Ms. Anderson is caring for her 4-year-old identical twin sons along with two older daughters in a small apartment in a rural community. The twins need medical infusion services to control hemophilia, a rare bleeding disorder. Ms. Anderson’s nephew recently died from the disorder and she, as well as the other children in the household, have a profound fear response to any bleeding symptoms the twins experience. Also, the family faces a set of other challenges. The children’s father is not present, nor does he contribute financially. The father’s relationship with Ms. Anderson is strained and can be violent at times. Ms. Anderson does not have any other family support in the area. She recently lost her job at a grocery store and would like to start her own business to allow her more flexibility to care for her medically fragile children. Ms. Anderson has had limited training on how to manage her sons’ disorder and how to appropriately administer the life-saving infusion. The family participates in the Medicaid program for health care coverage, which allows for limited nursing services in the home. The nursing visits are complicated, as the children are often not well behaved when providers are in the home to administer infusion or training. The nurses referred the family to a MSW social worker to address the behavioral and pain/fear issues. The RN and MSW were able to arrange joint in-home visits with the family. The MSW worked with the mother on her needle phobia as well as other long-range goals and referrals for the family. The MSW provided mindfulness-based stress reduction, behavioral management for the children, and grief counseling regarding the nephew. The RN provided the infusion/hemophilia education, cognitive restructuring regarding the needle phobia, and pain quantification. After several months of the IC visit approach, Ms. Anderson demonstrated an increased knowledge base of the bleeding disorder, progress on the needle phobia, and stress reduction via the mindfulness-based techniques. The children became more cooperative. Ultimately, the family achieved complete independence from requiring the in-home visits within 60 days.
Based on the information in the case study, address the following:
Explain the distinct roles of each of the professionals in this scenario. Indicate how these roles are similar and how they differ with examples to support your findings.
Determine which specific factors in the scenario necessitated a social work perspective.
Analyze the specific social work skills the social worker employed in this situation to increase the effectiveness of the IC.
Recommend additional skills, resources, or services the social worker could have offered to this family to improve outcomes. (Think specifically about macro social work skills that could be used to advocate for this client on a broader platform.)
Support your assignment with at least three scholarly resources. In addition to these specified resources, other appropriate scholarly resources, including seminal articles, may be included.
