Back to Contents of "Recording"
Date: 5.11.1999 (Friday)
Time: 11:00 a.m.- 12:00 p.m.
Social worker: R
I. Objectives
After the last session of interview, it seemed that CWL had the intention to correct her stealing behavior and had mentioned different kinds of problem solving methods to replace the stealing behavior. However, I assessed that she did not strongly believe that stealing was wrong. She tried to correct her stealing behavior mainly due to her fear of the punishment. Moreover, she showed that she had started to forget the fearful and painful experience of remand. (Comment: The placement student is sensing that the punishment and the experience of being remanded act as deterring factors to stopping the client from stealing. Thus, the student appears concern about the waning effect of the punishment on the client as it may mean that the client may forget and thus a higher risk of the client committing the stealing act again. She is right to be concerned given that she may find many documents or researches supporting the fact that punishment in itself does not serve as an adequate means to stop the offenders from re-offending. The worker is hoping that the client can gain a deeper learning from this incident, that is, to be able to see that the act of stealing is wrong. She is approaching it from a more moralistic emphasis or perhaps from a focus on changing the client¦s cognitive thinking. Implicit in the placement student¦s push towards the client learning this, is a belief that if the client is able to see this as a moral issue (theft is wrong), then there is a higher likelihood that she will develop a self-monitoring mechanism to stop her stealing behavior instead of relying on external controlling mechanism. However, putting the worker¦s concern aside, she still needs to see that the client and her may well be at different starting points. For instance, they are different in what they want to learn from this incident. If the placement student can identify these differences that exist, then she can work out different strategies to pace with the client and to move the client towards exploring this notion of stealing from different angles.)
Besides, I had phoned her before this session to show my concern for her and also to see whether she had done the homework that I gave to her last week. She said that she only finished two sheets out of the seven. I encouraged her to try her best to talk to her mother. In fact, her relationship with her mother and father was fair. Her relationship with her sisters might be better. However, she was not enthusiastic to talk about her family relationships. Her sense of belonging to her family was low.
IV. Intervention Plan
In this session, I will continue to focus on the rational and irrational belief training for CWL. The causes and the six types of irrational belief (Appendix C) will be explained. I will use the situations that she experiences to discuss with her so as to let her have an in-depth understanding of the rational and irrational beliefs and also develops a sense of right and wrong.
Similar to the last session, I will start the session with an understanding about how she is getting on. In the last session, I had briefly told her the objectives of this session. In the coming session, I will invite her to talk about her expectations about the next interview so that we can set the objectives together. In the last session, I invited CWL to co-operate with me to improve her relationship with her mother. She just followed my instruction. If she had the motivation to improve her relationship with her mother, it would be more effective. I will try to set the objectives together with her in the coming session although I had already set some objectives in each session.
Similar to last session, there were some exercises (Appendix D) for CWL to learn the irrational and rational beliefs through discussing different events with me. In fact, the discussion topic was mainly around her stealing behavior and her relationship with her family members. Through the discussion, CWL will learn and internalize some moral senses (right or wrong). Some problem-solving skills will also be learnt. Besides, the message that will be sent to her is §The action of theft is wrong and one should avoid doing it because it is wrong rather than because of the punishment¨.
Then, I will analysis the communication record (homework) about the family with her. This time, I will invite her to suggest some concrete communication skills with her mother. For example, I will try to invite her to say good morning, good night or hello to her mother and father.
V. Role of worker
I will try to help CWL to disclose more about her thinking. Besides, I will be the information giver to introduce the information about rational belief and irrational belief to CWL. Moreover, I will be the enabler to give the positive regards to her change so as to give her a positive reinforcement to prevent her from committing crime.
VI. Expected Outcome
I. Identifying Data
Name of Client: CWL
Date: 12.11.99 (Friday) (Session two)
Time: 9:30-10:30a.m.
Place: East Law Court building meeting room
Worker in Charge: Student social worker R
II. Objectives:
III. Summary of the Contact
CWL attended the interview on time. I showed my appreciation to her. She handed
in her homework. I said we would discuss it later. I tried to understand the
progress of her study. She said that she was very busy in recent weeks. Besides,
she asked me if she found a job and needed to fill an application form, whether
she needed to report her criminal record. I replied that she needed to admit
her criminal record within three years, but after that, she could choose to
either to disclose it or not. Then she told me that she wanted to find a part
time job.
