Problem: With your expertise, experience, and education, there will be times when you will need to make professional recommendations to assist service users and their families to make a decision about a specific treatment, option, or course of action. Family members and service users can sometimes be at odds with how to best resolve issues and challenges, and each option can have tradeoffs or risks. Your ability to marshal facts, provide dispassionate information about different options, and navigate the family tensions and dynamics at play will help you communicate effectively with service users and their families. This is a key, senior case management skill you have been developing throughout your course of studies.
For this Assignment, you will demonstrate how to provide unbiased information respectfully and to communicate effectively with the family members of a service users facing difficult choices.
Write a 300-500 word brief, diplomatic, caring, and professional email communication to the family member(s) in one of the scenarios. Need Assignment Help?
In the communication, make at least three recommendations for addressing their situation.
Provide at least one source, per each recommendation, that supports your professional recommendations so that the family members have the information they need to make an optimal decision.
Remember, your goal is not to persuade the family to follow your recommendation. Rather, your goal is to empower the family of the service user to make the optimal decision that fits their needs.
Please use the APA 7th Edition Course Paper template listed in the learning resources to ensure that your paper is properly formatted in APA 7th edition.
Be sure to read this week's assignment grading rubric to understand how you earn points.
Learning Resources: Required Readings
Clyde, C. A. (2020, January 15). Does contingency work in human service agencies compromise practice and practice ethics? An exploratory study. Ethics and Social Welfare, 14(1).
National Organization for Human Services. (2015). Ethical standards for human service professionals.
Weinberg, M. (2018).The politics of ethics in human services: Dueling discourses.
Williams, I. L. (2017). At the pillar of the proverbial golden calf: Sacrificing the need for 'responsible knowing' on the altar of a compliance-based ethic. Journal of Human Services: Training, Research, and Practice.
Document: Communicating With Family Members Scenarios (PDF)
Document: APA Course Paper Template (Word document)
Scenario:
Family Members Scenarios
Scenario 1:
Ricardo is 68-year-old widower who has lived alone since his wife of 38 years passed away 6 years ago. Ricardo has two children: a son, Cristian, and a daughter, Melissa.
Cristian lives close by and visits once or twice a week. Melissa lives farther away but is the primary contact.
Melissa has noticed of late that Ricardo seems more irritable and less tidy in his personal care. He was recently diagnosed with early frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a disease that causes slow deterioration in cognitive and memory functioning. Over a period of time, this deterioration may mean he has full dementia, it will not be safe for him to live alone, and his confusion and disorientation will increase. Most people with FTD over the long run will eventually need 24-hour care. Melissa would like to be proactive and start looking for facilities now for transitioning Ricardo. However, there is some cost involved to find a nice place for Ricardo to live with the kind of care he will need now and in the future. Ricardo has some savings, and these could be used to help with the costs of care. Cristian is less eager; he says there is no urgency, and he doesn't want to treat his father like a child, that he is doing fine for now, and would save more money by staying home with a visiting home care person coming in an hour a day to make meals and tidy up. Ricardo himself is reluctant to move out of his home and is nervous about how he will feel in a facility that provides 24-hour care.
You must write an email that explains to Melissa and Cristian the choices they have before them and how to choose what is best for their father