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Meagans Law

Meagan's law

Questions and Answers: Meagan's law

Questions and Answers: Meagan's law

Interviewing children requires a unique set of skills to accurately assess but at the same time, not re-traumatize the child. Discuss some of the finer points in interviewing a child. What must be considered to insure that the material uncovered will be helpful to the case?

One of the primary activities of child abuse or neglect examinations involves having to interview children, parents, and others who may have information that can help the case. Interviews with the children can be done to be able to gather information for calculations or to put together evidence; the latter are what people called forensic interviews. Some of the finer points of interviewing the child is first understanding the fact that Interviewing children regarding their physical and sexual abuse is one of the most hard and critical areas in the evaluation procedure (Edleson, J.L.,1999). Unfortunately, it usually turns out to be the most difficult and painful area of the entire investigation. The first things is to make sure that the number of interviews are basically be kept to the slightest questions by having as many of the multi-disciplinary specialists current as they can. In an ideal world this should be done in through a viewing room with a one way mirror, this way the child won't be overwhelmed. The interview may be done by a social worker, psychologist, physician, nurse, nurse practitioner, or criminal investigator. It does not really matter who performs the interview it just needs to be someone that patients and experience.

The following are the other finer points of the interview process.

1. To get the best results, the person doing the interviewer will need to already have some knowledge of the case before they even come in contact with the child. This should involve things like the child's age, name, developmental level, previous revelations, technique of revelation, and outcomes of preceding interviews or examinations, medical history from the past, symptoms or signs that are connected to sexual abuse (Giles-Sims, J. 1985). It is also accommodating to be able to ask who the family members, friends and babysitter and even things like who the child calls "daddy" or the name of the supposed perpetrator (Cole, R, 1997). The person doing the interview also would need to find out about exposure to things like pornographic material such as videos in the home, and other ways the child may have found about anatomy or behavior that is sexually explicit (Edleson, J.L.,1999).

2. Another finer point is being able to understand the format. The basic format will need to have a little rapport building phase, a challenge to regulate the child's developmental level, communication skills, and familiarity of things like truth/lie, and what they believe to be pretend/real (Graham-Bermann, S.A., 2002). Next the person doing the interview will need to go over the child's awareness of body parts and ability to use words expressions for instance on top of, in front, behind, in, under, and on, beside, before, after, first, last, never, always. These questions are routine safety inquiries to evaluate the child's capability to give detail and narrate learned knowledge.

3. Next, they should know that it is important to make sure that the foremost section of the interview by requesting queries that are mostly open ended like: "Do you know the reason why you are here?" "Your Mother told me you have been having an issue with a certain issue. "Has anybody ever discussed with you regarding good touch bad touch before?" If the child does decide to talk it is important that you that the person doing the interview ask as many questions as possible (Graham-Bermann, S.A., 2002). By making sure that there are open ended or attentive or direct questions as likely. Avoid leading questions or placing words in the child's mouth (Edleson, J.L.,1999).

4. It is important that whoever is doing the interview avoid things like teaching the child about sexual activity, trying to correct whatever the child states, or giving judgments that regard the supposed criminal being a person that is bad. Do not even use words the child does not know. Stay away from sentences that are hard. Keep away from questions to be answered by no or yes (Cole, R,1997). It is important that they do ask questions about something that may be hurting to them, because a lot of types of sexual abuse are not only not throbbing, but they may bring on some pleasurable feelings. It is important that they do ask about pornography, and certain type's creams, toys, lotions used, etc. A lot of those that are child molesters do normally have the child touch the adult, not the other way around, so it is important that they remember to ask about that as well (Ross, S.M., 1996).

