1. Welcome to Unit 5: Understanding Diversity in Practice
Robin C. Cooper, LCSW

2. Announcements Your half way there!!!
Review grade book- your unit 3 project grades are posted
Questions??

3. Review of Unit 4
Apply human service theories to identify, plan for, and assess clients needs for intervention

4. Unit 4-Key Concepts
In your past courses, you studied the relationship between people and their immediate environment (their homes, their town/city). If many individuals in a town suffer from the same problem, it is more likely that other social problems will emerge. For example, if a car manufacturer closes a plant in a town, the unemployment rate of the town increases quite a bit.

5. Unit 4-Key Concepts
Social problems often occur as a result of any one or combination of national, local, family, and individual factors. Assessing each one of these potential influences allows human service professionals to create individualized intervention plans to help clients solve resource or behavioral problems that stem from these influences.

6. Unit 4-Key Concepts
To provide appropriate services, human service professionals must understand the most common problems of that city or town to help clients best. Smaller towns located in rural settings are less likely to have a significant homeless population than bigger cities. Thus, there are unlikely to be homeless shelters in those towns.

7. Unit 4-Key Concepts
Therefore, the recommended intervention for a homeless client who is in a small town is to find friends or family members to provide temporary shelter. If this is not possible, usually a local church can assist. It is important to understand the local environment in order to create appropriate intervention plans. Sometimes successfully linking a client to a service includes advocating for changes in community service offerings or agency offerings.

8. Unit 4-Key Concepts
Clients never have only one simple problem that is complicating their lives. Often, clients face problems that seem so insurmountable that they develop strong emotions such as fear, anger, and/or sadness in response to the situation..

9. Unit 4-Key Concepts
These emotions lead to the development of behaviors that keep the client feeling stuck in the situation. Human service professionals help clients to identify these barriers and help them to create intervention plans with the goal of helping them to become self-sufficient
Empowerment

10. Case Study- Teresa
Assume that you have moved from early into mid-career and are now responsible for direct client care. It is your responsibility to assess your client’s problems in relation to their struggles in their environment (e.g., lack of food) and in their minds (e.g., angry about losing a job). In this scenario, you are a substance abuse/mental health screener for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program at a local One Stop office.

11. Case Study- Teresa
In this office are human service professionals who handle case management, employment training, mental health/substance abuse screenings, and public housing assistance. There are also General Education Development (GED) teachers on-site.

12. Case Study- Teresa
The purpose of your One Stop office is to provide many services clients might need, allowing them to make only one trip to an office rather than many trips to several offices. Your primary task is to conduct mental health and substance abuse screening using the forms required by TANF. Clients cannot receive any assistance from the government until their screening is complete. Unfortunately, many of these clients appear in your office in a state of anxiety, anger, and/or fear.

13. Case Study- Teresa- Scenario
Scenario: Mental Health/Substance Abuse Screening for TANF
You listen to the clock tick on your desk – two more hours and you are free for the weekend. It has been a slow Friday because the weather is nice and it is the middle of the month (no government checks are due out this week).

14. Case Study- Teresa- Scenario
You rifle through the files on your desk as you recheck your paperwork for each client when a mother appears at your door with her six children in tow. She tells you that her name is Teresa and introduces you to her children one at a time, but they are wiggling too much for you to connect any names to their faces. During her assessment, her children sit on your lap, pull books off of your bookshelf, cry, and demand their mother’s attention.

15. Case Study- Teresa- Scenario
She reveals that she is a single parent and has been evicted from her home. Everything that she could get out of the house is in her van in the parking lot. She tried to get into a homeless shelter but discovered that there was a limit on the number of children allowed per parent and she has too many children. Then she asks you if you have any food in your office; she and her children are hungry because they have not eaten for two days. As you move her children from your lap, desk, and bookshelves, you ask her other questions to help you to determine what resources that she might have overlooked.

16. Case Study- Teresa- Scenario
Using your town’s or city’s resources (do some research), respond to the following questions:
List all of the other potential problems that the client might have besides being homeless.
What other questions would you ask her to determine what resources she might have to help you and her to solve her homeless problem?
Using your area’s resources, what services might you add (list the agencies if you can) to her intervention plan to help her to become self-sufficient?

