Assignment
Case Study
Jennifer has been providing support to a number of families who use a respite program for which she is responsible. One of her colleagues, Tim, who runs a similar program is unexpectedly away for a fortnight as he has urgent family commitments to attend to. Jennifer offers to assist Tim by running his program as well as her own, seeing it as an opportunity to develop her management skills for the future. Jennifer decides to deal with the day-to-day administrative tasks and place on hold any urgent issues and new applications to the program, because she thinks it is more appropriate for her colleague to handle these on his return to work.
After the fortnight, Jennifer decides to seek some feedback from her supervisor about how she has managed the situation. Karina, the supervisor, tells Jennifer she is very impressed that she had been so careful in respecting the boundaries between the two programs and that Jennifer had not overstepped the boundaries of her role. Karina compliments Jennifer on her ability to manage two tasks effectively and also to ensure Tim is able to step back into his own role without any difficulties.
A. Jennifer decides to also seek feedback from some of the people she has supported in the program during the fortnight. What is one approach she could use to do this?
B. During the fortnight that Jennifer is running both programs, she runs a training workshop at an inter-agency networking meeting. What are two ways Jennifer could seek and reflect on feedback from colleagues from another agency at this training session?
C. Jennifer's supervisor asks her to reflect on her own performance during the fortnight. What approach could you use to do this?
D. Several of the participants in the training workshop provide feedback that Jennifer moved too quickly through the content and they did not always understand the information. Jennifer reflects on her workshop and decide there was a lot of content that she had tried to cover. What could Jennifer do to improve the workshop for next time?
E. What would be one legal and one ethical consideration that Jennifer would need to make before deciding how to respond when she knew Tim was going to be absent from work for a fortnight, given her own knowledge of her existing work role and job description?