Assignment Code: MSW-016/TMA/2022-23

Course Code: MSW-016

Assignment Name: Fields of Counselling

Year: 2022-2023

Verification Status: Verified by Professor

Answer all the five questions. All questions carry equal marks. Answers to question no. 1 and 2 should not exceed 600 words each.

Q1) Why are family courts needed? What are the main issues in family?

Ans) The Family Courts Act contains six chapters. Chapter one contains the usual section relating to Short Title and Definitions. Chapter two states about establishment of Family Courts, appointment of Judges, association of Social Welfare Agencies, Counsellors, Officers, and the other employees of Family courts. Chapter three is regarding Jurisdiction of Family Courts. Chapter four deals with the procedure. Chapter five is regarding appeals and the last chapter is regarding appeals and the last chapter is regarding Miscellaneous provisions.

Main Issues in the Family

Understanding Family Diversity: From ancient times, each community had a clear image of what a normal family should be like. Not every family could meet those standards, but most did. In pre-industrial societies, the family was the main economic unit, and it was hard to subsist without them. Parents or other family members arranged marriages, and family needs trumped individual needs. Divorce was difficult or impossible because marriage was a family duty. The father or oldest male controlled the family's assets.

The Passing of Joint Family System: Since ancient times, India has had a joint family arrangement. The 20th century saw big family changes. The conventional family arrangement is fading from urban life due to massive changes. Over 35% of households are led by people under 50. The advent of financially independent careers for men and women who are confident in making their own decisions and want individual achievement has contributed to joint family breakdown. Due to the emergence of nuclear families, familial disagreement escalated to physical violence, death, separation, and divorce.

Changes in Authority Structure: Once, family elders, or Karta in Hindi, held the most power. The family generally respected the father. Women deferred to the patriarch's wife. Women's role in the household depends on their husbands'. Family members expected young women to be obedient. Self-assured parenting was sacrilege. Widows and those spurned by their husbands had a roof over their heads but were mute.

Changes in Marital Practices: Traditional Indian norms, especially among Hindus, supported early and universal marriage for women. Today, marriages require women's consent. In many Indian societies, family members marry. Women are breaking this barrier and making their own judgments. Family troubles result. Muslims legalise polygamy. Most women in today's environment are uncomfortable with this behaviour.

Dissolution of Marriage: In India, divorce has traditionally been infrequent. In marriage crises, caste, community, and kinsmen tended to dominate. Social standards and public opinion were respected and feared. Implicit community authority is supreme. Individual decision has always followed public mood. Hindu weddings were sacraments. Female morality was likewise highly prized.

Dowry: Dowry is one of India's most serious social ills. Dowry or bridegroom price is a large sum of money with or without tangible assets transferred by the bride's family to her prospective spouse before the wedding. Dowry has caused family problems, including abuse and death of girls. The Indian government passed the Dowry Prohibition Act in 1961 and revised it in 1986, but the problem remains.

Domestic Tension and Violence: Males commit most domestic violence. Women and children are targets. Two out of five married women reported being struck, kicked, beaten, or slapped by their spouses, according to an international poll. The problem exists in all social strata worldwide, although upper-class women are reluctant to discuss it. Physical aggression has physical and mental impacts and causes divorces. In today's world, wives abuse their husbands by utilising anti-dowry and domestic violence laws, which is a kind of harassment for males.

Problems of Children: Problem or conflict families often abuse their children physically and emotionally. If a child has a physical or psychiatric disorder, it might cause serious family problems since parents can't handle the mental stress. Multifaceted childhood issues cause family troubles. A difficulty with a child can cause a family to break up. They're the largest family breakdown sufferers.

Problems of the Elderly: The family is confronting a new dilemma due to demographic change. Life expectancy may be a 20th-century accomplishment. It's one of India's biggest challenges in the 21st century. In 50 years, the elderly population has quadrupled. Younger generations don't have a good relationship with parents anymore. They feel their privacy is invaded by geriatric health needs. This is a big concern in Kerala. More parents are seeking support and protection from family court and other government authorities.

Q2) Define stress. Explain the models and techniques of stress management.

Ans) A scenario that a person perceives as demanding or hazardous to their well-being can cause them to adopt the response known as stress.

Models of Stress Management

1. Transactional Model: It is first required to determine the elements that are crucial to a person controlling their stress and to discover the intervention techniques that successfully target these factors in order to build an effective stress management programme. In order to understand stress, Lazarus and Folkman emphasised the interaction between people and their surroundings. According to the paradigm, stress may not actually be a stressor if the individual experiencing it does not see it as a threat but rather as something beneficial or even challenging.

2. Health Realization/Innate Health Model: The health realization/innate health paradigm of stress was created by R.C. Mills. This stress model is based on the notion that the presence of a potential stressor does not always result in stress. The health realisation model places more emphasis on the nature of thought than on how an individual evaluates so-called stressors in relation to his or her own coping mechanisms.

