Chapter 5 (Engagement and Assessment in Generalist Practice)

Question 1

How do you greet a client?

Answer 1

Greeting a client effectively requires a face-to-face greeting accompanied with eye contact and a handshake as common courtesy. However, always be culturally competent and refrain from addressing and greeting your client in ways that are viewed offensive in their religion or culture. When socializing with clients it is important to initiate a small talk to break the ice, and address the reason for the interview in a form of a statement or question.

Question 2

How do you demonstrate effective attending skills?

Answer 2

Demonstrating effective attending skills requires active listening that focus on both the clients verbal and non-verbal communications. Other attending skills include eye contact, leaning forward, and nodding. However, you should always be culturally competent to avoid any attending skills that might offend a client due to their culture or religion. Attending skills also focus on client’s emotions, feelings, and thoughts to communicate your interest in your client.

Question 3

How do you discuss agency services and client expectations?

Answer 3

Discussing agency services and client expectations requires addressing and assessing unrealistic ideas a client might have on what the agency or practitioner can or will do. The worker should inform the client of all the available services offered by the agency and assess whether they meet the clients needs or not. If clients needs cannot be met by agency, referring out is recommended.

Question 4

How to decide if the agency and worker can help?

Answer 4

Deciding if the agency and worker can assist a client requires accurately conveying what services are available. If services aren’t available that satisfy the client’s needs and are concerned with the client’s problems, advocacy and referring out could be appropriate and effective solutions.

Question 5

How to offer agency and worker services to the client?

Answer 5

Offering agency and worker services to the client require empowering the client to decide if a continuing relationship with the worker or agency is desirable. Client must be given the freedom to make this choice without agency or worker interference, unless they are involuntary clients.

Question 6

How to orient the client to the helping process?

Answer 6

Orienting the client to the helping process is accomplished by effectively and appropriately handling the engagement process. An effective engagment process that models the helping process will be conveyed by the worker through reassurance, clarification, indicating that the practitioner and client will share their respective expertise about the problem, discussing laws, rules, ethical standards, and confidentiality. Lastly, discussing about the frequency of sessions and time and place of meetings is necessary.

Question 7

How to complete required paperwork?

Answer 7

Completing required paperwork includes clients signing contracts, insurance forms, release-of-information forms, and other documents needed for service. The worker should help in this process by explaining the forms, answering any questions, and indicating the degree of confidentiality in which these documents will be held. In addition, it is crucial that workers disclose to clients that documents may be subpoenaed, and all forms in the record will be available for others to see. Although documents being subpoenaed is rare, it is important clients are aware of this fact.

Question 8

What aspects should be considered during assessment in generalist practice?

Answer 8

Aspects that should be considered during assessment in generalist practice include understanding clear the role that environmental stressors play in creating problems encountered by clients, which include micro, mezzo, and macro aspects, focusing the assessment on functioning at different points in the life cycle is also possible, specific problems can be the focus of the assessment, involvement of the client is essential, assessment always involves making judgements with insufficient or incomplete information, consider client strengths, single, clear definition of the problem does not exist, and assessment is a continuous activity.

Question 9

What is the difference between diagnosis and assessment?

Answer 9

Assessment focuses on environmental surroundings (mezzo & macro), outside systems being able to become targets of change, client’s involvement in the change process, and approach to clients strengths. On the other hand, diagnoses focuses on the individual (micro) pathology, and the medical model (focusing on curing the individual).

Question 10

What are the steps in assessment?

Answer 10

Step 1: Indentify your client
Step 2: Access the client-in-situation from the following perspectives: micro, mezzo, macro, and aspects of diversity
Step 3: Cite information about client problems and needs
Step 4: Indentify clients strengths

Question 11

How to achieve goals in assessment?

Answer 11

1. Achieving a clear understanding of the need, problem, or situation that will be the focus of work with the client.
2. Critically recognize the strengths, assets, skills, and abilities that clients bring to the client-worker relationship.
3. Formulate a clear description of the client system (individual, family, support group, social services agency, or a community).
4. Generalist practitioner needs to understand the client system’s interactions with other systems.
5. Practitioner must identify any missing information that is important for better understanding the situation.

Question 12

What are the steps in defining problems and issues?

Answer 12

1. Worker must recognize the client’s unmet needs.
2. Worker must identify the barriers that prevent the client’s needs from being fulfilled.
3. Worker must determine the capacities, strengths, resources, and motivations that are present in the client and/or environment.

Question 13

Define types of problems including interpersonal conflict, dissatisfaction in social relations, problems with formal organizations, difficulties in role performance, problems with life transitions, psychological and behavioral problems, inadequate resources, decision making problems, cultural and religious conflicts, etc.