5. Another Good technique to elicit some information is to include questions or statements such as: There are a lot of things that have to be thought about to insure that the material uncovered will be accommodating to the situation (Graham-Bermann, S.A., 2002). Can you tell us more? What makes you think that? Then what happened? Are there other things you want me to know? What did they say when that occurred? What kind of things did he do with his hands? Has there been anyone who asked you to keep some secrets? Has anyone ever told you not to tell things when it comes to private touching? Do you know what to do if someone touched you on a private part of your body and then told you not to tell? Have you ever told anyone at one time regarding touching on your privates? I understand sometimes it is extremely hard to talk about things that have happened to you, but I have talk with lots of kids regarding situations like these. it's always the right thing to do when you talk to experts; even talking to doctors about secrets is okay (Cole, R,1997). You are not going to get into any type of trouble (or go to jail). Can you remember what were you wearing? Do you know what he was possibly wearing? Do remember how all of your clothes might have come off? Do you remember what it felt or tasted or even looked like? Can show by pointing where it took it placed? Did anything happen with the use of using your mouth? Was there anybody else there? Do you remember the first time it happened? Do you remember where you were when this incident had taken place?

Question 4-2: Describe the major intervention steps from the time the case is reported until the family receives treatment. What special considerations should be made in dealing with the family?

Answer 4-2: Crisis intervention starts at the first instant of contact with the clients. As a result, community synchronization in its planning and application does result in marvelous remunerations to families (Ross, S.M., 1996). Families in just a matter of weeks will be able to achieve progress that is the equal of 1 or 2 years of old-style case management and action. In actual fact, families are most prepared to alter their nonproductive methods to problem-solving throughout a time of crisis.

The following is a model that can be used in the step process:

A Nine-Step Crisis Intervention Model

The following model will be able to provide a better understanding and also incorporate steps from a seven-stage model for crisis intervention. This nine-stage model is to some extent more all-inclusive.

Step 1: Rapidly Establish a Constructive Relationship

In the first step, it is very important that the stress is being placed on crisis worker genuineness, respect, and compassion to clients' emotional state and conditions. Crisis employees will need to listen and perceive for long eras of time (Giles-Sims, J. 1985). As Payer states in Helping People in Crisis, "Listening that is active really does entail listening for the dormant, fundamental, coded message and then looking to see if you have been getting it correctly."

Active listening provides clients a relay good way to be able to develop their own strengths. By supposing that clients are interested, they are maintained in discerning through their answers, which improves their self-esteem (Graham-Bermann, S.A., 2002). "The worker," Puyear makes the point, "needs to makes sure that the client is feeling that something valuable has been done in the first gathering and that there is potential of something that is valuable being proficient in the next." Rapport is improved by viewing admiration and unqualified positive respect for customers (Ross, S.M., 1996). Crisis employees need to begin with the supposition that individuals are essentially decent.

Step 2: Elicit and Encourage Expression of Painful Feelings and Emotions

Annoyance, frustration, and feelings that are related to the present disaster are the emphasis of interference rather than subjects in the previous time. Connections to past catastrophes and boring, unsuccessful replies to difficulties can be discovered at a later time.

Step 3: Discuss the Precipitating Event

After relationship is recognized, the emphasis goes to the family insights of the condition, the sequence of proceedings leading up to the predicament, and the issue that started out the sequence of events (Graham-Bermann, S.A., 2002). Consultations inspect when and how the disaster happened, the causal conditions, and how the family endeavored to covenant with it.

Step 4: Assess Strengths and Needs

The Family valuation of strengths and needs start right after and the goes on throughout crisis intervention. The crisis worker will start to draws conclusions that will regard the family's needs and strengths that are related to the present disaster and, with the family, assesses the prospective for recovery (Edleson, J.L.,1999). Client strong suit are tapped in order to make self-esteem better, while also providing skills and energy that is for problem-solving.

Step 5: Formulate a Dynamic Explanation

This next step really does looks for an explaining not of what occurred, but why it occurred. This is the essential of the disaster issue. The sense of the crisis and its backgrounds as seen by the customers are discovered (Cole, R,1997). Why do they assign that significance or observe it as they do?

Step 6: Restore Cognitive Functioning

In this step, the crisis employee aids the family to be able to identify replacements for determining the disaster (sensible solutions that are toward which the family is interested to work).

