A case study: Jenny in a foster carer

In this document we will discuss about a case study: Jenny Jenny in a foster carer  below are the summary points of this document:- Jenny is a 6-year-old girl who was recently placed in foster care due to concerns of witnessing domestic violence, irregular school attendance, and lack of food. Jenny misses her parents and wants to go home but also likes her foster carer and being able to share a room with her baby brother. Jenny needs a peaceful domestic environment, emotional and psychological security, adaptability to change, and protection from maltreatment. Information needed to assess Jenny's situation includes attention given to her, social anxiety, educational status and performance, and relationship with parents and brother. Jenny suffers from anxious-avoidant and disorganized attachment due to lack of love and care from her family, causing social anxiety and insecurity. Jenny needs a safe space to express herself and proper exposure to peers for personality development and mental health. The case plan involves addressing Jenny's needs in a sensitive manner, sensitizing her parents to the requirements of upbringing a child, and organizing a group meeting with proper records.      

Assessment Task Three: Case Study: Jenny
Jenny is a 6-year-old girl. She was recently placed with a foster carer as a result
of concerns that she was witnessing domestic violence between her parents, that
she was not regularly attending school and that when she did she rarely had
anything packed for lunch and complained about being hungry.
You meet with Jenny and talk to her about how she feels about being in care. She
says that she misses her mum and dad and wants to go home. She tells you that
she wishes they could just stop fighting and scaring her and making her baby
brother (18 months) cry.
Jenny also says that her career is nice and she likes the food she cooks. She likes
being able to share a bedroom with her baby brother. She says that she doesn’t
like going to school as she doesn’t like change and making new friends. She
wishes she could stay at home and play with her toys.
You are the case worker looking after Jenny and her brother.
1. To ensure that Jenny’s needs and wants are central to your case
planning, consider the following questions:
a. What are Jenny’s needs?
Jenny needs a peaceful domestic relation where she can get emotional and
psychological security (Develop the case plan. 2017). She also needs to build the
ability where she can adapt to the change and does not feel disoriented.
b. What does Jenny want?
Jenny wants a permanent settlement of her family feuds and she wants to
provide her brother with a comfortable atmosphere. Thus, she can spend some
quality time within her family. These are the following needs of Jenny: safe
domestic environment, proper educational orientation, and protection from the
maltreatment, moral and emotional security.

2. You are conducting a needs assessment interview with Jenny. What
information will you need to gather and/or review?
The information that will be needed for assessing the position of Jenny includes
of whether she gets sufficient attention or not in the family. Area pertaining her
social anxiety also need to addressed (Payne, 2015). . Educational status of her
along with her educational performance also needs some attention. The
relationship she shares with her parents and her brother needs to be explored as
well.
3. Bearing in mind Jenny’s needs, and the necessity of involving parents
where appropriate, outline the key steps that you would need to take
to develop a case plan for Jenny and her family.
Step one: Jenny’s needs should be handled in a sensitive manner.
Step two: Both of her parents needs to be sensitised to requirement of
upbringing a child.

Step three: Group meeting with the family needs to organised where proper
records need to be formed.
Step four: proper assessment needs to be done on the available data.
4. As part of the case planning, list three other support services/
individuals that you may need to call on to gather information, or
meet some of the family’s needs.
(Hint: when answering this question, you might find it helpful to
consider the services available in your neighbourhood, or that you
have come across in past experience.)
Her teacher, her friends and her mother’s acquaintance

5. Briefly outline how attachment theory might help you to better
understand Jenny’s situation.
According to Attachment theory, one’s attachment is grounded in the
motivational and behavioural control system that is influenced by familiar
caregivers. Thus it is the parents who play the most important role in the growth
and development of the child. The interpersonal relationship between a
caregiver and the infant is important because it is from here that the child uses
his caregiver as a “safe base” to explore the world around him.
As Jenny is deprived from the due love and care of her family, she suffers from
the Anxious-avoidant Attachment and Disorganised Attachment. This implies that
she is in a position where she avoids the closeness of her family and she
struggles to find a haven for her emotions (Raheim, 2017). Thus making her
suffer from social anxiety and social insecurity.
6. Briefly outline why peer relationships will be important for Jenny.
As the primary relationship of Jenny is much disorganised, she needs to have
that space where she can express herself clearly without any hindrances. Peer
group or group socialization are responsible for the transmission of the culture
and development of the environment where the personality of the child can
explore the dynamics of interpersonal relationship(Crompton, 2017).
Thus having a proper peer exposure will help her to develop the ability, through
which she can process new information and process the entry and exit to a social

group (Reitz). These influences can provide a suitable space for developing her
personality and her mental health.
7. You are conducting an assessment on Jenny and her brother’s
development to ascertain if their development is appropriate to their
age.
Refer to the list of developmental milestones provided via the link
below, and list a social, emotional or behavioural trait you would be
seeking to observe for the following:
(Developmental milestones available at:
http://files.acecqa.gov.au/files/ACECQA/2014/developmental-
milestonesDevelopmental%20Milestones%20and%20the%20EYLF
%20and%20the%20NQS.pdf)
a. Jenny (6 years)
For Jenny I will be seeking to observe her social, cognitive and language skills. I
have to see if she has the ability to make friends or can share her feelings with
them. She should be able to pay respect and empathy to her peers and her
friends. In this way, I can understand if she has a strong sense of self-identity,
where she can express her views constructively.

