Description of the Situation
Lopez is a ten-year-old boy attending Dunn Ave elementary school. Marty and his family relocate depending on where the parent’s job sends them. This time Marty has been encountering challenges in making this transition. He has been having experiences of physically harming himself and causing self-injury to his body. Marty’s teacher noticed him sitting alone and scratching himself, which led to self-injury. Self-harm is a significant public health issue, especially among adolescents. Marty’s case is a standard definition of deliberate self-harm.
Marty has a drawing book full of graphic pictures of injured people. Marty’s behavior became a concern to the teacher and other students where he was referred to the school counselor. During the counseling session, Mary disclosed that some boys were bullying him. There is a strong association between self-harm and bullying victimization, linked to emotional problems such as depression and anxiety. Bullying victimization is linked to high feelings of depression and anxiety, which show self-harm. The boys take his money, steal his notebooks and punch him in the back. The boys warn him of telling anyone, so he refuses to identify him.
Role in the Agency
I am a therapist in the agency, guiding and assisting children in navigating their challenges in life. As a professional counselor and therapist, I empower diverse children, including their families, to achieve their wellness and mental health goals. I work with mentally-health-challenged clients to formulate strategies to overcome personal challenges and obstacles that they are facing. Having specialized in helping clients develop their emotional and cognitive skills, I help clients cope with their life challenges mental illnesses and improve their lives. My professional role as a therapist is to facilitate the children’s growth, awareness, and psychological development. Therefore, as a professional helper, I will meet with Marty to help them during the problem management process and carry out the goals of the therapeutic process.
Collaborative Team
The collaborative team in the agency will include Dunn Ave, an Elementary School counselor, classroom teacher, and psychologists. The elementary school counselor offers help to distressed and troubled children and young people by understanding and exploring difficulties within agreed confidentiality. The elementary school counselor will help understand the student’s emotional, social, and personal growth challenges in their development. The teachers play a significant role in understanding the child’s behavior since they spend a longer time with the students and can supervise them better, thus evaluating them better. The psychologist will study the social behavior, cognitive, emotional and processes through interpreting, observing, and recording how the child relates to the environment. The clinical psychologists will examine, diagnose and treat the child experiencing mental illness and psychological distress.
Type of Meeting-Case Conferencing
A case conference is a discussion or meeting held to set and monitor an individual’s care and ensure that all their needs are being met through a coordinated and multidisciplinary approach (Vest et al., 2021). Considerably, as the care needs get more complex and challenging, the care plans have to be individualized. Case conferences have been used to increase the smooth delivery of multifaceted care plans. The case conference can be held in person or via phone or video applications such as Skype. During the conference, the patient’s history will be discussed, and their care needs to be highlighted. Following the care needs and care outcomes agreed upon, each team member will be delegated responsibilities to achieve the desired outcomes. The goal of the case conference is for the children and their families to attain the best state of well-being where they are secure and stable enough to meet their needs such as emotional and social support and being resilient enough to absorb even the modest shocks. Therefore, the case conferencing will be the most suitable since the multidisciplinary team will discuss the risk factors and the child’s protection needs as well as the support interventions with the best interest of the child and reintegration of family-based care. Case conferencing can occur anytime within the case management process, from case planning, assessment, observing to closure.
Strengths
Case conferencing is a more planned, formal, and structured event wince it offers coordinated, holistic and integrated service. Case conferences are more effective since they acknowledge and identify issues regarding the client’s status goals and need to review the activities, including barriers towards goals and progress, which help resolve conflicts and adjust the current service plans (Moo et al., 2019). Case conferencing is a good method of discussing the client’s needs since it begins with analyzing the case and patient’s history and identifying the multidisciplinary need and outcomes that the team members can reach. For instance, case conferencing will ensure that all the interested parties will work towards the same goal, improving Marty’s condition. They will have coordinated roles to establish activities and goals, identify responsibilities and share information early to have a clear purpose and outcome.
Weaknesses
To be effective and sustainable, case conferencing needs to fit within the workflow with diverse roles and positions. This requires a lot of time, refining, and testing before scaling. Time constraints greatly impact the effectiveness of the case conferences. Another challenge with case conferencing is the lack of staff training, which creates barriers to implementing multifaceted care plans.