I asked her if she had the motivation to work with me in disputing her stealing
behavior and in building up a good relationship with her mother. In fact, she
knew that these were the objectives of the last interview, but I wanted to assess
her motivation to achieve these objectives. She had a bit of hesitation about
the objective of building up a good relationship with her mother. I asked her
if she felt that her mother loved her before her remand? She replied that she
never felt that her mother and father loved her. I asked why she thought so.
She said that she felt that her mother did not trust her. For example, when
she went home late, her mother would query why she was late. Her mother suspected
that she played outside. She did not think that CWL would be late because she
was doing something related to her study. She felt that her mother did not believe
her. Then I said this was why I tried to help her and her mother built up a
good relationship. I said that I could play the role of a middleperson and mediate
between her and her mother and to help her mother understand more about her
needs. Moreover, I could also help her understand her mother's thoughts. The
relationship then might be improved. She said that it was fine and she would
co-operate with me.
I started to talk and analyze her theft behavior with her. In this session,
I had a better understanding of the perspective and thinking of CWL concerning
the act of theft. I asked her why she attempted theft and what her thoughts
were when she attempted theft. She replied that she wanted to have the things
but she had no money. She thought that if she stole small things, she could
save the money to buy some bigger items later. I asked if she had similar thought
as a child. Was there any difference between her thinking now and her thinking
in childhood? She said, "yes, when I was a child, I stole things without
thinking and just took the things that I liked". However, she would now
think about the outcome of stealing things. Then I asked her what did she think
about during her last theft in HMV. She said that she really loved the CD very
much and she had not thought about the outcome at that moment. But now, she
was really afraid of the punishment. I asked her if she was scared of the punishment
or she thought that theft was wrong as it made other people suffer. She replied
that she was just afraid of the punishment. I explained to her the concept of
cognitive behavior. When she was cognitively scared of the punishment of theft,
her stealing behavior would stop. However, I reminded her that once the scary
experience of the remand started to fade, she might not be able to control her
stealing behavior because she might be forced by her irrational belief concerning
theft.
However, she insisted that she would not attempt it again. She said with an
annoyed tone that she was okay and fine. Then, I explored her feeling of theft.
I asked her "will you feel guilty about stealing things?" She replied
honestly that she just felt happy or satisfied because she could get what she
wanted. Then I asked, "Do you know your theft behavior hurts other people?"
She insisted that she would not hurt other people because she just stole from
department stores. She thought that the owners of the shops had a lot of stock.
She reasoned that the shelf had ten pieces of goods. She stole one piece. After
a while, the shelf would still have 10 pieces because the shop assistant would
fill up the shelf again. She tried to rationalize her irrational belief. (Comment:
What is the placement student seeing as client's irrational beliefs here?) I
disputed with her through drawing diagrams (Appendix A). I told her that there
were ten toys on the shelf and the price was $500 each. If she took one of them,
the income of the owner was decreased because of her theft. (Comment:
The placement student seems to be rather fixed on using the notion of irrational
beliefs in working with the client on her stealing behavior. However, she has
not attempted to articulate how she is grasping and connecting the concepts
of irrational beliefs in her own reflection and more importantly communicating
it to the client. What is irrational about the client's way of thinking? How
does the client view her ideas about stealing? Perhaps it may make more sense
for the worker to discuss with the client on her view on the act of stealing
and to raise the issue of right and wrong with her. The worker can also share
her view of stealing (if appropriate) so that the client can hear another person's
view on the act of stealing. However, this is more for the purpose of offering
the client an alternative way of looking at stealing rather than conveying that
as the view the client needs to have. Often in practice, if the worker is not
actively reflecting on the process of the interaction or how he/she is engaging
with the client, it is easy for the worker to keep focusing on certain concepts
that may be ineffective in moving the process along. The placement student can
learn to be flexible in her use of theories and approaches so as to allow her
to respond more intuitively (and perhaps simply) during the client contact.)
She still did not feel sorry for the owner whom she saw as having a lot of goods.
