Social Work and Human Services: Andrea, R. Case Study
Andrea’s family has a history of psychosocial problems right from her growing time with her mother to her current family as a mother and an adult (Real Cases Project, 2007). Andrea can be described as a depressed but highly caring mother who lacks essential support to help her manage her depressive disorder condition. Vincent is a calm and reserved child who is protective of his mother at all times. John on the other hand is less caring and never takes time to understand the suffering of the mother of his own child and additionally only meets with his son thrice a month. Elizabeth is compassionate and caring; she readily proposes to take care of Vincent as his mother suffers from a mental disorder condition.
Both John and Vincent have disabilities, which can be noted as similarities between the two though for John the disability is in his hand while for Vincent, it is in his Autism condition (Real Cases Project, 2007). The history of Vincent’s family is similar to that of Andrea’s family in that in both families, the mothers took care of their children alone, and suffered from depression conditions due to the challenges of raising their children. Additionally, Andrea was not accorded sufficient care due to her mother’s tendency of always staying away from home and a similar case applies to Vincent who is not able to access sufficient care from his mother due to her mental condition that has worsened making it difficult for the child to receive appropriate maternal care.
This family faces various challenges such as the challenge of separation. Andrea’s husband John stays away on his own while Andrea and her son Vincent stay on her own as well (Real Cases Project, 2007). This challenge has contributed to the deterioration of Andrea’s mental condition. The challenge of disability is also affecting this family as both Andrea and her son suffer from mental conditions while John lacks one arm, hence making the family overly disabled (Real Cases Project, 2007). Additionally, the family faces the challenge of finances, as both Andrea and her husband are unemployed; hence have to depend on incomes allocated for the family’s disability conditions and other stipends to survive. The Andrea’s main strength is her commitment to care for he son, despite her income and health condition.
The impact if mental health illness on parenting is extremely immense as it takes a parents mental functionality making them fail to properly mind about the care of their children. Additionally, the mental health illness can even influence a parent into committing suicide, a step that leaves the family at the care of well-wishers, hence, a collapse. In the process of treating this family, I will feel the condition of this mother, explain to her how much I share her challenges and guide her through the options of a better life with less worry of what has already happened to help her cope with her family condition.
Social Work Skills and Intervention
In this family case study, Andrea can be identified as a client when choosing whom to counsel and guide through a mental health treatment process. This is because, she is the one disturbed by the state of her family, as John exhibits no remorse about the state of his family. The main social work interventions I would prefer for this family are; the intervention with family life aspects, intervention top improve the family’s living conditions and interventions to institute legal processes to compel; John to actively participate in the maintenance and upkeep of Vincent. The preference for intervening for family life aspects is always preferred by social workers as it helps counsel and strengthens the ability of individuals to solve family aspect problems (Walker & Beckett, 2011). This intervention will thus help this family understand the need to solve the problems that made Andrea and John to stay separately, strongly leading to her mental state deterioration.
The next intervention as observed by Lindsay (2009) is the intervention to improve the living conditions of a family. Through this intervention process, I will advise Andrea to improve her living conditions by majoring on what makes her happy, which is the care for her son and ignore factors pulling her towards worry and stress. Additionally, I will advocate for legal aid intervention as proposed by Walker & Beckett (2011) to help Andrea have John legally compelled to take part in the process of caring and providing for the needs of his son, hence, easing the burden on Andrea as three times a month is insufficient. Thus, through this intervention processes, I would help this family’s social condition and make them live happily.
In Andrea’s treatment process, I would propose a plan that allows her to starting undergoing mental treatment therapies at the hospital settings before being transferred to her home after showing reliable recovery signs. The treatment process will continue at her home and her son will be brought in at day-time at first and monitored for her ability to provide him with good care. The child will then proceed to staying with her full-time and monitored through a period of three months to help ascertain her ability to care for him. If satisfactory, the court will then accord her the complete mandate to care for her child.
In this case, I am easily pulled to Andrea and would wish to work with her due to her compassionate character that makes her easily mind her son’s care in addition to her good interpersonal skills that help her get on well with her mother and sister. Thus, i\t will be easier to interact and work with her. It will however be difficult to work with Jon due to his reserved and almost remorseless character, which may hinder him from seeing the positive side of the intervention efforts. Through this case, I have learnt that it is a big challenge to raise a disabled child as a single unemployed parent. It is painful to reflect on what Andrea is going through and I would thus propose that families` stick together and share the challenges of raising their children.
References
Lindsay, T. (2009) Social work intervention. Exeter: Learning Matters.
Real Cases Project. (2007). Andrea R. Case Study , 1-7.
Walker, S. & Beckett, C. (2011). Social work assessment and intervention, 2nd edition. Lyme Regis: Russell House Publishing, Ltd.
