COU203A-Assessment 2 Brief-Case Study-Week 6-25October2017.pdf

PROGRAM: BACHELOR OF APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCE
SUBJECT: APPLIED COUNSELLING 2
SUBJECT CODE: COU203A
NAME OF ASSESSMENT: ASSESSMENT 2: CASE STUDY
GRIEF COUNSELLING
Table of Contents
Introduction    3
Key Principles and Goals of Approach in Working with Danni    3
Rationale for Grief Counselling for Working with Children and Families    4
Five stages of grief    4
Role of Grief Counselling in Addressing Five Stages of Grief    5
Rationale for Success of the Selected Approach for the Situation    5
Suggestion of intervention or technique to help Danni    6
Behaviour Therapy    6
Family Therapy    7
Conclusion    7
References    8
Introduction
Counselling of children and teenagers is a very sensitive issue. The approaches used by counsellors in child counselling is different from the approaches used for adults. Child counselling is mainly focuses on encouraging children or teenagers to express their feelings through various modes such as through drawing or playing various games. There are instances when a feeling of loneliness and distress often makes a child either isolated or violent. The case becomes further sensitive when a child losses their biological parents or siblings in their young age. This type of childhood trauma needs to be addressed sensitively so that it does not cause any severe impact in adulthood.
As per the case study, Danni used to live with her mother after her father got separation from them when she was six years’ old. At the age of 16, her mother passed away due to cancer, hence for the past six months, she was living with her father and his family, which included her current partner and their 10 years’ old daughter. Danni found it difficult to adjust with the new family and kept herself isolated. This condition shows that Danni has not properly grieved the death of her mother. She needs the counselling, which could help her with the grievance process.
Key Principles and Goals of Approach in Working with Danni
The grief counselling can be done in case of Danni. The key principle of the approach is to address the grief of the Danni as she had lost her mother after three years of cancer treatment. Danni was with her mother during the entire process of the latter’s cancer treatment. She had seen her condition from being better to worsen and then lost her. She then starts living with her father and his family. Since past six years, she is struggling with adjusting in new family, due to which she had failed to process the loss of her mother. The struggle is so intense that she did not even get the scope of processing her mother’s death properly.
Hence, the main goal of using the grief counselling would be to make sure that she deals with the grief of her mother properly, so that she can come out of the trauma she had not addresses so far, which made her reluctant to accept the new family as well as had made her isolated. The goal of using grief counselling is to reduce her pain of loss and helping her in moving forward in life, which seems to be held. Losing a mother at very young age for a child is a big trauma. As suggested by Barle, Wortman and Latack (2017), every person has their individual way of bereavement and handling grief.
It is difficult for adults to handle the loss of loved ones, on the contrary, children have a traumatic stress of loss of loved ones especially parents or sibling. This leaves a scar on their life. Therefore, grief counselling is the best way to address the grief and pain of the loss. As per the case study, Danni’s father wants her to change her behaviour towards the new family and encourage her to participate in the family events. This goal can be achieved only after she processes her grief.
Rationale for Grief Counselling for Working with Children and Families
Grief counselling helps children to cope with the grief and assures that they are able to interact with the families about their feelings. It is a healthy way, in which children learn to deal with the loss. As noted by Worden (2018), grief counselling can be defined as the form of therapy, which focuses on general counselling with the goal of helping the individual in processing their grief and acknowledging the loss in a healthy manner. The grief counselling is done with the objective of encouraging people to express their emotions about the loss with counsellors and family members. It also helps on processing the loss by accepting the loss.
Grief counselling focuses on adjusting individual in life after loss. As noted by Hoeg et al. (2017), the emotions, which are addressed in grief counselling, are anxiety, loneliness, anger, guilt, isolation, confusion and behavioural changes. The...