If the owner did not let her get the things that she liked, then the owner was
money-minded. Then I confronted her why should the owner bear the loss that
was caused by her theft. I explained to her that nobody had the responsibility
to satisfy her desires. She wanted to get the things that she wanted. She could
use another way and I appreciated her intention to seek a part time job. If
she took things from other people without permission, she stole other people's
income that was earned through hard work. I asked her the feeling of losing
her mobile phone. She argued that it was different because she just had one
mobile phone. If she had 100 pieces of sweets and someone took one, she would
not mind. She was willing to let other people take her things. I joked with
her about her sense of "robbing the rich to save the poor!" In fact,
I tried to relax the atmosphere because she felt a bit annoyed about my confrontation.
Then, I kept on talking about her irrational assumption about the shop owners
while she talked about how better off the owners of these shops were. It was
because she had said, "when you see the beautiful decoration, you know
that the owners are rich!" I told her that it was just her assumption.
Maybe the owners were trapped into financial difficulties. Besides, if everyone's
thinking was like hers and thus stole from the shops, the owners would suffer
a big loss because of that kind of irrational behavior. In fact, she still insisted
her irrational belief concerning theft but she promised that she had to control
herself.
(Comment: From this particular narrative, the exchange
between the placement student and the client appears tense. One can sense the
frustration of the placement student arising from her inability to get through
to the client. This resulted in a series of what the placement student perceived
as confrontation, bearing in mind this might be experienced quite differently
where the client is concerned. For the client, the worker may come across as
`talking', moralizing or preaching at her. The placement student appears rather
pre-occupied with trying to get her message across to the client. She has to
a certain extent, confronted the client's view of stealing with her own view
of stealing. In this instance, their views are different from each other. So
are their concerns. However, it is difficult for the placement student to see
the way the conversation is heading given that she is also rather caught up
in it. When looking at the narrative here, we can see that it seems rather fruitless
to focus on right or wrong from the angle of the store owners or from building
a case for the owners. However, as both the placement student and the client
are standing rather firmly on their own grounds, they are locked in. The worker
may be too caught up in the exchange to retrieve herself and to allow some reflective
space in the process.
Such blockage occurs frequently in practice and by reflecting on it, we can
learn a great deal from it. It is important to reflect on why the deadlock exists,
how does that evolve, what underlying messages are being communicated, how to
be aware of it and the skills to work around it. For instance, it is obvious
that the client does not care about how her act will affect the store owners.
She also sees the store owners as the people belonging to the `haves' while
she sees herself as the `have-nots'. This may have further justified her act
of taking from them. Given the client's attitude and perception, the worker
is unlikely, at this point of her intervention, to get much success in working
on developing the client's sense of responsibility to the store owners. Perhaps
another way of discussing about this issue can be to focus on the client's responsibility
to herself and to the significant others. One thing to avoid is to moralize
or preach especially when working with offenders. With regards to the techniques
and guidelines for direct practice, Sheafor, Horejsi and Horejsi (1997) write
`There is no need to argue the "rightness" of your (the worker's)
choices in life. If your moral character is indeed worthy of emulation, your
client will be influenced by your behavior; your explanation will not be necessary.'
(Reference: Sheafor, B. W., Horejsi, C. R. and Horejsi, G. A, Techniques and
Guidelines for Social Work Practice, (4th Ed), Allyn and Bacon, Boston, 1997.)
This particular practice episode has allowed the placement student to gain insight
into how the client views or feels about the issue of stealing. Equally important,
is for the worker to gain an understanding of herself in practice. This seems
to have been left out in her reflection so far. As pointed out by Ballardie
in Lawson (1998, p195), `It can be uncomfortable for any of us to maintain a
dialogue which may entail hearing from the defendant about their positive feelings
about offending - particularly if we ourselves find the offence/s distasteful
or repugnant. Yet any prospect of change is going to involve ambivalence - the
offender will need to contemplate gains and losses before s/he can make a decision
to change. If we are to help in this process, we will need to know what these
gains and losses are. It is important to practice `stickability' - staying with
what the defendant is saying, managing our own discomfort, enduring the silences,
keeping on the same track and so on.' (Reference: Lawson, H. (Ed), Practice
Teaching - Changing Social Work, Jessica Kinsley Publishers, London, 1998. Chapter
12 - Reconciling the Act and the Actor: Probation Practice Teaching, Pre-Sentence
Reports, and Anti-Oppressive Practice.) It is important for the student to integrate
this evolving understanding (of the client and herself) into her subsequent
intervention by developing more effective and flexible means of working with
the client on her stealing problem.)
