appropriate for André as an adoptive father seeking to build a relationship with his new son. One of the two male leaders of this group is a Haitian American social worker, Emile Richard; the other is an African American psychologist, Ed Gaines.
André was hesitant about joining the group with Michel given the boy’s emotional and behavior challenges, but he agreed to meet with Emile and Ed to see if the group was a fit for him and his son. As it turned out, André and Emile were distantly related through their mothers, which cemented André’s willingness to try the group. From the group leaders’ modeling, André learned some effective strategies for managing his son’s behavior in public situations, as well as attunement skills to help Michel build capacity for self-regulation. André connected with several of the other fathers in the group, and a small group of them with their sons, all around Michel’s age, began meeting in a local park on Saturday mornings to play pickup soccer. Through the fathers’ group, which occasionally met at a local sound recording studio, André and Michel discovered a mutual love of Kompa (in English called compas ), the traditional music of Haiti. They often listen together to old LPs made by Kompa artists like Nemours Jean-Baptist and Rene Saint-Andre that were given to André by his father.
Michel wistfully remembers his grandfather playing the same records back in Haiti. Finally, as the theme of trauma runs through this family system, I used the strategy of storytelling to aid healing among its members (Kiser et al., 2012). Storytelling is also an important technique in adoptive families to help members co-construct a narrative that binds their lives together. The goal of this strategy is for each member to move from owning an individual story to collaborating on a shared narrative of their evolving family system. This technique was particularly useful in working with this family because Michel was initially unable to talk about his experiences during and after the earthquake in Haiti, expressing his feelings and fears through night terrors and overwhelming anxiety attacks during the day. As he listened intently to his adoptive parents tell the stories of their own childhood experiences, particularly their individual immigration stories, each of which involved emotionally painful loss and renewal, Michel gradually became able to put his own experiences into words, which described an ordeal so terrifying that it was difficult for the adults in his life to hear. SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete.
My role was to help André and Marie Clothilde manage their own affective responses to this difficult material and to learn how to use reflective listening skills to accurately and empathically respond to Michel’s efforts to communicate his needs and feelings to them. In one of our most significant family sessions, Marie Clothilde sat with tears streaming down her face as Michel described being able to hear his grandfather’s weakening voice in the rubble, urging Michel to be strong until searchers could find him. By the time rescuers came, no one except Michel was left alive in the debris. Marie Clothilde opened her arms and Michel, who had been sitting by himself on a small chair somewhat outside of the family circle, hesitated only momentarily before flinging himself into her arms, sobbing noisily.
André got up from the couch where he had been sitting and, pulling another chair close to his wife’s, embraced his wife and son as they cried together, mourning their mutual losses. It was shortly after this that the family, with my guidance and support, began to co-construct a narrative of their emerging life together as a new family system. This story included the routines, rituals, and traditions they were developing, as well as some of the obstacles they had faced and overcome as a family. SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete.
Conclusion : I recognize in presenting this somewhat complex case of family systems work that the contemporary approach to this type of practice is heavily dependent on viewing the family in the context of larger systems and on using available resources outside of the family to strengthen the functioning of both individuals and family subsystems. The kinds of resources I was able to draw on in working with the Laurent family as Haitian-born immigrants are not available in many parts of the country, particularly in poorer and more rural communities. Clinicians are often surprised, however, at what is actually available when they are seriously committed to connecting family members to resources that can enhance resilience in the family system.
Mentors can be found almost everywhere with a little effort, as can activity groups. Support groups for parents who have adopted special needs children or whose own children have serious emotional or behavior challenges are as close as the Internet, although the clinician must be vigilant in ensuring that the client’s online privacy is protected and that the website is sponsored by a recognized legitimate entity before recommending this resource. In summary, my work with the Laurent family, although informed throughout by a family systems perspective, was also dependent on my knowledge of adoption dynamics (Reitz & Watson, 1992), particularly the unplanned adoption of an older child and its impact on an existing family system; of complex trauma and its bio psychosocial impact on a latency age child as well as an adult; and of the public education system and how to manage its response to a child with serious emotional and behavior challenges, all with an overlay of Haitian culture and the immigrant experience. Although the specific issues in each family that presents for treatment are different, or as Leo Tolstoy put it so well, “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” a family systems approach easily accommodates these unique factors, giving structure and overall direction to the work.
SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete
SOC 386 Week 6 Assignment Latest
Details:
Social work practice at the macro level involves advocating for social change and social action, eliminating economic disparities, social injustice, and exploitation.
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Part I: Pre-Writing/Outline Worksheet
Complete the “Macro Level Social Work: Child Protective Services and Bureaucracy Outline Worksheet.” Listed below
The worksheet is a type of outline that will be used for an essay in Topic 8. You will utilize instructor feedback from the worksheet to inform you essay.
Provide a minimum of three to five scholarly sources to support your content.
While APA format is not required for the body of this assignment, solid academic writing is expected, and in-text citations and references should be presented using APA documentation guidelines,
SOC-386 Topic 6: Macro Level Social Work: Child Protective Services and Bureaucracy Outline Worksheet
Directions: This worksheet provides an outline for Part II of your essay that is due in Topic 8. You will use the answers that you put in the boxes next to the prompt to complete your final paper. Your responses for the worksheet should total between 500 to 750 words. The answer you provide in Part I should be developed enough so that your instructor can give you valuable feedback. Please include three to five scholarly references at the end of this worksheet.
SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete
Macro Level Social Work: Child Protective Services and Bureaucracy Outline
Social work practice at the macro level involves advocating for social change and social action, eliminating economic disparities, social injustice, and exploitation.
Explore the website of the Child Protective Service (CPS) agency for your state. Find articles on CPS from your state that discuss organizational issues or dysfunctions regarding the agency at a macro level. This assignment examines the functions and dysfunctions of organizational structure. Use the table in the worksheet to address the following:
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SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete
GC SOC 386 Week 7 Case Study Analysis Assignment
Details:
Review the following theoretical perspectives: ecological, systems, strengths, task-centered, cognitive and behavioral. Read the following upon which to reflect:
Read “Case Study 3-4: Challenging the Tradition: In Some Families, Violence Is a Way of Life,” by Steven Krugman in Case Studies in Social Work Practice by LeCroy & LeCroy. Write a 750-1,000-word reflection on the role of the social worker in the attached domestic violence case study.
For each case reflection discuss the following:
- Discuss the primary theoretical perspective reflected in the case study. Discuss one other theoretical perspective that could be applied.
- What competencies and behavioral practices did the social worker utilize?
- What did you find challenging about the case?
- What strategies did the social worker use that surprised you?
- What skills, practices, and behaviors do you think were critical for managing the case?
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion. Please include a thesis statement in introductory paragraph and include a conclusion paragragh.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide. Case study listed below.
Case Study 3-4 Challenging the Tradition: In Some Families, Violence Is a Way of Life
Steven Krugman3
The couple in this case developed a relationship that incorporated significant incidences of violence. Breaking this pattern of violence became the goal for successful resolution of the problem.
Questions 1. How does the social worker challenge the family’s values in this case?
2. What factors could be attributed to maintaining the violence in this family?
3. How was the couple kept involved in the treatment?
4. What personal attributes or family experiences do you have that could affect your ability to work with similar cases?
A dog barked at me while I waited on the porch of the ramshackle house for someone to open the door. A young woman in her mid-twenties wordlessly let me into the kitchen. There, five or six adults were sitting around the table, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. A baby slept in a port-a-crib, while two older boys played with used auto parts in the living room. The baby and the two boys were the ostensible reason I was there. A social worker at the hospital where the baby had just been born had learned that the infant’s mother, “Kathy”—the young woman who had let me in— had a long history of drug abuse and that both she and her two young sons had been beaten by her first husband. The worker, concerned about Kathy’s ability to take care of her new baby, had filed a child abuse and neglect report. I was there following up on that report as the representative of a family intervention team of the State Department of Mental Health.
