Description
This assignment will walk you through the steps to create crisis response plans, which is a critical job skill for counselors of children and adolescents. Using the Group Crisis Intervention Template, you will:
- Develop a one-time group crisis intervention plan that will help children or adolescents deal with the loss of classmates.
- Develop a one-time group crisis intervention plan to assist their parents and other concerned community members.
- For each intervention plan, describe how you will adapt these groups so that they are beneficial for individuals from different cultural backgrounds and are inclusive of individuals with exceptionalities.
- Use the Group Crisis Intervention Template to complete this assignment. Follow the instructions for formatting your plan, as indicated in the template.
Counselors who work with children and adolescents rarely work only with children and adolescents! They are often asked to help with prevention efforts, consult with schools or other groups that serve children, educate parents and teachers about children's mental health needs, and advocate for changes in communities and schools. Therefore, any counselor must understand how these multiple systems operate and must be knowledgeable about the programs and networks that support the mental health of diverse children and adolescents in the community.
For this assignment, you will describe how you would work with diverse individuals and two different constituencies by developing a group crisis intervention proposal for the Middle Valley Consortium. The intervention will include counseling components, education and prevention components, and follow-up plans to connect individuals to other programs or networks, if needed.
Your proposal is being requested because the community is still reeling from the shocking death of two middle school students, who overdosed on prescription drugs. Your proposal will include plans for holding two crisis intervention groups, one for the classmates of the deceased children and one for parents and community members who are upset by the event and concerned about the growing epidemic of prescription drug abuse among children and adolescents.
Your community is diverse, so your crisis groups will include members from several different racial and ethnic backgrounds. You also have been informed that there is one middle school girl who has a hearing impairment, as do her parents, and one middle school boy affected by a motor neuron disease resulting in orthopedic impairment; he requires a wheelchair. His father is also affected by this heritable disease and requires a wheelchair. Additionally, from previous experience in the school, you know that two of your group members are medicated for ADHD.
You will implement your crisis counseling groups adapting the Group Crisis Intervention plan offered in Counseling Children, pages 610–612; however, you will tailor your plan to meet the needs of your attendees. Your proposal will include the following:
Introduction to Group Crisis Intervention
Discuss why group crisis counseling is helpful for children and adolescents who experience crises and how this meets important mental health needs. Discuss why group crisis counseling is also helpful for parents, teachers, or community members who work with children, using a systems theory perspective.
Counseling Theory
Select a counseling theory that will guide your crisis interventions and state your rationale for using it for this purpose.
Skills Required in Diverse Groups
Discuss the counseling skills and techniques, based on your selected theory, which will be genuinely helpful to both groups. How will you build and maintain rapport throughout the group? How will you ascertain that you accurately hear and sensitively respond to the group's emotions?
Sample Group Outlines—Counseling Phase
For each group, describe the Introductory Phase, Fact Phase, Feeling Phase, and Client's Current Symptoms Phase with brief elaborations of what you as a counselor will do or say in each phase.
Teaching Phase
The teaching phase will differ for your middle school group and your concerned parents and community members group. In addition to teaching your groups about common responses to crises, including helpful and unhelpful responses, you will need to include a prevention component to briefly address substance addictions, including why and how they develop (etiology), how they can be prevented, and how to intervene when a peer (or a child or adolescent) is suspected of using drugs, and where group members can go for further information.
Summary Phase
The summary phase will help support group members going forward. Describe how you will help develop individual or group action plans. Describe how you will inform the group of several hypothetical school or community resources where they can turn for additional help. The resources should be somewhat different for the adolescent group and the parent and community members groups. Including resources that are available in your own community as part of your resources for your groups will help prepare you for your own future!
Assuring Cultural Appropriateness for Diverse Individuals
One responsibility of counselors is to use multicultural competencies to ensure that individuals from all background benefit from our services. In group settings, this can be even more challenging due to differences among the group members. Even group members from the same race have different levels of acculturation, and so might respond to counseling strategies differently. What will you do to remain alert and responsive to needs of the group? How might you need to modify your counseling skills, techniques, and the group crisis counseling intervention to make it culturally appropriate for diverse individuals?
