The Strenghts and Difficulties Assessment to Measure Mental Health Difficulties in Children

“This social service delivery system was initially created for the mental health system in order to better meet the needs of children and families entering the social welfare system. As part of the development of this platform in one of their counties, they cataloged all of the social services resources in that area” (Widom, 2001).

Contemporary Challenges in Mental Health Care Provision and Management 2 B73M20 Cohort 09/09 Student ID: 20328

“Nearly 5 million children in the U.S. have some type of mental illness” (Goldberg). It is agreeable that there are many young children that deal with mental illness every day. Schools should be concerned for every student’s well being. Moreover, mental health is a part of a person’s overall “well being.” Therefore, schools need to make the mental health of students a stronger focus and implement plans to keep students mentally well and educated. To help create a positive, mental health aware environment where students feel open to seek help, high school students should be educated on how to be mentally healthy, be given a safe place to seek help, and be encouraged to monitor and maintain their mental health. Mental illness and mental health care need to be a more eminent priority in our society, starting with high schools.

A national strategy for promoting mental wellbeing and mental health is No Health Without Mental Health.

During my clinical placement, I have done the nursing standard 2 which is engaging in therapeutic and professional relationships. An example of one event in my placement where I have done this standard is when doing interviews in my two-week community placement at the Community Rehabilitation in Armadale Hospital. For my reflection, I will be using the Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle (1988).

Questionnaires are commonly used used in Health and social care services,How do you know that they are? in order to gain insight into the views of the services delivered. The use of questionnaires,in some aspects could be of great use, service users will all be answering the same questions, which will make it easier when it comes to analyse the responses given. Although a problem with this is that a service users perception of what quality is, may be completely different to what the perception of quality is to the frontline manager, other professionals and the wider community. Questionnaires are are Repeated Word good way for people to be able to give honest and truthful answers about their experiences of care. However, this is not always the case especially where people are asked to identify themselves. Service users may feel that they have to answer a question in a certain way, or feel that they must say things that are not how they feel in case that it affected the delivery of their care package. In order for this to be avoided, the questionnaire could be in a way that it can be answered with the service users own views without being misleading, and the service user could remain anonymous Poor Grammar without fear of reprisals. For a questionnaire to be of use, it must be in a

In the course of proper identification, evaluation, and treatment, children and adolescents suffering with mental illness can conduct positive, normal lives. Nevertheless, the devastating majority of children with mental illnesses are unsuccessfully identified and the lack of treatment or support services have led to a subordinate worth of life and violence. The Mental Health Awareness and Improvement Act of 2013 (S. 689) is an inclusive bill proposed to address the extensive issue of mental health. By strongly considering the United States’ struggle against mental illness and school violence, as well as utilizing theoretical constructs to examine the Senate’s bill, a social worker can develop a more holistic perspective that can productively integrate practical insights reached from a variety of different points of view.

In this assignment I am going to reflect on a clinical situation that has taken place during my placement. I will be using the Gibbs’ reflective cycle which will include the skills of assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation of care and link it to the registered nurse standards for practice – standard 4 , comprehensively conducts and assessments (nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia [NMBA], 2016). The Gibbs’ reflective cycle consists of 6 stages which starts with a description of the situation and what I observed, the second stage is to describe what were my feelings and thoughts were at the time, third stage is an evaluation to explain what worked well and what was good, fourth is an analysis to link the incident to what we have been learning , fifth stage is the conclusion to talk about what else could have been done and the final stage is an action plan to set out next steps for if it was to happen again (Gibbs' Reflective Cycle, 2014).

List two potential problems that a nurse may discover in an assessment of each age group.

The school special services rating scale – LD checklist was the rating scale used to gather information on students to find out if they match the criteria for students who might have learning disabilities and as a result will need intervention to correct same. The rating scale has eight domains which are gross and fine motor skills, oral expressive language, reading, written language, mathematics, social/emotional, attention and finally other. These different domains have different behaviours under them and maximum scores that are allotted. The degree or severity with which the behaviours range from a low of “not observed” to a high of “observed to a severe degree”. Scores are also attached to the different levels of severity from a low

Mental and emotional health can have interpersonal, and social impacts; I want to provide evidenced-based mental, emotional and behavioral health interventions within the context of families, communities and larger systems, to children and adolescents. My goal as a licensed counselor will be to develop a collaborative relationship where each client feels empowered to act as an expert in developing effective coping skills, manage anxiety, depression, navigate difficult life transitions, and enhance communication skills and relationships. Reflective practice and self-evaluation will be an integral part of my practice. This also means being able to set my experiences, values, privilege, beliefs and biases aside during counseling sessions and allowing the clients goals and needs to take precedence. In order to be well-rounded in my profession, my day-to-day functions will include, assessments, psychological testing, counseling, personality testing, teaching, treatment plans, referrals, coordinate services, case-management, client-family- community education, documentation,

During my placement at the Palmerston North CAFS team, I got to meet many children and adolescents with mental health concerns. I was directly and indirectly involved in CAFS clients’ care, and all experiences I had in the clinical setting enabled me to identify my strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, working closely with a particular client as part of my practice case study, especially gave me an opportunity to practice social work as a beginning practitioner and enabled me to utilise my people skills which I have gained from previous work experience as an intellectual disability support worker. This part of my report will describe my involvement with support for this teen client.

This enabled the development of an action plan in response to the children’s needs and concerns to improve student mental wellbeing. The research questions from this study were “Is the 10 Element Map a useful framework to structure focus groups to elicit children’s views about organisational influences on their mental health and wellbeing?”, “Can information gathered from such focus groups be used to develop an action plan for change at the organisational level?”, “Can this process promote pupil participation in the area of mental health and

This essay will discuss a clinical skill in which I have become competent in practicing. I will use a reflective model to discuss how I have achieved the necessary level of competence in my nurse training programme. The reflective model I have chosen to use is Gibbs model (Gibbs 1988). Gibbs model of reflection incorporates the following: description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and an action plan (Gibbs 1988). The model will be applied to the essay to facilitate critical thought, relating theory to practice where the model allows. Discussion will include the knowledge underpinning practice and the evidence base for the clinical skill. A conclusion to the essay will then be given which will discuss my reflection skills, acknowledge my competence and show my personal and professional development.

The next level - Mental health service level – highlights peer provided mental health services and placement on catchment management teams. Finally, the National Service User Executive - involvement in implementing and evaluating the new mental health policy.