You are currently employed by, The Love and Hope Center, a non-profit organization that provides crisis, temporary shelter for homeless women with children.

Case Study #3: Bernadette

You are currently employed by, The Love and Hope Center, a non-profit organization that provides crisis, temporary shelter for homeless women with children. In addition to shelter, The Love andHopeCenterprovides, group counseling, assessment and referrals, and legal aide.

You conduct the intake assessments. While conducting intakes, the children of the possible residents are taken to in-house childcare so you can meet with the parent one on one. During the intakes, you are responsible for obtaining demographic information, informing the consumer of the services provided, and getting the names of people who have permission to visit the new residents of the shelter.

Bernadette (she/her) is a 30 year old woman who came to The Love and Hope Center with her 5 month old daughter and 2 year old son. During the intake Bernadette appears anxious and uncomfortable. Throughout the interview, you notice that Bernadette is only answering, “yes” or “no” to your questions.

At one point, you inform Bernadette that The Love and Hope Center provides group counseling for developing coping skills to manage adjustment in life as well as parenting education groups. Upon learning this, Bernadette becomes angry and defensive. She says to you, “what would you possibly understand about my situation, you just met me!” and, “you’re only telling me about the parenting group because I’m here with my kids, you think I’m a bad parent, don’t you?”.

Please respond to the above mentioned case study and answer the following questions as the intake worker for The Love andHopeCenter;

1. Identify and describe three steps that you would carry out as the intake worker at the beginning of the intake interview.

2. What skills would you use once you noticed that Bernadette was anxious and    uncomfortable? Provide two specific examples and describe how you would employ and demonstrate the skills you identified.

3. How would you respond to the comments made by Bernadette? Provide examples of the wording that you would use when asking questions/making comments and include non-verbal communication skills as well.

4. What do you need to change about your interview in order to allow Bernadette the opportunity to provide more information as compared to answering, “yes” and “no”?