I had already gotten some background information on Kathy. She was a tough Irish girl from Boston who had grown older and a little wiser over the years. At 17 she had married a man who worked sporadically, sold drugs, and regularly abused her and their two boys. After one especially vicious beating, Kathy’s brothers helped her escape and return to her parents’ home. That ended the marriage. Back home she quickly resumed her long-standing job of taking care of everyone else and keeping the lid on the ever stewing pot of family conflict. She was the fourth of 10 children. She had kept out of trouble by staying close to her volatile, sometimes alcoholic, mother; running errands; and hauling in stray family members. Then she met 40-year-old “Tony,” whose maturity seemed to offer the possibility of a more stable, less violent family life. They had been married for 2 years at the time of this first visit. The relationship with Kathy was Tony’s third try at a family. His first marriage had broken up because his wife wouldn’t take his abuse and left with their daughter. According to him, the second marriage “just ended,” that’s all. SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete.
Tony carried himself like a coiled spring and let everyone know he was not someone to mess with. But evidently someone had ignored those signals along the way, because Tony had once done 10 months in prison for assault. As I entered the kitchen, Tony offered me a seat and went on talking with his buddies. I just sat there wondering if either Tony or Kathy would acknowledge that we had set up a meeting a few days before. Neither one of them did. Finally I said we needed to get started. With drudging ceremony, Tony ushered his friends from the kitchen, shrugging his shoulders and asking one of them to wait in the living room. I explained about the report I had received from the hospital’s protective worker. Tony immediately let me know that he wanted to be no part of whatever I was selling. Everything was fine except for the “goddamned Department of Social Services.” He stated that neither he nor Kathy needed any help, and I should leave. I felt like an intruder and was more than a little intimidated by Tony and his friends. Kathy hardly said a word. There was no room for discussion. As I left, I told Kathy and Tony to call if they felt I could be of use.
A Surprise Call The following Sunday night, I answered a crisis call. It was Tony. Kathy was in the hospital. She’d “hurt herself ” while high on Valium and alcohol. Could I see the two of them? The next morning, I learned that Kathy had been stuporous and badly bruised when she was admitted to the hospital. The emergency room sent her to a shelter for battered women. The kids seemed to be all right. Later that day, Kathy came to the session with an advocate from the shelter. She and Tony cried together while the shelter worker and I sat by uncomfortably. They were both tremendously apologetic and remorseful. Kathy was angry at herself for breaking a promise she had made to Tony about using pills. She was, however, confused about how she had gotten so bruised. Tony swore he had only “slapped her around a little” to revive her. He said that he had been scared to death when he saw her looking all doped up. I asked Kathy if she knew what Tony wanted her to do.
She said, “Sure. Stop using pills. Be home when the boys get home from school. Stay in at night because it’s too dangerous. Not see anyone, just wait for him.” As she spoke, she got angrier and more sarcastic. “Yeah, I know what he wants. He wants to control me.” Still smarting from my first encounter and puzzled by Tony’s call to me, I wanted to shift the responsibility for choosing therapy to the clients. “It seems to me that you’ve both apologized and forgiven each other. The last time I spoke with you, Tony told me that everything was okay. I wonder if there’s any need for us to meet? Maybe Kathy should go for counseling at the shelter.” This time they both said that they wanted to go to therapy; they didn’t want this relationship to go down the tubes like the others had.
