Child’s Angry Outburst Management and Family Therapy

General Information and Goals

Presenting the Problem

Mrs. Smith and her husband had problems with their child, who had conflicts at school. Parents could not manage it, as they both worked full-time and could not use flexible schedules. Mrs. Smith contacted the agency, as she received several calls from school that the child was aggressive and might cause harm to other students by fighting. This situation caused conflict between Mrs. and Mr. Smith, as they wanted to use different strategies to improve the behavior of their child. As a result, Mrs. Smith took the lead. Now, she does not feel support from her husband.

Goals

Improving climate and atmosphere in the family by 2/18/2017 by organizing individual assessments and evaluations with each family member (10 individual sessions), evaluating child’s medical condition and prescribing medication if necessary, and organizing family therapy sessions (10 times).

Progress

In the beginning, Mrs. Smith claimed that the proposed treatment would be ineffective. However, when attending individual sessions, Mrs. Smith felt relieved since she understood that she was not the only one responsible for the conflict that took place in her family. Both Mrs. Smith and her husband attended sessions, and it helped them find a compromise and share responsibilities when addressing the behavior of their child.

The individual meetings with the child were difficult to manage, as he showed no interest in these activities. The evaluation revealed that the child had problems with the behavior due to the fact the family members did not spend enough time together. Group sessions united family members, and individual ones with a child helped him find an interesting hobby and become less aggressive to his classmates and teachers. Overall, it could be said that Mrs. Smith and her family met all the set goals, but the behavior of the child has to be regularly diagnosed to avoid the development of various illnesses. The reason for termination is moving to another city due to the husband’s job transfer.

Angry Outburst Incident and Client’s Response

In this case, the potential anger outburst might be referred to as the fact the client was exhausted with the problem (Summers, 2016). In the context of the presented scenario, this situation was likely to take place since Mrs. Smith was feeling lonely and did not receive the required support from her husband. For example, when the long-term therapy that included many stages to be followed was proposed, Mrs. Smith might have an anger outburst.

It was represented by claiming that the actions of the agency were irrelevant since she was not able to resolve this conflict with her child and husband for a long time. Simultaneously, she referred to the fact that the actions of workers were unprofessional, as she clearly explained that no one in her family showed interest in finding a solution to this problem.

Plan for Managing This Type of Crisis in Future

Managing this type of anger outburst is important, as it will help discover the problem from a different angle and show respect to the client (Summers, 2016). To resolve similar situations in the future, the following steps have to be taken:

1. Prioritize and respect the feelings of the client;
2. Allow customers to express their emotions and show their feelings, as it will help understand the actual problem (Summers, 2016);
3. Apologize for causing the client inconveniences and be patient and kind;
4. Show empathy to the client and try to ask questions about the problem;
5. Propose alternative solutions to the client or explain the effectiveness of the proposed treatment from the professional perspective.

Reference

Summers, N. (2016). Fundamentals of case management practice: Skills for the human services. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.