The Case Study of Sarah and Sally
This paper focuses on the case study of Sarah, who is 23 years old and a single parent of her 7-year-old daughter Sally. Sarah grew up as an orphan and she has no father or grandparents. The family is currently on a single-parent payment and a job seeker’s benefit. Sarah is in a relationship with John, who visits them frequently. This family was referred to social services after getting a call about the child being at risk of significant harm. Loud yelling, crying, and banging sounds have been reported at least once a week from the apartment. For improving their outcomes, social workers are thus involved aiding in the protection of vulnerable individuals from abuse, harm, and other adversities, as well as their ability to live independently (Tärnfalk & Alm, 2021). This paper includes the stages of appropriate social work, observation and risk assessment, and challenges. The paper focuses on Sarah and Sally, and efforts have been made to improve their quality of life.
In order to improve their outcomes, social workers are the ones who are involved with the client and/or family. They aid in the protection of vulnerable individuals from abuse, harm, and other adversities, as well as their ability to live independently. Seven stages are involved while doing casework with the client and they are: engagement, assessment, planning, implementation, evaluation, termination, and follow-up (Forrester et al., 2019)
The first stage of social work is engaging with the family. During this stage, I will do a systematic study of the client and their situation that contributes to their pain and suffering (Hadley & McGrath, 2021). Collecting information like the problems that Sally and Sarah are facing and the associated problems that might arise is important. Meeting the client can be confusing at first, but it is important to build a rapport and help them speak freely. The basic skills of a social worker are to accept and listen to their clients’ concerns. At this stage, I interviewed Sarah and Sally, listened to their pain and suffering, identified the issues faced by them, and used my active listening skills to understand the needs of the family. Creating an environment that is comfortable while taking interviews is important (Hadley & McGrath, 2021).
The next stage is assessing and this includes finding the answers to the questions of what are the issues, how they have arisen, and what needs to be done. Social assessment will be helpful to make a conceptual picture of the issue to decide on an action plan. At this stage, I figured out that the majority of the life incidents had a negative impact on the client’s belief system. Sarah is an orphan, and so she has not received any love and care from her family. At the age of 23, when people usually think about their career, she is already a mother of a 7-year-old child. Having responsibility for a child can be stressful for Sarah, as she has no job and she is dependent on the benefits she gets from the government policies (Hadley & McGrath, 2021). Moreover, the child, Sally, doesn’t go to school and is often left alone in her home, which is disheartening. This indicates that Sarah and Sally require support and guidance to improve their lives and manage them as well as organize them in a better way. So the major issues are lack of support, financial burden, no family, lack of education for Sally, psychological support, parenting issues, etc. (Lavee & Strier, 2018).
The Seven Stages of Social Work in Practice
The third stage is planning, which overlaps with the fourth stage, intervention. Thus, I planned to provide psychological support, improve the overall health of the client and their family, and guide them to choose the best for their needs. The interventions thus include helping Sally and Sarah to be comfortable by creating an environment that helps them to express their needs in a better way (Pineda, 2018). Further providing counselling support to Sarah can be helpful to empower her so that she can take good care of Sally. Further assistance needs to be provided to Sarah in identifying parenting issues and coping strategies. Identifying the changes that Sarah needs to make to improve their quality of life and provide care and support to the family is important (Hadley & McGrath, 2021). Furthermore, as a social worker, I can help the client by creating a budget, and managing the benefits and funding. I can advocate on behalf of Sarah to access funds for assistance such that Sally can be raised without any financial burden (Lavee & Strier, 2018). Moreover, schooling is important and so is educating Sarah about the necessity of schooling and providing her with resources that can aid in getting proper education for the child (Hadley & McGrath, 2021). Moreover, as loud yelling, crying, and banging sounds have been reported at least once a week from the apartment, providing parenting education can be helpful to improve Sarah’s parenting skills as well as reduce the risk of child abuse or child harm (Pineda, 2018; Sanders & Morawska, 2018).
The fifth stage includes evaluating the outcomes. It helps to identify whether the goals have been reached or not and thus helps in checking the effectiveness of the interventions that were applied. Taking feedback from the client before and after the application of the idea and asking them whether it had helped in addressing their needs was one of the methods that were used in the evaluation (Pineda, 2018).Through counselling support, financial assistance, parenting education, ecclesiastical support, and guidance, the overall improvement in the mental and physical health of Sally and Sarah was noted (Lavee & Strier, 2018; Sanders & Morawska, 2018). There were fewer or no complaints from the neighbours regarding the abuses. Loud yelling, crying, and banging sounds indicated that the interventions were effective.