Challenging the Family’s Values Once I began meeting with Tony and Kathy, it was clear that they were much more experienced than I with violence of all kinds. Both had grown up witnessing violence at home and in the street. They jokingly called their neighborhood “Dodge City.” During the 2 years they had been married, Tony had threatened Kathy numerous times; shoved her on two occasions (prior to the current incident); pushed around Kathy’s 9-year-old son, Kevin, several times; and had a fight with her ex-husband. Yet these acts had barely registered on their scale of life events. With Kathy and Tony, as with other violent couples I see, the first phase of treatment was governed by three principles: 1.Safety first . I help the victim and the family establish as much safety as they can. To do this I negotiate an explicit contingency plan in which both partners agree on how they will deal with a violent crisis. The plan then becomes a technique for creating alternative choices, like timeout periods and physical separation, to counter abuse and victimization. My emphasis on the plan challenges the family’s belief that now that treatment has begun, the danger is over. I insist that it lies ahead. Responsibility and control .
2. Responsibility and control With violent couples it is essential to give a clear message that the hitter is responsible for his hitting and that rationalizations like “she provoked me” or “I couldn’t help it” are not acceptable. Tony insisted that when he hurt Kathy he was “out of control.” I told him that I had a hard time believing that an experienced streetfighter like him had so little control over his hands. He repeated my observation, enjoying the irony. There was something about this way of looking at his relationship with Kathy that struck home with him. Invoking the image of the battle-scarred streetfighter who was unable to control himself with his wife provided tremendous leverage throughout the course of therapy.
3. The rights of the victim . Along with the emphasis on the responsibility of the abuser comes a concern with the rights of the victim— namely, the right not to be hit. In many families, this challenges the accepted value system regarding the use of physical force. While emphasizing that Tony was also hurting and needed help, I strongly supported Kathy’s right not to be hit or coerced. “I’ve never had a safe place,” she told me. “I want my home to be safe.” SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete.
After 4 months of weekly meetings with Tony and Kathy, there had been no further physical battles, and I confronted a familiar problem in working with violent couples. If you succeed in putting a check on the violence, then the family’s motivation to change is likely to diminish dramatically. Going from the crisis and initial engagement to a longer-term working alliance is difficult. Many cases get lost at this point. Making the transition to ongoing treatment requires either a high degree of motivation within the family (often the wife says “Unless you change, I’m leaving”) or consistent external pressure coming from the courts or the Department of Social Services (DSS). At times, family and church networks can provide it as well. Violent families rely heavily on denial and minimization as a way of warding off their feelings of being out of control and vulnerable. Dropping out of therapy at the first sign that things are better is a predictable response. After all, going on in treatment means dealing with upsetting memories and experiences. So, when Christmas arrived, Tony and Kathy decided to break for the holidays and call me if they wished to see me again.
Phase Two: What happened next makes the case of Tony and Kathy unusual in my experience. Typically, either one or both of the partners in a violent relationship are reluctant to be in treatment. The investment of the mental health system with such couples is more in the way of crisis intervention than ongoing treatment. If therapy is to continue past the initial crisis, then the therapist must ally with both partners while insisting that the violence must stop. This can be a difficult balancing act to pull off. Somehow, in this case, both Kathy and Tony had come to see me as someone who had something to offer, and 4 months later, I heard from them again. SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete.
Tony, working long hours and under a lot of financial pressure, “lost his cool” one night, pushed Kathy around, and slapped her. In a similar incident some days before, Tony slapped Kevin after the boy told him “not to yell at his mother.” Kathy was furious. She told Tony, “I did what you asked. I haven’t used Valium. But I married you to spend time with you, and you’re never home. I need my own life. You can’t control me. I won’t put up with your hitting and shoving me and the boys. I don’t want those kids hit by anyone ever again.” Tony seemed to get the message and reaffirmed his commitment to no more hittings. I agreed with Kathy that Tony was trying to control her life, but I reframed it as “too much caring.” Tony agreed to see me individually to find some better way of handling Kathy’s wish for more autonomy.
Meanwhile, Kathy’s son Kevin told his guidance counselor about the violence at home. Another DSS worker got involved and raised the question of whether Kathy’s three boys should be removed from the home. Although no specific action resulted, Kathy became very anxious at the possibility of losing custody. She even talked about leaving Tony if staying with him jeopardized her custody of her sons. For the first time, Kathy and Tony were faced squarely with the possibility of losing either their children or their marriage.