IV. Assessment
In fact, when I invited CWL to work together on improving the relationship between her mother and her, she hesitated because she did not feel that her mother loved her. Besides, from the homework, she always said that her mother had problems (it was a word that hinted her complain) in the homework (Appendix B). However, I had no time to discuss with her the homework at this interview. In the preparation, I mainly prepared the work of improving CWL and her mother's relationship. From the assessment, I found that she hated being born into this family. She thought that her parents did not provide her with enough things. In the homework, she said she suppressed her feeling when she was with her mother. She blamed her mother in her heart through using negative wordings. In fact, during my home visit, her mother also used such wordings to nag at her daughters. It was apparent that CWL modeled after her mother's speaking style. However, negative wordings only blocked communication. Though CWL was unhappy with her mother's attitude, she just suppressed her feelings. Besides, she also blamed her family for not being able to fulfill her material desires. It reflected that her material needs were not satisfied and she blamed her parents for not giving her enough love.
She had the motivation to correct her behavior. However, the motivation is mainly due to the punishment. Besides, it is observed that her feelings associated with the remand experience were relatively weaker. I wonder when her feelings associated with the punishment disappear, the deterrent function of the punishment still comes into effect? But in the short term, she still could control her behavior. Therefore, the correction objective should be followed up.
In this session, it was observed that CWL could not distinguish the rational and irrational belief concerning theft well she tried to rationalize all her thinking and shifted her own responsibility to other people. In fact, I thought I still needed one or two more sessions to dispute her irrational belief rather than restructuring her cognitive thinking in that stage. She believed strongly in her irrational belief. I thought more discussions with her to distinguish between the rational and irrational belief were needed. (Comment: Up to this point, the rational or irrational beliefs that the worker talked about were still unclear. The worker needs a little more clarity on this.)
In fact, CWL rejected the intervention of other people. However she was quite willing to see me. She was never absent. Besides, she seldom disclosed her feeling to others, especially at home. However, she was honest and willing to disclose her feelings to me although I found that our relationship was still in the initial period. I wished that I could have a more intimate relationship with CWL in the coming session.
V. Evaluation of the worker's performance
In this session, I had understood more about CWL's view of theft. I found that
CWL was quite willing to disclose her personal feelings to me. Therefore, in
the coming session, I could focus more on her feelings to provide a channel
to ventilate her feeling.
In fact, I can now know about her concept of theft. However, I found that it
was still not the time to confront too much about her irrational belief because
our relationship was easy to break if too much confrontation was used. In the
coming session, I would try to work more on maintaining her sense of the punishment
rather than forcing her to restructure her cognition before she could distinguish
between the rational and irrational beliefs well. When our trust in the helping
relationship is more stable, I could focus more on the cognitive restructuring
task again. (Comment: It is good that the placement student
had reflected on her approach to working with the client on this issue. She
is right in backing off a little on her objective and to start with where the
client is at.)
I found that in this session, I could be firmed about
client's wrong thinking concerning theft. However, at some point of time, I
sensed that she was annoyed by my confrontation and then I tried to show some
understanding and empathy to her. In fact, I had not fully used the material
that I had prepared. I used the tool of drawing skills to explain the concept
to her. I found that flexibility was very important for a social worker when
working with the clients. (Comment: Worker's flexibility is an important
quality to develop in one's practice. Perhaps the placement student can elaborate
on why she came to this conclusion about social worker' flexibility and how
that will be useful in handling this case.)
VI. Follow-up action
In fact, I originally planned to do the task of restructuring cognitive thinking
in the coming week. But after this session, I found that CWL's irrational belief
was very strong. Therefore I found that more work could be done to reinforce
her rational belief and enhance her ability to distinguish between the irrational
and rational belief. Besides, I would provide more chance for her to ventilate
her feeling because when I invited her to work with me to improve her relationship
with her mother, she talked to me with a disappointed tone.
Written and revised by: 17499533 (Student)
Instructor: K S To
Copy Edited by: Phyllis Chee
Commented by: Phyllis Chee
Copyright c 2001 by the City University of Hong Kong. All rights reserved.
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