Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOeQUwdAjE0

You are the social worker with the child within the video, ReMoved. In your role, you must assess what next steps will be in the best interest of the child, and you will have to present your assessment to a foster care court judge. Given that your decisions will have an impact on the child, you will also need to include a historical context for your professional opinion. The judge will make a determination regarding parental rights, as well as placement options, based on your professional assessment.

1. Discuss and identify the various theories and the components of the theories that need to be considered within your work with the child. Please include specific concepts from your readings or lectures as your support and include at least TWO theories. You must identify and define the concepts and propositions connected to those theories that help to support your assessment (ex: behavioral theory, cognitive behavioral theory, systems perspective, etc.)

2. Be sure to specify the stage of development that you consider is most important within the child’s history and discuss why the stage is important. Utilize theory to support your assessment here as well.

3. Identify risk and protective factors that may present issues in your work with the child. Present ways to overcome the impact of those factors and identify which theories support your perspective.

Readings:

Chapter 3 –  Whitelaw-Downs, S. Moore, E. & McFadden, E (2009). Child Welfare Services and Family
Services: Policies and Practice (8th ed) Boston, MA, Allyn and Bacon.

Chapters 14 and 15 –  Boyd-Webb, N. (2011) Social Work Practice with Children. Guilford Press, NY

Attached: Pecora et al., 2009

Attached: Child Maltreatment and Intra-Familial Violence

The U.S. justice system is often cited as being unjust. Specifically, people of color are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system with over 58% of prisoners identified as African American or Hispanic, despite accounting for only 25% of the general population (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP], 2016). Estimates suggest one out of three African American men will experience imprisonment in their lifetime (NAACP, 2016). The impacts of incarceration extend past release, as a felony conviction limits voting rights and creates difficulties in finding employment and housing. What are the reasons for the occurrence of these racial and ethnic disparities?

In this Discussion, you consider how institutional discrimination may be a factor influencing these statistics and how the intersection of poverty impacts both crime and victims. In addition, you provide ideas about how to address issues related to social justice that may have contributed to the criminal behavior.

Two examples of the impact of race, ethnicity, and/or socioeconomic status in the criminal justice system.

Segal, E. A., Gerdes, K. E., & Steiner, S. (2019). An introduction to the profession of social work: Becoming a change agent (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

• Chapter 13, “Violence, Victims, and Criminal Justice”

Reading Links

http://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/

Chances are someone has asked you to keep a secret at some point in your life. But what if that secret involved someone harming themselves or another person who was in immediate danger? Would you feel compelled to tell?

Thankfully, this question of when to divulge information to outside parties is not a mystery in social work. There are strict laws that govern when a social worker must report to authorities a client’s disclosures. At the beginning of treatment, the social worker should inform the client of these limits to confidentiality in order to avoid any confusion or feelings of distrust.

In this Discussion, you examine the requirements of mandated reporting and your views about confidentiality.

• Describe at least two circumstances when you are legally mandated to break client confidentiality and disclose selected privileged information without the client’s consent.
• Identify a time when someone broke your confidence, and explain how it made you feel.
• Describe how your experiences related to confidentiality have shaped your view on mandate reporting.

References

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0145213406000500?via%3Dihub

https://www.socialworkers.org/about/ethics/code-of-ethics

Cummins, L., K., & Sevel, J., A. (2017). Social work skills for beginning direct practice: Text, workbook, and interactive web based case studies (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

• Appendix B, “HIPAA and Confidentiality Issues” (pp. 299-303)