b. Jenny’s brother (18 months)
For her brother I will be looking forward to his physical, emotional, cognitive and
language skills. I have to see whether his sensory-motor skills and movements
are in coherence. He should be able to self-regulate himself and must have an
attitude to develop autonomy and agency. He must also have proper cognitive
understanding of the things that are around him.
Jenny’s mother, Robyn, has been granted access to Jenny and her brother for
three hours every Saturday afternoon under the supervision of her parents
(Jenny’s maternal grandparents). The children’s court has stipulated that the
contact should not take place at the home of Jenny’s parents, but rather at the
home of Jenny’s maternal grandparents. Robyn confides in you that she has
never really spent quality time with her children. At home Jenny would very
much fend for herself. Robyn is seeking your advice on what she can do with the
children during her time with them.
1. Research three age-appropriate toys, games or activities that you
might suggest to Robyn, to help her plan age-appropriate and safe
activities.
According the situational condition of Jenny and Robyn, dress-up clothes
accessories, and props that assist to pretend-play along with musical

instruments and modelling clay for craftwork will help them recover their
disoriented relationship.
The foster parents are concerned that the day before Jenny’s weekly access
visits with her mother, she appears to be quite anxious and very clingy. They
are concerned about the effects these visits may be having on Jenny emotionally.
You agree to talk with Jenny, but you find that she is reluctant to open up to you.
1. List three strategies that you might use to engage Jenny and gain her
confidence.
I might start the conversation by giving her compliments and never interrupt
while speaking, keeping the conversation open (Cipriani, 2016). I can also begin
conversation by telling her stories by which she can feel more comfortable.
Lastly, I should maintain a positive to her body language, which will make her
feel more at ease.

2. List your responsibilities in this scenario as they relate to the
following:
(Note: you may need to conduct research, or draw on your own
experience, knowledge or notes from previous units, to answer the
following questions)
a. Duty of care/Work Health and Safety
The following will be my duties:
 The first and the foremost duty of care is provide appropriate atmosphere
where a child can exercise his or her rights.
 The significance of inter-personal bond should be realised by both the
parties so that proper and systematic plans could be drawn for future.
Moreover, the importance of work-life balance must also be inculcated.
 The consequences of disorganised lifestyle must be informed.
b. Mandatory reporting
The mandatory reporting is as followed:
 Presence of domestic violence in home
 Jenny’s social anxiety and avoidance to newer elements.
 Her performance in academics and her thoughts related to her brother.
 Future expectation of Jenny and Robyn.

c. Privacy, confidentiality and disclosure
Things that need to be kept confidential are as follows:
 Her mental status regarding her mother.
 Robyn’s disclosure about her failed parenting.
d. Records management
The inputs derived from the interviews were daily managed in the report format.

e. The rights and responsibilities of Jenny and her parents and
carer
The rights and responsibility that I think is important for Jenny includes right to
education, right to mix freely and right to claim her independence. It is the
responsibility of her parents to provide for her needs and requirements. It is not
always the material needs but the emotional requirements that will help her to
develop her personality.
f. Your own rights and those of your employers
My rights in this matter include free access to their family and their promotion of
welfare and dignity. The rights for my other employers include freedom of
expression and right to equality.

3. Research and briefly describe what is meant by principles of
empowerment in a worker/client relationship. Explain how you would
apply this principle to your work with Jenny.
The worker/ client relationship is based on a dynamic force that never ends but
keeps on changing (Bowen, et al., 2016). The principles of empowerment in this
relationship includes self-determination collaboration and democratic
participation and distributive justice. In the relationship status of Jenny and her
parents, these values of empowerment can be effectively used (Cook, 2017).In
this form of relationship model self-dignity and worth of being is instilled and the
person gains confidence, which helps choose better in life.
4. List two client/worker boundaries you would put in place and
communicate to Jenny’s parents when working with the family.
The issues concerning the boundaries that I have come across is related to the
intimacy of the relationship and the emotional and physical dependency of needs
between Jenny and Parents.
Another set of boundaries that I have come across is related to Jenny and her
brother. The limitation was basically related to the communication of their feeling
and their initial resistance.

Reference
Bowen, E. A., & Murshid, N. S. (2016). Trauma-informed social policy: A conceptual framework for
policy analysis and advocacy. American journal of public health, 106(2), 223-229.
Cipriani, D. (2016). Children’s rights and the minimum age of criminal responsibility: a global
perspective. Routledge.
Cook, A., Spinazzola, J., Ford, J., Lanktree, C., Blaustein, M., Cloitre, M., ... & Mallah, K. (2017).
Complex trauma in children and adolescents. Psychiatric annals, 35(5), 390-398.
Crompton, M. (2017). Children, spirituality, religion and social work. Routledge.
Develop the case plan. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.csyw.qld.gov.au/childsafety/child-safety-
practice-manual/chapters/4-case-planning/key-steps/3-develop-case-plan
Payne, M. (2015). Modern social work theory. Oxford University Press.
Raheim, S. (2017). Self-employment training and family development: An integrated strategy for
family empowerment. In Reinventing human services (pp. 127-144). Routledge.
Reitz, A., Zimmermann, J., Hutteman, R., Specht, J., & Neyer, F. How Peers Make
a Difference: The Role of Peer Groups and Peer Relationships in
Personality Development. Retrieved from
https://www.aging.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/Reitz,
%20Zimmerman,%20Hutteman,%20Specht,%20Neyer_in
%20press.pdf