Family Task Based Intervention

Task-based Interventions. If I had to opportunity to work with this family long-term, I would encourage a number of task-based interventions, or homework, for various family members and myself. I would encourage both Kadisha and Anthony to look for employment, and I would encourage all family members, if they were willing, to keep a small journal around to record notes on what is going well for the family, what presents a challenge, and how they can work together for the benefit of the children. My tasks would include 1) researching GED programs and their cost in/around Sauk Village, 2) contacting Kadisha’s AOD worker to inquire about making a referral for outpatient substance abuse treatment in/around Sauk Village, and 3) researching a new

When addressing the tasks that I am responsible for as the worker, I would take notes on the following information: phone number and contact information, name of the person with whom I spoke, parameters of available resources, and conditions of referral. I would then communicate that information to the family by phone or text (their preferred method of communication). For the family, I might use modified “goal attainment scaling” to measure what kind of progress the family has made or not made in reaching their goals. I prefer this evaluation design because it is meant to be a “collaborative process between social workers and client systems… to identify concrete intervention goals and to specify expected outcome levels for each goal” (Miley, O’Melia, & DuBois, 2017, p. 394). The family established their goals together so it would follow that the family would reevaluate them together as well. The goal attainment scaling might provide some structure to guide the conversation and get each person thinking about his or her responsibilities within the

The DCP Investigator, Regina, for instance, appears to favor a ‘tough love’ approach and upon finding out that the client’s drug of choice was crack cocaine spent nearly five minutes berating the client for “smoking an 80’s drug!,” as in, “Girl, you’re 23 years old, what are you doing smoking an old person’s drug?” While I think that Regina was attempting to use humor as a way to connect with the client, Kadisha immediately felt embarrassed and withdrew from the conversation. When Regina tried another tactic—exerting power and making threats—Kadisha shut down completely. Not only did Regina’s approach alienate the client but also it was ineffective at initiating change. Forrester, Westlake, and Glynn (2012) write that, “The key skills associated with reducing resistance are those involved in skilled listening. Workers who seem respectful and empathetic, and who use open questions and reflective statements in order to check their understanding regularly seem to create less resistance; those who take the position of the expert, who try to argue or persuade the client to change, or who are explicitly confrontational tend to create greater resistance from clients” (p. 123).