Description of the Client’s Identity
Marty links to the multidimensional identity model. The multidimensional identity holds that varying identities are socially constructed, overlapping, and dynamic and that identities are more or less dependent on the context (Pope and Reynolds, 2017). Multiple factors are forming the identity of Marty. For instance, bullies and societal restraints connect to Marty’s identity. Societal restraints rely on interpersonal interactions, which are reasonably constructed by an individual to whom they are directed as aversive or intimidating or threats that may lead to fear which moderates an individual’s behavior. Being a target of bullying can be damaging and painful since it influences one’s core identity that can be increasingly destructive. For instance, this can damage an individual’s self-esteem for a long period. Marty identifies as someone who exemplifies low self-esteem as a result of bullying.
Cultural Considerations
The cultural considerations that were put into consideration included the family background, personal experiences and past trauma, age, values, and sexual orientation. Culture plays a significant role in childhood development. Every child is unique and has a dynamic interactive process with the world around them. Therefore, culture is a powerful organizer in Marty’s life. Marty’s identity does not vary from his upbringing and cultural background. Ideally, an individual behaves and makes choices depending on psychosocial development. Therefore, the culturally relevant resources will consider the cultural backgrounds, views, and beliefs for the responses to be culturally sensitive.
Culturally Relevant Resources
Social and emotional learning and culturally sensitive therapeutic sessions will find constructive ways to understand their emotions and thoughts to become more self-aware. The social-emotional learning activities will help achieve core competencies such as self-management, self-awareness, relationship skills, and social awareness (Gueldner, Feuerborn, and Merrell, 2020). One of the major barriers to the identified goals is family support. For instance, improving Marty’s self-esteem can be challenging due to a lack of support for a positive sense of self by the parents. Harris and Orth (2020) state that there is a link between social relationships and self-esteem. Social relationships play a major role in shaping a person’s self-esteem. Emotional sensitivity can be overwhelmed and lose control of emotions and impact their willingness and ability to learn.
Egan and Reese’s Three Stages of Problem Management
The three-stage model is useful in enabling individuals to develop solutions and opportunities. Using this model aims to enable individuals to manage their problems and live more effectively and become better in everyday lives (Egan and Reese, 2019). The stages of the model include the current scenario, preferred scenario, and action strategies. Stage 1 is an exploration to offer a safe place for the client to tell a story. It’s about where an individual can listen and comprehend the client’s story. At this point, the therapist or helper encourages the client to tell their story. Some of the tasks in this stage involve active listening, attention giving, empathy, acceptance, questioning, and summarizing. The colleagues at the meeting may ask at this stage, “What is going on?” The classroom teacher will explain Marty’s behavior and the past few days concerning the lack of cooperation and that she witnessed the self-injuring incident in the classroom. The counselor also tells the colleagues how Marty revealed his bullying experiences and how he is terrified of parents and other students finding out his situation. Telling the story of Marty helps bring a wider picture of what is happening.
Stage 2 is the preferred scenario that involves challenging the current views. This brings another way of looking at the current situation and setting goals by identifying where progress needs to be made. At this stage, the helper moves from the problem to action or solution by bringing a picture of what they want or the changes they want for the client’s problems. Therefore, the colleagues asked themselves at this stage, “What do we want instead for Marty’s condition?” The colleagues were encouraged to think about another way of looking at the issue to solve Marty’s problem. The collaborative team members will reflect on practicalities such as culturally relevant resources that will be used to formulate achievable, measurable, and appropriate goals.
Stage 3 is action planning which entails turning the good intentions into actual outcomes. At this stage, the colleagues focus on the goals they identified in stage 2. This is about the possible actions and strategies that will help change Marty’s condition. The question at this stage is, “What might help?” A therapeutic session with Marty will assist in meeting the goals set to improve his condition. The therapist relied on the principles of behavior, cognition, and emotions to help manage the problem situations. Relatively, these will help in psychotherapy integration to help Marty.
