Question

Charlie is a 14-year-old boy, 5 feet tall and weighing 100 lbs. He had a juvenile criminal history. He was arrested and put in an adult prison for shooting and killing Charlie, his mother’s boyfriend George, who also was a local police officer. George had a history of physically and psychologically abusing Charlie’s mother and enacting physical and psychological trauma on Charlie.

Explain how a social worker/therapist should engage with Charlie and assessed him for childhood trauma.

Answer 1

Social workers are the professionals who work for the well being of the people. Their duties include helping people cope with the challenges. They identify the people in need and try to help especially those who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty.

They are trained to address social injustices that include poverty, discrimination, unemployment, lack of housing, substance abuse problems, people living with disabilities, and domestic violence.

A clinical social worker can focus on diagnoses by providing treatment. They are involved in providing support to people suffering from emotional and behavioral issues. They guide the people to the right kind of treatment and if any therapy is required they help in arranging for the therapist. Their duties include helping the children who are abused and have mental health emergencies. They follow up with the clients to see that the situation has improved.

In this case, Charlie is a 14-year-old boy who is 5 ft tall and has a thin body. He is put in jail on the murder charges and kept in the adult jail, with other criminals.

It says that he was staying with his mother and her boyfriend George who was a police officer, he used to ill-treat her mother and violent with her, he was an alcoholic. Charlie had killed Mr. George and put in the adult's jail before the trial.

Charlie had gone through physical and psychological trauma seeing her mother being tortured by George.

A child suffers from trauma when he goes through violence, scary, and life-threatening events, these experiences make the child upset and feel helpless. Charlie was upset and feeling helpless against George who used to physically and psychologically abusing Charlie’s mother.

In Charlie's case one reason that can be assessed was his witnessing the torture of his mother and the second reason is that he was kept in the adult's jail, he was scared of George and adult inmates and it would have scared him more and jail inmates would have abused him as well.

These abuses are called adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) the children who have more ACES are mentally and emotionally more disturbed and scared they suffer from trauma.

Charlie must be provided protection to see that there is no future abused done to the child.

As these children suffer from depression anxiety it is important to remove these fears from their mind that Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy would help.

It would help the therapist to understand his mental and physical condition and advice how to manage distressing feelings and trauma-related memories. Through physical examination, the physically abused condition can be ascertained.

Together with therapy medication would be required for his physical well being and emotional stability.