Assuring Appropriateness for Individuals With Exceptionalities
All individuals have the right to receive mental health services that meet their needs. How will you adapt or modify your groups so that children and adults with unique exceptionalities or disabilities can benefit as involved members? Are there legal considerations that will inform your group crisis counseling plans?
Conclusion
Briefly describe what you have learned about how counselors—particularly counselors who serve children and adolescents—need skills to influence community systems, family systems, and school systems on behalf of their clients.
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Explanation & Answer
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Running head: GROUP CRISIS INTERVENTION: SERVING MULTIPLE CONSTITUENCIES
Group Crisis Intervention: Serving Multiple Constituencies
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GROUP CRISIS INTERVENTION: SERVING MULTIPLE CONSTITUENCIES
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Group Crisis Intervention: Serving Multiple Constituencies
Introduction to Group Crisis Intervention
Group counseling is useful in children’s developmental responsiveness to the experiences
of the group and aids in individual sense-building and identity among the children. Majority of
the counselors had issues related to difficulty in verbal communication in both children and the
adolescents. Therefore, the use of group crisis intervention ensures the development of children
communication through the integration of verbalization and activity in one-one-one context. It
develops the free expression of the feeling of children through play and manual activities (Thabet
et al., 2005). Group crisis intervention not only enhances the establishment some degree of
connection among the adolescents but also focus on the reality of the actual event that guides the
expression of feelings among the children. The use of group crisis interventions oversees
children in the development of life skill, coping with different challenges, and managing of anger
and emotions through shared experiences. Identification of physical needs among children is
more comfortable as opposed to the mental requirements. Group crisis intervention meets
psychological health needs through the development of self-confidence, self-esteem, and
emotionally tuned.
Furthermore, group crisis counseling is helpful for teacher, parents, and the society
members in enhancing collaboration in the development of support and helping students. It will
help parents overcome the sense of guilt on the inability to protecting their children. The system
theory perspective application in counseling is useful in enhancing different characteristics
among the group. For example, through knowledge members of the teams are a learning system
GROUP CRISIS INTERVENTION: SERVING MULTIPLE CONSTITUENCIES
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with diverse knowledge and skills that facilitate the production of their understanding (Mele,
Pels & Polese, 2010). Group interventions also enhance relationships among the parents,
teachers, and community members hence promoting open communication and information flow.
This process is useful in data sharing among the members thus helping them in crisis handling.
Counseling Theory
Different counseling theories explain the concepts of crisis handling. The psychodynamic
theory states that the life experiences influence the actions of an individual. It assumes that all
the past experiences form the basis of the current behaviors. According to the model, forces that
determine personality include instinctual needs, reasons, and values and ideas. The rationale of
the technique about the crisis is its development of a free association between the counselor and
the patients, dream examination, and transference which are aspects that are still applicable in
contemporary psychoanalysis (McLeod, 2017). This technique is essential in training of
counselors on behavior handling after a crisis. They concentrate mainly on the assessment of the
past relationship of an individual and the traumatic experiences of a child about the current life.
In our case, psychoanalysis model is essential in analyzing how the memories of the death of the
two students affect the current behaviors of the students, teachers, and community members. The
technique is believed to have a positive effect on the cognitive function of the brain of the
affected person. The free association of a person and explaining of the feelings helps in
uncovering of unconscious events and dynamics of the crisis. Therefore, understanding this
relationship will not only enhance the understanding of the students’ behaviors but also
determining their impact on the adult’s feelings and ability to deal with the causes of childhood
experiences.
GROUP CRISIS INTERVENTION: SERVING MULTIPLE CONSTITUENCIES
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Skills Required in Diverse Groups
Counseling involves the creation of a healthy relationship between the therapists and the
client essential in empowering the ability to obtain the relevant data. Hence, to reach the optimal
mental health, the intentional counseling technique and understanding of the human nature are
essential factors in psychodynamic theory. A necessary procedure for diverse groups is listening
skills. Different groups may exhibit varying experiences after a crisis. Attending, verbal, and
active listening will help the counselor in understanding the life experiences of various groups
and their impact on the current life. Listening skills are essential in indicating that there is
sufficient communication between the counselor and the client. For example, the therapist should
have a clear understand...
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