Minor Child Sexual Assault

The case In this particular case study, the client is a 15-year-old minor. She has suffered neglect and abuse and has lived with toxic parents and guardians for a while. As of today, she has had residence in 8 separate communities. Her problems started when she was ten in 2010. At that young age she was sexually abused by somebody who was a friend of her family. The man who abused her is now in jail serving for his crime.

When the client was abused at such a young age, she specified that she did not receive any intervention, psychological support or counselling from anyone let alone the Human Services Agency. In 2012, she was arrested and put in detention. Her crime: the murder of an older male schoolmate in her school’s compound. She was detained in the country’s only jail and she specified in her statements that she ended up seeing the main who violated her in the facility.

As per the client, seeing the man left her emotionally bruised. She stated that she felt and steel feels angry, depressed, and frustrated. The client regrets having been involved in the event that led to her being detained in the facility and states that she did not do the incident on purpose. However, she is of the opinion that sharing her experiences would help other girls like her going through the same experiences. The client openly tells of her anxiety, frustration, and sadness at her predicament.

She is also sad that her country’s Education Department cannot assign her to a private or public school setting where she can speak. She says she is ready to visit schools to talk to others about violence and hopes to resume learning soon. As of now, she is out of jail on probation and is involved in community work as the judge determined. She is also on a curfew. The problems One thing that is clear is that her responses and statements are concerning.

They are concerning because they reveal that her emotional balance and functioning is not okay. Statistics show that young female delinquents who have previously been exposed to sexual abuse often end up with self-regulatory problems and being very aggressive (Bell, Foster & Mash, 2006). According to the Ecological System Theory by Bronfenbrenner (1979), how one grows and develops is based on their environment. This theory provides insight into the client’s behavior. Her development and her present behavior have been affected by her interactions with environmental systems.

She has ended up feeling hopeless, feeling not so confident, not having interest in activities she previously enjoyed, and experiencing difficulties making logical and ethical decisions. The client was referred to counselling in a bid to understand the behaviors she is presenting right now and to provide her with the emotional support she seems to clearly need. Her problems begun a long time ago. The client also has a history or abuse in her family.

Her previous experiences and what she is going through right now seem to be affecting how she is thinking and the decisions she wants to make. Client’s perspectives on the problems It is positive to note this case’s client understands some of her problems. For instance, she regrets involving herself in the event that led to her incarceration and stated that she did not do it on purpose.

She also somewhat has a rough understanding of how her decisions have led her to where she is right now and how her decisions plus her experiences have made her not to grow up like other kids. When she stated her feelings of anxiety and frustration at her Education Department’s reluctance to place her in an educational system, it meant that she understood how her current circumstances were limiting her options and that she was willing to change.

Issues and factors affecting the problem system Through a micro-system evaluation, she which looks at her current environment, it was revealed that the client has issues with her mom and that the two have poor communications. Through a meso-system evaluation, in which her interactions with her friends, her school, and other persons close to her were examined, it was revealed that she had very limited interactions with others.

She interacts with groups that have high rates of crime, she is friends with anti-social people, she stays out late, she breaks her probation terms, and she is still out of school. The revelations from the meso-system assessment raise concerns as she is still a young girl who is developing. They are concerning because it is interactions with social peers, schoolmates, and other individuals of generally good character that can reinforce or inculcate positive behavior.

However, despite her interactions with anti-social people and other groups in high crime rate neighborhoods, she is determined to rejoin school and change her circumstances. Through an exo-system evaluation, in which interactions and structures not directly involved with her pathway are examined, it was revealed that the client was angry that her mother was unemployed. She thought that her mother’s unemployment status was because of she was lazy.

And since her mother did not have a job and stayed at home a lot, she did not want to stay at home when her mother was around. Through a macro-system assessment, in which her society’s concrete structures were examined e.g. the cultural beliefs and expectations, it was revealed that her further constantly complains about how she dresses and claims that she is not modest enough.

However much her father talked, she did not change because she thought how she dressed revealed her identity and she had no interest in dressing to please anyone. Not even her father. Her view is in agreement with what Erik Erikson (1993) talks about in identity vs role confusion in his 1993 work.

Lastly, through chrono-system evaluation, in which the client’s behavioral consistency, her psychological functioning, her current environment, and her parent’s divorce were examined, it was revealed that clients like her who at risk of becoming aggressive or being involved in crime usually become the way they are because of parental stress (divorce) or low socioeconomic status (Johnson & Worme-Charles, 2016). The fact that she has not gone back to school may further push her towards delinquency according Bell et al. (2006).

