Assessment Techniques and Intervention Goal Planning

Yellowbird Family Case Study

The case of Jason Yellowbird and his family is an all-too-common one: pregnant with him at the age of seventeen, Jason's mother Carol marries Jason's father, Stone Yellowbird, only to divorce him when Jason is four years old. Since remarrying, Jason has suffered from abuse and neglect at the hands of both his mother and his stepfather, and has been in and out of the foster care system and the juvenile justice system. Currently living with a treatment foster family that is a part of the community's foster care program, Jason is being prepared for returning to live with his mother and stepfather again, something that both of the guardians in this case have resisted before. Developing appropriate assessment techniques and preliminary interventions is vital to helping Jason find some real stability and direction in his life, or he is liable to end up like many other foster children -- essentially alone, despondent, and eventually uncaring, turning to criminality and/or stuck in poverty.

One direct assessment technique that could definitely be useful in this case would be developing an appropriate interview instrument. Learning exactly how Jason, his mother, and his stepfather all perceive the situation will help identify the underlying problems in the family dynamic. An indirect way to come to certain understandings along the same lines would be to ask the three involved to keep diaries that cover day-to-day issues as well as the specific episodes and issues that come up regarding this dynamic. This method may not provide the same clarity as interviews would, but might achieve a greater level of honesty and introspection due to the privacy inherent to diary writing, even knowing it will be read.

Interviews would be useful in this case because it is clear that none of the family members have come to a real understanding of each other or of their own roles within the family as they are perceived by others. Addressing this lack of understanding is vital in developing a full and comprehensive assessment of the family, and interviews are a very direct and fairly reliable way to allow each person to describe their perspective and the issues as they see them. Diary keeping would be useful for largely the same purpose, and additionally would allow for an assessment of overall values and perspectives -- because the diaries would include details that were not necessarily directly related to the case at hand, assessment of the overall concerns, worries, and matters of importance to each family member would be known. This would lead to a more full assessment of each individual family member, and thus a better understanding of the family as a whole. Neither of these two techniques is necessarily better for this family, but rather they are complementary.