A social worker has the responsibility of ensuring that a child being sexually abused is assisted in getting justice. The social worker in this case of Brandon did the right action of talking to the parent, his mother, and the boy himself about the abuse incidence. It was also right for the social worker to have substantive time with Brandon so that he would slowly get the whole story from him. It is important to acknowledge that all the steps taken by this social worker were appropriate, including the actions made to make Brandon safe. However, this social should have considered using the ecological model to comprehend the circumstances of Brandon on a person-in-environment basis.
The ecological model aims at identifying the root causes of the sexual abuse on the child. This model would enable the social worker to identify and understand the factors that influenced the situation of Brandon. Moreover, the significance of the ecological model is that it is also focused on establishing some of the possible prevention strategies (Baral et al., 2013). With this model, the social worker for the case of Brandon would have considered the complex interconnection that exists among an individual, community, associations and the societal factors. Therefore, the social would have understood a wide range of factors, which put Brandon into the risk of being abused sexually. It is the most effective model to be used in the case of a child experiencing trauma because of child sexual abuse. In essence, using the ecological model would make the social worker assess Brandon in an evolutionary and adaptive view of him, in an on-going interaction with his environment.
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It is quite possible to apply the concept of person-in-environment with the ecological model. According to this perspective, a person cannot be properly and appropriately understood without considering different aspects in the individual's environment. This perspective, therefore, would offer this social worker an effective framework for assessing Brandon on the sexual child abuse case. Moreover, this approach would have enabled the social worker to find a wide range of effective interventions for the case of Brandon.
The social would use the ecological model based on the three main levels of social work. These levels are macro, mezzo and micro (Saleebey, 2012). At the macro level, the social workers would try to identify some of the interventions for child sexual abuse based on correcting the factors that influence this vice at Brandon's community level. With the mezzo level, the social worker would try to assess the immediate neighborhood of Brandon and identify factors that influenced his situation at this level. Focusing on this smaller group of people, the social worker would then initiate interventions that target to safeguard Brandon on the entire neighborhood. Micro social work level is what this social worker did. Using the ecological model, the social worker would similarly have talked to the mother of Brandon and the boy himself to understand the situation accurately. The social would then try to solve this matter at this family or even individual level.
By failing to apply the ecological model, this social worker missed some strength during the assessment of Brandon and his mother. Firstly, the social worker did not pay attention to the environmental factors at stake while assessing Brandon and his mother. This meant that the strengths as the ability to correlate with people were missed. This social worker identified challenges such as irritation and violence on the part of Brandon. If his strengths were not identified, Brandon would have abused somebody sexually or caused an incident of violence.
References
Baral, S., Logie, C. H., Grosso, A., Wirtz, A. L., & Beyrer, C. (2013). Modified social ecological model: a tool to guide the assessment of the risks and risk contexts of HIV epidemics. BMC public health , 13 (1), 1.
Saleebey, D. (2012). The strengths perspective in social work practice . New York City, NY: Pearson Higher Education.