Risk factors and resilience The Ecological System Theory by Bronfenbrenner (1979) and the risk protective approach were used to examine and provide guidance in the review of the client’s resilience and risk factors. Bronfenbrenner’s approach involves the examination of multiple systems to comprehend the things that influenced the client. The theory contends that behavior is often a result of the protective and risk factors that interact with one’s development pathway.

According to Durlak (1998), protective factors are the variables or influences that lessen the likelihood of negative outcomes manifesting from identified risk factors. Examples include the presence of strong support networks, school environments that facilitate positive development and growth, and the ability to solve problems. The opposite of protective factors are risk factors. Durlak (1998) describes them as the variables that heighten the likelihood of undesirable outcomes manifesting. Example of risk factors include negative school environments, peer pressure, negative experiences, and bad family environments.

A resilient child is one who can overcome negative scenarios. He or she develops as expected in spite of facing multiple risk factors. Resilience is brought about by interactions with surrounding environment (Rutter 2007). Multiple researchers have concluded that resilience in young female adolescents can be evaluated in six main areas of functioning; substance abuse, psychiatric disorder, social activity, education, homelessness, and employment (Bell et al., 2006). According to Bell et al. (2006), about a fifth of neglected or abused children develop normally into adulthood because of resilience.

Environmental variables have the biggest effect on a child’s resilience. Because it is through the environment that children can get exposed to protective factors. Protective factors in the family environment include adequate income, adequate housing, family cohesion, and positive attitudes from parents. Protective factors in the community environment include access to quality healthcare, access to quality education, availability of supportive mentors, peer acceptance, and community life (Hepworth et al., 2009; Johnson & Worme-Charles, 2016).

Therefore, it is important for providers to have a dual focus on both the family level and community level protective factors so as to build resilience and coping mechanisms to help adolescents recover from negative experiences. In the present case, the client had also stated that she was frustrated with her situation and the system. She is no longer patient and her father also stated that she no longer has time for counselling. In fact, her counsellor was also frustrated with her and had wanted to stop their sessions.

In the client’s case, her risk factors include exposure to her rapist and other adult delinquents in jail, neighborhood violence, lack of enough support networks, being stopped from attending school, parental abuse, difficult family relationship, and poor parental supervision. Other potentially longer term risk factors include the client’s mother’s bad health, her unemployment, and the client’s own aggressive behavior. Risk factors that could be underlying include neighborhood violence and childhood adversity.

Her protective factors include her newborn sister who inspires her to hope for the future, her older siblings who give her support, her father who supports her emotionally and financially, and her mother who cares for her and is trying to be there for her. Her spirituality is also a supportive factor. She believes in God and she believes that He will give her the strength to overcome what she is going through.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) involves a twenty-session treatment for kids between the ages 5 to 17, who have encountered harsh physical discipline and abuse. It deals with child trauma, child behavioral issues, and parental forced discipline (Malhotra & Biswas, 2006). CBT presumes that majority of individuals could become aware of their own deeds and thoughts and eventually make the necessary positive changes. Behavior Therapy presumes that each and every behavior takes place as an outcome of an external and/or internal stimulus (Zastrow, 2003).

In addition, the client could gain from what is being offered by the therapist. In the course of therapy, she could make a step towards defeating the challenges through changing the emotions as well as problematic behavior encountered over the event. Additionally, this kind of therapy will also help her change negative thoughts and challenge her emotions, restructure and reframe a number of her thoughts, particularly concerning the abuse.

This therapy should also assist her in identifying her biased thinking; build a better relationship with her mom; eventually restoring back good emotional functioning. In this particular scenario, Trauma-Focused cognitive behavioral therapy is also going to be utilized. This sort of therapy is suitable for young individuals aged between 3 to 21 years. It involves short-term treatment including 12 to 25 sessions, about 60 to 90 minutes long, the duration sub-divided between caregiver/parent, child, and child-parent.

Trauma-Focused cognitive behavioral therapy can tackle depression, PTSD, anxiety, attachment and relationship problems, externalizing behaviors, school issues, as well as cognitive issues that might connected to sexual abuse (Hepworth et al., 2009).