Other Systems: A basic ground rule in working with violent family situations is to make use of all available community resources. Yet anyone who has ever dealt with the courts and DSS knows that their interventions are often ineffective and poorly coordinated. In this case, though I had worked closely with the protective agency, the threat to remove Kathy’s children was never discussed with me. I suggested a meeting to develop a plan including the school and DSS, but before the meeting could be held, the caseworker left the agency. The case, evaluated now as “low risk,” went unassigned for months. A relieved Kathy and Tony left therapy once again. About six months later, Tony and one of Kathy’s brothers had a terrible fight over some money that had disappeared from the house. The police, arresting no one, filed a child abuse report.
A new worker was assigned, and the family was once again encouraged to resume treatment. By this time the pattern of ebb and flow of tension was becoming clear, and together we focused on understanding how the episodes of violence fit into Tony and Kathy’s life with each other. Tony had long ago cut himself off from all familial ties. As is true for many men, abusive and nonabusive, his wife had become his sole source of emotional attachment. Yet her wish that he be home more left him feeling “hemmed in” and anxious about making enough money. The later and harder Tony worked, the more entitled he felt and the more alone and vulnerable to her family Kathy found herself to be. Furious at Tony for not fulfilling the role of protecting her from her family, which he had assumed earlier in their relationship, she distanced herself by using drugs and going out with friends. Tony experienced this withdrawal as deeply threatening. His fear and anxiety would generate a crisis of violence that, like a powerful summer storm, would clear the air and reestablish their connection.
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As they came to recognize that violence was their way of regulating closeness when no other means seemed available, Kathy and Tony began to feel more connected. He began to come home for dinner several nights a week. They agreed to set limits with Kathy’s intrusive family and become more involved with the boys. By this time, the pattern in Tony and Kathy’s relationship with me was also becoming clearer. Some crisis or external push (e.g., from a new DSS worker) would trigger a new round of therapy. We’d meet regularly for several months, and then the demands of daily life would override our scheduled meetings. I framed the waning energy as Tony and Kathy’s taking control of the therapy. We ended this phase with me saying, “Call me when you’d like to meet again. Remember, you don’t have to wait for a crisis.” SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete.
Transgenerational Issues: Tony called 6 months later to report another crisis: Kathy had moved out with the boys. They had had a fight, but— he emphasized— he hadn’t hit her. When I saw Tony and Kathy together, I learned that her mother had died, her father had moved in, and in his wake the brothers and sisters followed through the open door. “I’ve lost control of my house,” she said. Tony said, “This is how it started. I thought that when her mother died, we should take care of her dad. Kathy blew up. She said, ‘If you like my family so much, you can have them.’ I was hurt. But when she said she was leaving I saw red.” The death of Kathy’s mother brought all of the transgenerational themes underlying their conflicts into focus. Kathy had been ambivalent about her mother all along. Her covert function as surrogate mother became overt when “Mom” died, as did her lifelong resentment about being put in that role.
For Tony, having Kathy’s father around was a little like having his own deceased father around again. Creating boundaries around the nuclear family with Kathy’s father living there was next to impossible. Finally, pursuing the issue of how Kathy and Tony could be available to each other in the midst of all this conflict generated the idea of a vacation. “Pops” could either go with them to Florida or go stay with one of her older sisters. With great difficulty, Kathy allowed her father to live elsewhere. A year later he was still living with her older brother, and Kathy and Tony were together and doing well. SOC 386 Weekly Assignments Complete.
Conclusion: Physically violent families tend to be closed systems. They are organized around secrets and a fearful view of the world. Obtaining the trust of such families is a trick in itself. Engaging the abusive members, along with others in the family, means going from being seen as a nosy intruder to a valued resource who can help the family to change what hurts. Engaging any closed or rigid