In this assignment, you are required to write a 3000 word assignment on one of the following topic areas: 1) Choose a case from your current or past workload OR from the attached case studies, and use the case material to critically discuss the use of a p
How to write your case study based assignment
What do I need to do?
First, choose which case you will be focusing on.
Generate a list of the issues that need to be addressed in the case.
Decide which approach you will take – Play or creative therapy? CBT? DBT? BSFT? Family therapy? etc etc. Pick ONE.
Next you need to read relevant literature on the issues raised by the case. For example, what does the literature tell us about drug addiction in young people? Placement breakdown? Ensure that your reading is focused on mental health, and try to choose literature that is relevant to the overall approach you have decided to take.
You also need to read literature on the approach you have chosen – looking at both ASSESSMENT and INTERVENTION. A mix of some textbook and some journal article based reading will be best here.
Also see if there is information on the use of the approach you have chosen for the issues you have identified in the case (for example, what does CBT literature tell us about intervening in drug and alcohol issues in young people?; what does systemic literature tell us about placement breakdown in looked after young people?)
Writing the assignment
You will need to start by describing the case, and explaining the case theoretically. To do this, it may be best to formally FORMULATE the case first. The formulation should reflect the theoretical approach you are taking to intervention.
Describe how the approach you have chosen works – its key assumptions and components. For example, if you are taking a psychodynamic approach, you would need to explain the concept of the unconscious, repression, defense mechanism, you might want to talk about attachment relationships, etc etc. You would need to talk about the psychodynamic approach to therapeutic intervention.
It would be best to link this to the case material you are working with as you go along, though you could also do this in a separate section if you wished.
Finally, you need to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the approach you have taken to understanding and intervening into the case.
How to approach your community intervention based assignment
Start by choosing a community you wish to intervene in (this should ideally be a community you are very familiar with) and a problem you might want to intervene with (this could be any one of a range of problems – e.g. mental health issues for homeless young people; support for young people in transition between schools; support for refugee families; parenting and family programmes; etc etc etc).
Reading will need to be conducted in TWO areas:
1) The problem area in which you wish to intervene (e.g. refugee experience)
2) Community approaches to mental health.
Your assignment will need to:
Describe the community in which you will intervene
Describe the problem you wish to address (with appropriate literature)
Describe how you would AUDIT the problem and resources within the community
Describe how you would plan and implement a community intervention
Describe how you would evaluate the effectiveness of the community intervention (e.g. an action research approach? How would you measure success?)
Critically discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the community based approach.
C
How to approach your training based assignment
Decide who you will train. (Tier 1 professionals include GP’s, school nurses, teachers, social workers, midwives, contract foster carers, youth offending team workers, etc etc etc)
Decide what your training will focus on. This could be pretty much anything mental health related that interests you and that is appropriate to the group of people you want to train. For example, a particular psychological problem (like PTSD, depression, dyslexia, autism, anxiety); an issue (like the psychological effects and how to help in situations of divorce, domestic violence etc; how to understand and work with sibling relationships; how to support children in transition between primary and secondary schools; adolescent developmet); a method (like Protective Behaviours, or Transactional Analysis, or a classroom based intervention for autism)
Once you have decided on your focus you need to read about:
the target professional group you will be training
The issues you will be training professionals in
how adults learn (see Sarah’s notes on this)
For your write up you will need to:
Describe your training programme
Discuss its components (e.g. your use of didactic methods, breakaway groups, how have you scaffolded, how have you mediated learning?)
Highlight the way that you have taken into account the way that adults learn
Critically evaluate the training programme.