Step 7: Plan and Implement Treatment

The crisis worker then will go ahead to help the family in the preparation of short- and long-standing objectives, purposes, and action steps that are really based on what the family has chosen as significances. With a real plan of action, the family does will feel a little less helpless, but much more in control, letting participants to emphasis on action steps (Cole, R,1997). Purposes and action steps are essential to be easy and simple at first, promising client achievement. The family members are accountable for homework or action steps, but the crisis worker endures to advise them, seeking to help discover right resources that are in the community, and then becomes the family's supporter (Ross, S.M., 1996).

Step 8: Terminate

Cessation happens when the family begins achieving its pre-disaster level of constancy. Crisis workers do start to review with the family the hastening event(s) and reply(s) and the recently educated managing services that can be applied in the upcoming (Edleson, J.L.,1999). The crisis employee guarantees that the family is arranged for conferences with, and dedicated to, any essential, continuing public services.

Step 9: Follow-up

Crisis workers will then start arranging for ongoing associates with families and recommendation sources on prearranged days or by mentioning "I' will be in touch with you soon to see how things have been going." (Milner, J.S.,1995) This puts suitable weight on families to endure to work on subjects in a way that is positive (Bragg, H.L.,2003).

Question 4-3. What is meant by a team approach? Describe in brief the roles of professionals on that team and how they could work together effectively. Be specific. As you formulate your response, be sure to include ideas you may have from your outside research and/or life experiences.

Answer 4-3.Team approach is important when it comes down to helping a child. Over the past two decades, the amount of reports regarding child abuse and neglect had been rising up by the minute. This chaos has really importantly increased, draining resources to examine claims effectively (Graham-Bermann, S.A., 2002). A number of circumstances have been the theme of penetrating media coverage. Even though serving to raise public consciousness of the issue, this coverage has also led to a repercussion that comprises burdens of government witch-hunts on the one hand and charges of administration indecision on the other (Ross, S.M., 1996). Whatsoever the insight, there is important external heaviness on specialists to act punctually, yet skillfully and correctly, when confronted with a document of child abuse or neglect. This is why more team work needs to be put in proper place (Babcock, 2004). Teamwork is the gathering off different resources from all types of expert backgrounds.

The roles of the team are many when it comes down to helping abused children. Within the health services the entire member of staff has a duty for making sure that children are being protected as much as they can (Ross, S.M., 1996). It is significant for staff to identify the parts and responsibilities of associates in child protection, nevertheless this does not free them of accountability or answerability in recording or performing on described anxieties regarding a child that could possibly be at risk (Cole, R,1997). These accountabilities can be established in the succeeding: Primary care trusts (PCTs) - Ever since the growth of PCTs in the NHS rearrangement in April 2002, PCTs are taking the planned lead for health service preparation and delivery, counting health service participation in the local area child defense group groups. They safeguard that passable service preparation and delivery for children in need is commissioned.

District and community nurses also play a role that is not mentioned enough. They are the ones that observe certain events or incidents that have occurred to a child inside a household where the child is not really the patient (Ross, S.M., 1996). These nurse really have to be able to report it to the suitable specialists and obtain the provision they may need to constitute statements, attend meetings and in ongoing to visit the family where the patient be inherent in. A health visitor's association with a family is sole (Graham-Bermann, S.A., 2002). Health guests have unusual admission to families during health and growth checks that other professionals may not have. Their sole situation should permit them to be powerful and important players in child- protection shadowing.

Adult mental health services and forensic services also play a role in evaluating the risk that is posed by committers of abuse and in the establishment of treatment services. The knowledge of substance abuse and learning disability facilities can also be necessary (Giles-Sims, J. 1985). Child and teen-age mental health services - Specialists in this arena have unusual admission to children and will be able to classify or may suspect examples where a child has been ill-treated.

Question 4-4. Compare and contrast a Differential Response and a Concurrent Planning. Briefly describe each. In what ways do you see them as similar and different? What are the pros and cons of each? Conclude your answer by sharing your view on whether we should continue pursuing these strategies and explain your rationale.