Sarah is 23 years old and is the single parent of her 7-year-old daughter. The report of loud yelling, crying, and banging sounds once a week has been made, indicating the risk of child harm. Thus, the Structured Decision Making® (SDM) model for Child Protection was used to assist the workers in meeting the goals of promoting the well-being and safety of the child (Fluke et al., 2022). This will help in identifying the main points in the life of a child welfare case, and the structured assessment is used to improve the validity and consistency of each decision. This model includes several assessments that are helpful for a social worker to decrease subsequent child harm as well as to expedite permanency (Fluke et al., 2022).
Engaging with the Client: The First Stage
Firstly, the intake assessment was used to help the social workers determine if the present report requires a child protective services (CPS) investigation response. This helps the workers determine the best way to initiate an investigation into the reports that need investigation. In the case study, loud yelling, crying, and banging sounds were reported, and the investigation is to be continued. Next is the safety assessment to determine whether the child is safe at home or not without a safety plan (Fluke et al., 2022). The next is the risk assessment, estimating the chances of involving the future child welfare system as well as assisting the investigation workers in determining the causes that need to be continued for the ongoing services. Further family strength and needs assessment inform the planning of the case by structuring the assessment of the caregiver and the child. In the case study, Sarah and Sally required emotional support, and Sarah required parenting guidance as well as the development of coping skills to improve her health and well-being (Sanders & Morawska, 2018; Coatsworth et al., 2018).
The challenges that I might face while responding to the needs and completing the assessment to executing an effective care plan include discussing the issues with my supervisor. This has a dilemma regarding how to ensure that the patient’s confidentiality is not breached. However, one of the major challenges that I might face is encountering highly emotional situations while assessing Sarah and Sally. Remaining unaffected by distressing cases can lead to depersonalization, emotional exhaustion, etc. Thus, in such cases, I need to be emotionally resilient and able to handle the crisis as well as return to the pre-crisis state (Russell, 2018).
Conclusion
Thus, Sarah and Sally are suffering from financial burdens, and Sally might be at risk of child harm. . Seven stages are involved while doing casework with the client. It is important to guide Sally through parenting guidance and help her to change her behaviour towards the child to reduce the risk of abuse and harm. The Structured Decision Making® (SDM) model for Child Protection was used to assist the workers in meeting the goals. Furthermore, it is important to provide counselling to both Sally and Sarah so that they get psychological support and develop communication skills that contribute to their improved overall health. With proper care, love, support, and guidance, the family can benefit both physically and mentally.
References
Coatsworth, J. D., Timpe, Z., Nix, R. L., Duncan, L. G., & Greenberg, M. T. (2018). Changes in mindful parenting: Associations with changes in parenting, parent–youth relationship quality, and youth behavior. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, 9(4), 511-529. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/701148
Fluke, J. D., Bauman, D. J., Dalgleish, L. I., & Kern, H. D. (2022). Decisions to protect children: A decision-making ecology. In Handbook of child maltreatment (pp. 611-626). Springer, Cham. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-82479-2_31
Forrester, D., Westlake, D., Killian, M., Antonopolou, V., McCann, M., Thurnham, A., … & Hutchison, D. (2019). What is the relationship between worker skills and outcomes for families in child and family social work?. The British Journal of Social Work, 49(8), 2148-2167. https://academic.oup.com/bjsw/article-abstract/49/8/2148/5303670
Hadley, R., & McGrath, M. (2021). When social services are local: the Normanton experience. Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003197638/social-services-local-roger-hadley-morag-mcgrath
Lavee, E., & Strier, R. (2018). Social workers’ emotional labour with families in poverty: Neoliberal fatigue?. Child & Family Social Work, 23(3), 504-512. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cfs.12443
Pineda, E. (2018). Factors associated with child welfare social worker retention. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/691/
Russell, M. (2018). Challenge and complexity: Implementing the principal child and family social worker role in England (Doctoral dissertation, Cardiff University). https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/117043/12/1266401%20Marion%20Russell%20117043%20DPR.pdf
Sanders, M. R., & Morawska, A. (Eds.). (2018). Handbook of parenting and child development across the lifespan. New York: Springer. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-319-94598-9.pdf
Tärnfalk, M., & Alm, C. (2021). Social worker motivations and organisational prerequisites for care of children who commit crimes–the best interests of the child or the protection of society?. European Journal of Social Work, 24(1), 21-33. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13691457.2019.1585334
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