Answer 13

Interpersonal conflict: These problems involve individuals having difficulty relating to each other. Interpersonal conflicts may involve both communication and behavior. Problems may exist regarding how information is conveyed and received between two people.
Dissatisfaction in Social Relations: Even when no overt conflict exists, people may identify unhappiness in their relationships with family and friends as a primary problem.
Problems with Formal Organizations: Clients often report difficulties with the formal organizations with which they interact. Clients may not feel they are getting the resources they need.
Difficulties in Role Performance: Sometimes, clients will face challenges in performing specific expected roles. A role is a culturally expected behavior pattern that characterizes people having a particular position and status in society.
Problems of Life Transition: Sometimes, clients will have problems making the normal transitions that occur in life. In other words, they will experience difficulty dealing with some major change in their lives, e.g., divorce, having a baby, moving to a new locale, adjusting to a new job, or coping with a loved one’s death.
Psychological and Behavioral Problems: Clients also may experience mental health problems. These involve a broad spectrum of emotional upheavals and inappropriate, self-defeating, criminal, or uncontrollable behavior.
Inadequate Resources: Lack of adequate resources may reflect a number of deprivations of basic needs. Many times, this problem is related to poverty.
Decision-Making Problems: Sometimes clients will find themselves in emotional dilemmas in which they experience serious difficulties making important decisions.
Cultural and Religious Conflicts: Cultural conflicts include discrimination, oppression, acclimating to a larger society, etc. Religious conflicts include religious intolerance, e, g., a social worker may find it a challenge to work with clients who have vastly different belief systems that are anchored in their religious values.

Question 14

How to prioritize problems?

Answer 14

There are approaches for prioritizing which problem to work on first, second, and so on. Such prioritizing is part of the planning phase in the planned change process.

Question 15

Strengths are divided into 7 different categories, what are they?

Answer 15

1. family and friends
2. education and employment background
3. problem-solving and decision-making skills
4. personal qualities and characteristics
5. physical and financial resources
6. attitudes and perspectives
7. miscellaneous other strengths (e.g., athletic ability, musical talent, acting ability, or special interests)

Question 16

What is resistance in assessment?

Answer 16

Sometimes a client will indicate a degree of resistance to the results of assessment. Resistance is a common occurrence among clients who are not yet sufficiently motivated to undertake change or are still coming to grips with the idea they have a problem (e.g., a person addicted to alcohol may object to an assessment that suggests he has a serious drinking problem). Although resistance can be perceived as a problem, it also signifies that the person is strong enough to reject information that he deems as inapplicable to the situation.

Question 17

What problem should you work on?

Answer 17

Generally speaking, problems chosen for the helping process should reflect three considerations:
1. Clients must recognize that the problem exists.
2. The problem should be clearly defined in understandable terms.
3. You and the client should realistically be able to do something to remedy the problem.
Lastly, problems should be ordered in terms of their priority to the client. This process alerts you to which problem you should address first (e.g., client may be concerned with the following problems in order of priority: paying the rent, her husband’s drinking, her child’s truancy, and an overweight condition that is resulting in a number of health problems).

Question 18

How to collect, organize, and interpret client data?

Answer 18

There are at least seven basic “sources of information” about your clients:
1. Many agencies require clients to fill out forms
to provide information (e.g., childhood and current relationships with their parents, siblings, and peers; parenting expectations and behaviors; employment information; current family relationships with their spouse or significant other and children; sexual history; and financial or legal information).
2. As the worker you can obtain much information from clients’ responses to questions during your interview.
3. Obtaining information can also occur during the interview (e.g., non-verbal behavior, conflict between non-verbal and verbal behavior).
4. You can observe the client’s interactions with other people.
5. Information is sometimes available from outside sources (e.g., client’s family and friends, along with any professionals having knowledge of the client or situation, and referral sources).
6. Sometimes the client has gone through psychological and other testing.
7. Your own interactions with the client.

Question 19

Define the DSM-V, Rathus Assertiveness Schedule, and College Alcohol Problems Scale.

Answer 19

1. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) represents the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) official classification of mental disorders.
2. The Rathus Assertiveness Schedule (RAS) is an instrument composed of 30 items that measure an individual’s assertiveness. Assertiveness involves being able to state your thoughts, wants, and feelings straightforwardly and effectively, while taking both your needs and the needs of others into account.
3. College Alcohol Problem Scale is an assessment that measures how often you have had any problems over the past year as a result of drinking alcoholic beverages.

Question 20

What are the family assessments (genogram and ecomap)?

Answer 20

1. The eco-map provides a graphic representation of the family’s ecological system. It depicts family membership and relationships and can help individuals and families recognize their own strengths and areas of weakness.
2. Genogram is another useful tool for family assessment, because it provides a means of depicting a family from one generation to the next. More specifically, it presents a chronological picture of the family, recording such things as important events, additions and losses to the family, communication and relationship patterns, and occupational or work connections.

Question 21

How to provide worker safety in regards to home visits?

Answer 21

Providing worker safety in regards to home visits requires weighing the extent to which you need or are required to make a home visit against the potential danger in which it will place you, being aware of areas with high crime, and doing a risk assessment in regards to environmental factors.