mod 12
Order Description
You are to select a film or a short story or a book that presents a situation that a social worker might You are to select a film, short story or a book that presents a situation that a social worker might encounter. This might be an individual; it might also be a community issue. Assume you are a social worker that has somehow encountered this situation and that you are expected to do something about it.
Please use the following headers and follow the outline they suggest.
find a film or a book or short story that is specifically about New Mexico and her people). Novels present good possibilities and there are many.
Your overall task is to make an assessment of the situation, the individual, the family/community and the larger environment. This doesn’t need to be elaborate; some of you have MUCH more experience than others with such things. Do it in whatever way makes sense to you. The outline materials should be covered. In general, if you follow this outline in order, you will be safe enough:
1. Description of situation/Presenting Problem (identifying the nature of the issue the people are bringing to the social worker, including whether this is an individual problem, one belonging to a family, a situation at a work site or in a community). This part is brief but needs to contain this essential information.
2. Who is involved? Give some descriptive material about the major players.
3. Relevant History (this will vary wildly with the situation). If you are talking about an individual, give some history of this person with a focus on the evolution of the problem. If you are talking about a community problem – for instance difficulty with maintenance of an irrigation system – a different sort of history will be needed. Pay particular attention to the cultural and diversity issues.
4. Further Important Details. Consider medical conditions, family issues, separations, deaths, etc. Also include financial considerations, poverty, difficulties with housing, diversity, etc. If the problem is more on the community level, who has been involved? what further difficulties have arisen? Anything else it might be important to know about should go here.
5. Your observations. What does all this make you think? Where are you making assumptions and where is the information you’ve collected relatively solid? What other information do you need (perhaps to strengthen your observations and the hypotheses you have created?) and how might you try to obtain it? Even if you are talking about an individual, remember that this person lives in a larger environment, probably a family or at least a heritage, a community and all the macro systems that surround us. And if your situation is more a community situation, then each of the major players has families, backgrounds, and all of them live in communities and larger environments.
6. Assessment. (this will require some imagination on your part). Assume you got some further information that leads you in one direction or another. Make as concise a statement as you can about the nature of the problem now that you’ve begun to assess it? What do you think is going on? What do you think might be a good approach to begin working with this problem? Think about possible interventions on several levels, individual, family, community and larger. Your narrative assessment is most important, with an emphasis on sociocultural issues. A DSM diagnosis is not required.