Roles and Skills Assignment

February 3, 2020

Roles and Skills Assignment

Human Services 2990

Professor Sharyse Jones

1. The first role that I feel I have mastered, and I am very good at is crisis intervention.

A. I acquired the skills to be competent in performing this role in my practicum class in 1850.

Professor Diritsky taught us that there would/ may be clients who will go through crisis during

a session and she taught us how to de-escalate those situations by doing things such as talking

calmly to the client and acknowledging the client’s feelings during the crisis.

B. An example that I have of de-escalating a situation is a time where I did a home visit with a

male client, I had named D. This session included D, his mother and his aunt. During this

session we were discussing the client (D) and his manipulative and self-sabotaging behaviors

in the home such as not listening to or following the rules at home of doing his homework

first before playing his game and contributing to family chores. During the in-home visit, a few

things began to come to light such as D’s feelings about his father not being involved in his

life. While his mother was responding to this fact, D got up from the table we were sitting at

and began to cry as well as pace the floor. After a few seconds of pacing, D punched the wall

to release some of his anger. In that moment, I could see that we were beginning to get to

the root of the problem, but also that the behavior that D was exhibiting needed to be de-

escalated and calmed down. I calmly said “Hey D, I can tell this subject brought up a lot of

emotion and feelings for you. However, I need you to calm down and have a seat at the table

with us. If you feel yourself getting upset and needing to calm down, you need to practice

your anger management skills such as taking some deep breaths and counting to ten before

you react.” At this point, D was still pacing the floor, but a few seconds later sat down at the

table with us in order to finish our conversation. He acknowledged that he was wrong for
 reacting in that way, and that he was just overcome with emotion due to dealing with these

feelings.

C. The lesson I learned from that experience was that I shouldn’t be afraid to intervene in

situations like that. I have learned the tools and skills I need in order to deal with the situation

appropriately and I just need to trust my instincts and I’ll be able to figure the situation out

and deal with it in the best possible way.

2. The second role that I feel I have mastered and am very good at is case management.

A. I acquired the skills to learning about case management in my case management class with

Professor Jordan as well as my practicum class with Professor Diritsky. Both professors taught

me that sometimes when dealing with a case and a specific client, you may not always have

all the answers so it’s important to collaborate with your peers or others that are on the case

along with you to learn how to best serve and help the client.

B. During the beginning of the fall 2019 semester, I was assigned my own cases to work on where

I do my in-home visits. This was the first semester that I really had real responsibilities in

dealing with my own clients as opposed to shadowing. In acquiring these three clients, I had

to do the in-home visits with the client and work on assessments with them to determine

what services were needed for my clients and determine what goals they wanted to work

towards during our sessions. I am the case manager on my cases, and I see my clients on a

weekly basis. All three of my clients also have therapists that they see once a week. I initially

had to collaborate with the therapists to see what they had been working on with the clients,

and then once I did the assessments to determine what else the clients wanted to work on, I

would let the clients know what the therapist said to work with them on to make sure it was

still a goal they had. I also make sure I collaborate with and speak to the therapists every week

to ensure that we are on the same page with what we are working on with the clients.
 C. The lesson that I learned from this is that it’s important to collaborate and work with others

that are either on the case with you, or other peers you have that might know the answers

and be able to help you when you find yourself stuck.

3. The third role that I feel I have mastered, and I am very good at is record keeping.

A. I learned about record keeping and acquired these skills at my internship. My supervisor

would always talk to me about the importance of record keeping, especially with billable

notes for Medicaid. Even before I had to do billable notes, my supervisor gave me strips of

papers with verbs that I could use to help me develop my language for when I began doing

billable notes. She would also always stress the importance of making sure my billable notes

were short and concise, but also detailed what happened during my visits. I was also able to

see examples of billable notes from the other case managers that I would shadow, so I had a

pretty good idea of how to do them before I had to.

B. In the beginning of the fall 2019 semester when I was assigned my three clients, my supervisor

had me come in and do my first billable case note with her so that I would know how to do

them on my own. She had me breakdown what happened in the visit and taught me step by

step how to write a billable case note with the correct verbiage, and ensuring that the note

was concise, but also detailed everything that happened during the visit. After a while, I began

to work on the notes by myself without the help of my supervisor and saved them for

Medicaid. In the beginning, my notes were okay but sometimes had spelling errors and didn’t

always detail exactly what happened during the visit. I would often have to rewrite some of

my notes and add more details as well as fix my spelling errors and re-write a new note.

However, by the middle of the semester, my notes were pristine and included everything that

happened in the visit while also being succinct, no longer had spelling errors and I was using

the right verbiage in my notes.

C. From this experience, I learned that it is important to check over your work all the time and

to not rush through something as important as case notes. I also learned how to properly

write a billable case note for Medicaid which is great because writing billable notes is

something that we must work on for my 2860 practicum course.