17. Unit 5 No Project Due This Unit Next Project Unit 6 Attend Seminar
Review readings

18. Unit 5 Outcomes Assessing clients using ethical principles
Apply knowledge of cultural diversity when working with clients

19. Human service professionals often face difficult situations that test their ethical standards and cultural understanding. It is in those difficult times that adherence to professional guidelines is important because it removes the emotions that often accompany human services work, allowing for better decision making.

20. All human service professionals are called mandatory reporters and must make abuse reports in cases of suspected abuse of minors, senior citizens (many states recognize this as 65 years of age), and disabled people of any age. While these laws are clear, the reporting of other situations is less clear. Sometimes human service professionals do not know how to proceed when there are multiple problems that present ethical challenges. During these times, supervisors and/or agency policy manuals should be consulted.

21. Human service professionals who work for faith-based organizations often have challenges that are unique to faith- based work. Clients will sometimes expect services to be more personal, occasionally tempting human service professionals to overstep ethical boundaries or become overly involved in the client’s issues.
Demonstrating sensitivity to clients’ differences (e.g., gender, age, and ethnicity) helps build rapport and establishes trust. When clients believe that someone respects their differences, they are more likely to be honest when providing information during assessments or sessions.

22. Sometimes, clients will use language or refer to particular family practices that seem odd or even illegal. For this reason, it is important that professionals develop strong listening and questioning skills to help determine whether unsafe practices are occurring (e.g., to some people of other cultures “whooping” is acceptable because it refers to a spanking though it sounds much worse).

23. Case Study
Diversity in Practice

24. Case Study cont…
Last week, you helped your hypothetical client, Teresa, find stable shelter, food, and transportation. In this unit, you will continue to provide intervention services for Teresa and her children as you learn that there are much more complicated issues involved in her case.

25. Case Study cont…
Scenario: Now that you successfully helped Teresa and her six children to move into public housing (months after the first visit), to find assisted daycare, to find her a job, and to provide mental health services for two of her children, you realize that the family is still not fully stabilized.

26. Case Study cont…
Teresa visits your office late one afternoon as you are getting ready to leave. She only has one of her children, Javier, who is five years old. In past visits, you have noticed that he is the only of her six children who is quiet and in fact, seems withdrawn. “Tell her!” Teresa demands.

27. Case Study cont…
Crying quietly, Javier curls up in the chair and refuses to pull his head up. Teresa smacks the back of his head and yells, “I SAID tell her!” This time, Javier jumps up out of his seat and looks right at you. “NO!” he shouts and cries harder. Trying to make sense of all of this, you firmly ask Teresa to sit in your chair at your desk to separate mother and child and to keep him from being hit further.

28. Case Study cont…
You move to the chair beside him and quietly ask if he wants to talk to you in private. He nods. Teresa agrees to leave and when she does, Javier tells you that his uncle hurt him. After more questions, you understand that Javier is reporting sexual abuse. You leave the office and tell Teresa that you would have to make a call to the abuse hotline. She understands but insists that nothing really happened. She adds, “Good, you can get an officer in here to tell him to stop lying.” You make the report.

29. Case Study cont…
When the police leave, you are more baffled than before. The uncle is really the boy’s great uncle and should not be living with them because he is not on the public housing list of approved occupants for the house. Further, he is sharing a room with two of Teresa’s youngest sons. Teresa absolutely refused to tell him to leave. The police officer will investigate further with the child protective officer, but not that night.

30. Case Study cont…
Teresa and the son return to the home, and the police escort them to ensure that the great uncle leaves the premises. As you leave, you remember that you studied about cultural differences in some of your college courses. Perhaps you can convince Teresa of the danger in this situation if you understand her culture better. You check her file. Teresa was born in Mexico and identifies herself as Mexican.

31. Case Study Questions:
Given the situation, why might Teresa insist that her uncle continue to live with them despite the abuse allegations?
Provide some strategies that can be used to help Teresa understand that while you understand her culture, in this case, it would be better for the great uncle to live elsewhere. Remember to be sensitive to her perspective of the strength of the family unit.
What additional referrals might Teresa and her children need after this incident?

32. Questions?