Agency and Services Provided
The Statewide Outreach is a private counseling agency that provides a plethora of counseling services to individuals, couples, and families. The services are confidential, credentialed, and the professionals are clinically trained. Some of the problems that the agency seeks to address include behavior issues, marital discord, depression, addiction, and emotional and relationship problems. Everyone is eligible for the services provided by the company regardless of race and financial means. Detailed services offered by Statewide Outreach include family counseling, individual counseling, and behavioral modification. Other than professional advice, the agency also deals in group counseling, testing, self-esteem issues, addiction counseling, and trauma counseling among others. The company has consultants and staff members who are dedicated to providing a holistic approach to solving personal and family problems.
Description of the Client
The setting of the counseling session is in South Carolina. The client is from Bamberg South Carolina. The client visited the agency on 11/12/2018 and needed help because her parents were undergoing divorce. The client studies at Bamberg and has demonstrated behavior misconduct with the siblings. Also, she has shown signs of social isolation that has continued for two years. Some of the symptoms that the client presented include the mild depression, moderate appetite disturbance, mild low energy, fatigue, and poor concentration. She also demonstrated signs of mood swings, mild irritability, and mildly elevated mood. Overall, the client is unhappy with the fact that the parents are facing divorce and as such, she seems hopeless due to the prospects. The counseling session will have several goals. First, it will seek to assist the child in adjusting to the new life in the event that her parents' divorce. Secondly, it will help the child to avoid destructive behaviors and thoughts that might implicate her development (Rzepnicki, 2012).
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The social worker must also take into consideration the legal and ethical considerations of counseling during the process. First, confidentiality should be the first aspect that the social worker must demonstrate. Turner & Maschi, (2014) asserted that confidentiality is defined as the moral duty if the professional to protect the private communication of the client. Therefore, the social worker must ensure that everything discussed with the client remains a secret unless otherwise states by the law. The counselor must also demonstrate knowledge of the legal knowledge required in counseling especially when dealing with minor clients. According to the Statewide Outreach agency, it provides credentialed services meaning that licensing has been done to protect the public from any unprofessional work. The primary form of assessment that has been done in the case is through question the child how she perceives the imminent divorce between his father and mother. The best proposal for treatment would be a cognitive behavior therapy.
First, it remains critical to note that the child has a dysfunctional family thereby making family therapy a difficult approach to use. The cognitive behavior therapy will assist the child to improve on their moods and behavior by examining the distorted patterns seen in her such as self-harm thoughts and failure to attend school. Therefore, they will identify the harmful ideas with the social worker replacing this with functional patterns that will assist them to cope with the family problem. If there are sufficient grounds to believe that the child has acquired the coping skills, they will be allowed to proceed and continue with their life depending on the outcome of her parent’s divorce. However, before the termination, the counselor must remain keen to show patience with the process because the client is a minor.
Social Work Practice Skills
For a social worker to succeed in their work, they must demonstrate a host of emotional, professional, and cognitive skills. Some of the critical skills that these individuals can leverage include active listening, emotional intelligence, organization, tolerance, critical thinking, empathy, and communication among others (Collins, Garlington, & Cooney, 2015). Several social work practice skills were applied to the client throughout the session. First, communication is an essential aspect of any social work practice as it provides the platform for the exchange of information and the gaining of information vital in creating a course of action. The social worker went for an interview model where questions are asked, and the client is expected to respond in a manner they deem fit. The counselor demonstrates interpersonal skills such as empathy in a bid to ensure that the client receives their warmth and concern. In an instance, the client engages in an outburst that she is not in need of the help of the social worker. It is in such instances that social workers need to demonstrate a sense of tolerance since they are dealing with potentially emotive or severely depressed clients.
The counselor has further shown active listening as a strategy in assessing the client. The social worker remains keen throughout the session and responds appropriately to the child by mitigating all the negativities. Lastly, emotional intelligence (EQ) remains one of the most critical skills that social workers must employ in their work. Some of the characteristics that the individual demonstrates in this regard include empathy, self-awareness, and sensitivity (Collins et al., 2015). All these are shown mainly in an effort to convince the child that indeed she needed help.
Social Work Skills Not Demonstrated
Despite the use of several strategies in getting the best out of the client, the process can be ineffective due to the lack of two important strategies. Social workers must demonstrate the ability to goal-oriented strategies before the begging of the counseling process. As such, this enables them to have a sense of direction throughout the counseling process. Secondly, the use of a task-centered approach, therefore, denying the professional and the client an opportunity to develop goals via treatment planning (Turner & Maschi, 2014). In developing a proposed professional development plan, the social workers must demonstrate cognizance to several aspects including proficiency in their professional practice. Also, they must demonstrate the ability to remain at per with the emerging knowledge relevant to the field of social work. Some of the professional development works that these individuals should engage in include education, licensure, certification, consultation, and training among others.
Formal Case Presentation
Formal case presentations are an essential aspect of social work. They are guided approach to investigating the patterns of problems experienced by a client. Some of the components include demographics, background, formulation, interventions and plan, and critical findings among others. Preparing and engaging in the formal case presentation is an essential aspect of social work. As counselors, they are vital members of the health team that need to keep track of the client information and provide an evidence-based intervention (Rzepnicki, 2012). They must follow a systematic approach as demonstrated in the case presentations to guarantee that they keep track of all the vital aspects of a client's symptoms and behaviors. However, the components mentioned above are not for memorization. Each social worker can come up with their particular case presentation based on the unique needs of the case and the employed strategies.
References
Collins, M., Garlington, S. & Cooney, K. (2015), Relieving Human Suffering: Compassion in
Social Policy. The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare , 42(1), Article 6.
Turner, S. & Maschi, T. (2014). Feminist and empowerment theory and social work practice.
Journal of Social Work Practice , 29(2), 151-162
Rzepnicki, T. (2012). From Task Centered Social Work to Evidence Based and Integrative
Practice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press