Session content is going to include informative exercises and materials based on the issues below: 1) Assisting the parents and client to identify and also manage a variety of feelings such as fear, anger, and shame 2) Offering psycho-education to both caregivers and the client regarding the effect of trauma on kids as well as common childhood response to trauma 3) Teaching the guardians of the client how to identify the connections between behaviors, thoughts, and feelings 4) Coming up with personalized stress coping skills for the parents and client, like deep breathing 5) Assisting the parents and client to converse with one another about the encounters if sexual abuse 6) Assisting parents in developing skills for improving the behavioral and emotional adjustment of the client, such as parenting skills 7) Cheering the client to open up about their sexual abuse or any traumatic encounter wither verbally, in writing, or in any other developmentally suitable way, such as drawings 8) Changing the client’s negative or wrong thoughts related to the trauma, such as the abuse being their fault Social Work Intervention Firstly, a culturally precise definition of child neglect and abuse is required in order to avoid unsuitable interventions, breach of rights of parents, as well as discrepancies in interpreting who is the abused kid and at-risk kid.

Continuing treatment is required to help take the client through that turbulent time; she requires dedicated and consistent workers assisting her all through. This provides some form of stability to them as she attempts to successfully and effectively complete their developmental breakthrough. She could gain a lot from weekly sessions of counseling with particular stress in a CBT approach.

Secondly, backing advocacy of child rights to center attention on child’s holistic wellbeing (in comparison to the present focus that centers around justice for the culprit) and assisting donors, the government, as well as relevant agencies responsible for making sure that the child’s rights are applied.

Thirdly, pushing for certain changes to the entire system, like lobbying for health personnel to give precedence to child care services, widening the medicolegal examination provision to incorporate trained nurses, promoting abuse awareness as a health concern and HIV risk, encouraging changes to the local as well as school administration system that the local government officers and teachers could follow up on cases of child abuse, follow up on the health status of children from unsteady households, and making sure that the child is proactively safeguarded.

Last but not least, working to raise societal awareness of sexual exploitation and violence against kids to create child protection networks within the public as a social worker. Reaching out to as well as empowering community leaders and other relevant stakeholders are key to getting this done. The community might need to ratify the presence of some of the stakeholders, for instance synagogue/mosque/monastery/church leaders to reinforce their capacity of fulfilling their responsibilities and duties in the protection of children.

All works with these stakeholders must make sure that the volunteers are not handling too much jobs and ought to offer training (leadership training included) and systematically establish connections between the official system of government and stakeholders. Strengths Based Approach The helping process focusses on consumer’s abilities, strengths, and interests, and not on their pathologies, weaknesses, and deficits (Coulshed and Orme 2012, 163). Based on this context, client interventions should center on resilience, empowerment, and thee social work importance of individualization.

In addition, it is also proposed that interventions surrounding positive activities that the client loves ought to be encouraged. Asset-improving undertakings such as interacting with others could be utilized as a chance for the client to establish pro-social capacities as well as a path via which the case worker could build rapport and trust. A multi-sectorial tactic could also be utilized as a method of intervention to benefit from what all social partners could contribute to the holistic development of the client.

It is obvious that there exists huge gaps in the systems that she interacts with. With that in mind, interventions should concentrate on reinforcing defensive factors within the household like the ability to trigger her parents. This will have a positive effect and should better the overall interactions of the household. Given that the parents of the client are alive, I am also going to incorporate restorative justice.

In this particular case, restorative justice will offer a family group meeting organized through the authority-exercising members of the family, and local leadership, and in case the community has a Village Child Justice Committee, its chairperson is also going to be involved. This meeting will address child care as well as protection by their parents, and also make them aware of the impacts of their deeds.

Gaps within the Social Service Delivery Child abuse is especially a complex issue that needs a variety of gender and culturally relevant intervention and evaluation to secure the prevention of child neglect and abuse. For the purpose of the issues surfacing from this research, the gaps existing three human services providers: Child Care Homes, Law Enforcement, and Child Protection will be revised within the case’s context. There exists numerous gaps within service delivery, which contribute to the prevalent risk factors for abuse victims.

Child Protection Agency Within this case, the Child Protection Agency is considered as the governmental agency for child protection. Even though its main role cannot be completely established within the boundaries of this particular case, its divided approach in addressing child abuse has left behind several gaps. Though this governmental agency is mainly intended to prevent cases of child abuse, accomplishing this task appears to be somewhat challenging. The.