Assessment Item: What Culture Means to Me

Assessment and Logbook Activity

Community agencies

The Department of Communities and Disability Services has compiled a Community Portal to help Australian communities and community groups obtain relevant and up-to-date information.

For a list of links to community agencies around Queensland and other Australian states and territories, check the website.

Once you have looked at the community agencies around Queensland and given it some consideration, complete the following task for your first piece of assessment in this unit.

TASK

Using the Internet site and/or a local agency resource directory, list a minimum of five local or regional agencies that support clients in your locality.

Give a brief description of each agency and categorise the type of issues that they deal with. Use the table below to record your information.

Here are some examples:

child protection
alcohol and other drugs
juvenile justice
youth work
mental health
disability support
accommodation support
a combination of services.

Agency / Service description / Client group

Assessment Activity

Identifying and prioritising the client’s needs

TASK

You are required to take part in a short simulated/role interview (no longer than 5–10 minutes).

Videorecord the interview.

You are to interview a ‘client’ with a range of presenting issues. This is to be the initial interview when you are attempting to identify and prioritise the needs of the client. Use the information in your notes from your learning resource to get you started.

You can use one of the following three scenarios as a basis for the interview or develop your own scenario.

In the video you will need to demonstrate:

an emotionally safe environment
non-judgemental communication
empathy with the client
appropriate body language
reflecting back to the client what you believe to be their immediate needs.

Open: Role play assessment sheet

Scenario 1:

A 15-year-old female presents at your agency very upset and withdrawn. When you interview her, you discover that she is having major problems at home. She is constantly fighting with her mother and when she is at her father’s place she is in fear of verbal and physical abuse. She wants to leave home but is scared her parents will come after her. She is depressed and has suicidal feelings that are becoming more frequent.

Scenario 2:

Carla comes into your community centre when you are on intake duty. She is a 48-year-old teacher who gets up early every day, drives to the boarding house where her 22-year-old son Tony lives, wakes him up and takes him to work. If she doesn’t, Tony, a heavy cannabis user, will never wake up on time and will lose his job.

Doing this daily for five days a week is very hard on Carla: it takes so long to wake Tony that sometimes she’s late for work herself. She also has to be secretive about this because if her husband finds out, he’ll be very angry. He already blames her for her son’s problem.

Scenario 3:

Mary is 18 years old and lives with her boyfriend Mark. Mark is 27 and is employed at a local steelworks. Mary has one child, Jose, 11 months, and has recently discovered that she is 10 weeks pregnant.

Her GP, Dr Jones, suggested that she visit the Women’s Support Centre where you are employed as a support worker. Mary has not told Mark about her pregnancy, as she is seriously considering an abortion and knows that he would be violently opposed to this.

Mary’s GP has known her for many years and he is well aware of the violent home situation she grew up in. Her parents and siblings no longer live in the area and Mary appears to have very few friends; she explained that Mark becomes very jealous of any social contact she has outside their immediate family.

Dr Jones has written a referral note to your centre and (with Mary’s consent) has informed your centre that Mark has ‘slapped her around occasionally’ but she thinks that she wants to stay with him. She doesn’t know how she could manage financially or emotionally without him and she is hopeful that things will change for the better now that he is really trying not to lose patience with her.

However, she doesn’t know what to do about the current pregnancy. Apparently Mark got very violent towards her during the last pregnancy and was not tolerant when she was sick and couldn’t do all the household tasks.