Answer 4-4. Concurrent services are the one that are tracking the helping of the case plan for a child receiving family reconsolidation services which classifies the child's durability alternate and the services essential to attain durability should family reunion fail (California Child Welfare Services Manual Sec. 31-002). Concurrent planning is founded on the attitude that adults, somewhat than children, should undertake the expressive risk that is in foster care. It undertakes that adults are healthier able to achieve the vagueness of relations and the doubt of an unidentified future than are children, so the emotional load is removed.

Unlike Differential response, Concurrent planning is to be effective, concurrent planning needs not only the documentation of an substitute plan but also the application of active labors that is going toward both plans at the same time, with the full information of all case contributors. Compared to more customary consecutive planning for durability in which one durability strategy is ruled out before a substitute is developed, concurrent planning may provide earlier permanency for the child (Child Welfare InformationGateway, 2007).

Differential response is similar to concurrent planning because they are both involved in helping the children and the families. However, in differential response, there is a CPS practice that permits for more than one technique of first reply to reports of child abuse and neglect. Also named the "dual track," and the "multiple track," or "other reply," this method distinguishes difference in the environment of reports and the worth of replying otherwise to dissimilar kinds of cases (Schene, 2001).

I think that both differential and concurrent planning are both helpful. In my book neither one are better than the other but differential response may have more to offer. For instance, while meanings and methods differ from State to State, difference response usually uses two or more "tracks" or pathways of answer to information of neglect and child abuse. Characteristically, these replies fall into two major groups that concurrent planning does not have:

Investigation. These replies comprise assembling forensic evidence and necessitate a prescribed willpower concerning whether child maltreatment has been taking place with the child or the child is at risk of neglect or abuse. In a differential response system, unlike concurrent planning, investigation responses are basically utilized for reports of the simplest types of mistreatment or those that are possibly criminal (McKay, M. M, 1994).

Assessment (alternative response). These replies -- typically put to low- and moderate-risk belongings -- commonly comprise calculating the family's strong point and needs and giving services that will be able to meet the family's needs and funding optimistic parenting. Even though a formal willpower or corroboration of child abuse or neglect may be done in some cases, it is naturally not necessary.

Questions 5-1. Describe the major distinctions between juvenile and criminal court as they relate to responding to child abuse and neglect cases. Include in your discussion: what do you see as the advantages and disadvantages to each? If you could change anything about the current structures, what would you change, and why?

Answer 5-1. In the Criminal court process, the conduct that elevates to the point of child abuse or neglect can be seen as a crime, depending on State law and the conditions of the circumstance; not all criminal acts, on the other hand, are prosecuted. It just depends on the severity of the act (Milner, J.S.,1995). In the Criminal court process, all of cases do not get addressed as they should because there are some prosecuting attorney's that are not as zealous as others may be, or they are just not following through on the cases to the best of their abilities. Another distinction from juvenile court is that they are not as sensitive to family matters or children as the juvenile courts can be. In the Criminal court process, cases that are classically prosecuted comprise of sex offenses or those that outcome in the death of, or thoughtful wound to, a child (McKay, 1994).

In the Criminal court process, Child protective services (CPS) work closely with them. In the Criminal court process, caseworkers usually are the ones that may have information regarding the family that is dangerous. In the Criminal court process Caseworkers are the ones that get involved by continuously being the ones that regulate whether either the family is fit to have the child in their custody or not (O'Keefe, M.,1995).

In the juvenile court system things may be a little different. Other than the judges and the lawyer, people are finding that the court proceedings are threatening and vague when it comes to the needs of children (O'Keefe, M.,1995). Child protective services (CPS) families and caseworkers that are involved in juvenile court are always facing the intimidating task of being able to understand the court process, and the multifaceted lawful nonsense that goes on in them (Bragg, H.L.,2003). Even though juvenile court systems should be on the child's side, there are cases when it does not always work out in their favor. With that said, it is up to the CPS caseworkers to be ones that need to be capable in circumnavigating the juvenile court process in order to attain positive consequences for families and children so that the child can be treated fair.