Techniques of Stress Management

Autogenic Training: The German psychiatrist Johannes Heinrich Schultz created the relaxing method known as autogenic training in 1932. The method calls for daily bouts of practise lasting about 15 minutes, typically in the morning, at lunch, and in the evening. The practitioner will repeat a series of relaxing visualisations throughout each session. A position from a list of suggested postures can be used to practise each session.

1. Cognitive Therapy: American psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck created cognitive therapy in 1960. By detecting and altering faulty thinking, acting, and emotional responses, cognitive therapy aims to assist the client in overcoming challenges. This include assisting individuals in learning how to alter beliefs, recognise skewed thinking, interact with people in new ways, and alter behaviours.

2. Self-Hypnosis: It is a useful and successful method for deep relaxation. Depending on what one wishes to accomplish, one can use it with or without affirmations. The first step is to locate a seat that is comfortable for you. The next step is to try to relax your muscles while closing your eyes. Using images and visualisation is a useful method for accomplishing this. Affirmations can then be used as a form of suggestion.

3. Exercise: Exercise is essential for keeping one's body physically fit and can help one achieve and maintain a healthy weight, healthy bone density, muscle strength, and joint mobility, as well as promote physiological wellbeing, lower their risk of surgery, and boost their immune system. Cortisol levels are also lowered by exercise. Stress hormone cortisol causes fat to accumulate in the abdomen area, making weight loss challenging.

4. Developing a Hobby: A hobby is an interest or activity that is pursued for enjoyment, usually in one's free time. We require some form of natural outlet in order to help us deal with the stress we are experiencing. Taking up a pastime is a great method to do this. They assist in transporting us to a different reality where any issues we may be having on the outside do not exist.

5. Meditation: Any of a family of practises in which the practitioner develops mental discipline or self-indulges a state of awareness in order to reap benefits is referred to as meditation. A person tries to focus their mind during meditation by rejecting all other thoughts and things in order to concentrate on one specific item or idea.

6. Yoga Nidra: The state that arises when people practise meditation is similar to sleep. Along with yoga, dream psychology, and guided visualisation techniques, it also covers relaxation and meditation. Yoga relaxation has been shown to lessen the symptoms of the autonomic nervous system.

7. Listening to Relaxing Music: Music may do wonders for reducing stress. Everyone has distinct musical preferences. Always an excellent healer, music. The impact of music as a mood enhancer and stress reliever is enormous and multifaceted.

Q3) Answer any two of the following questions in about 300 words each: 10x2

a) Describe the importance and stages of parent counselling in the field of disability.

Ans) Every parent wants their child to be normal and healthy. The successes a child with a disability can make with the correct instruction and schooling are often unknown to parents. In order to assist the parents in effectively resolving the situation, counselling is essential as part of the overall management strategy. The specific needs of the child or adults with disabilities and their family dictate the counselling’s main points. The following are the stages of counselling for parents of children or adults with disabilities:

Stage 1: Inform the audience of the child's condition:

1. The parents should be informed in plain terms of the child's actual situation.

2. Counselling sessions need to be long enough.

3. Parents should not be misled, given misleading information, or given false hope.

4. The parents must be given information about professional assistance for addressing concomitant disorders like fits, ADHD, or other disabilities.

Stage 2: Help the parents to develop right attitudes towards their disabled Child. Some even feel that nothing could be done for such a child.

1. The counsellor should provide accurate information on the nature, causes, and management of disabled children or adults.

2. Some parents mistreat their crippled child. Overprotection or rejection may cause this.

3. Overprotection, or protecting the child from tough situations or doing practically everything for him before he tries, hampers the child's growth.

4. Rejecting and ignoring a youngster should be altered so he can be taught systematically.

5. Some parents expect their child to learn or achieve above his capacity. The child may become frustrated and fail. Parents should know their child's skills.

6. Some parents feel guilty for their child's illness. Parents should be told that their child's condition is usually related to outside factors.

Stage 3: To create awareness in the parents regarding their role in training the child.

1.  Some parents fear they lack the abilities to train their intellectually challenged child. Parents should know that a mentally challenged child can learn with repeated easy steps.

2. Helpful would be a meeting between parents of helped and newly identified mentally challenged children. This will encourage reciprocal support.

3. Parents should see how their training helped their child. This will provide parents a sense of accomplishment, making them more interested in their child's training.

b) Briefly discuss various time management techniques and strategies. 10

Ans) The various time management techniques and strategies are as follows:

Getting Things Done: GTD is an organizational method created by David Allen in 2002. The Getting Things Done method rests on the principle that a person needs to move tasks out of the mind by recording them externally. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks. GTD is based on making it easy to store, track and retrieve all information related to the things that need to get done. Allen suggests that many of the mental blocks we encounter are caused by insufficient front-end planning.

ABC Analysis: A technique that has been used for a long time is the categorization of large data into groups. These groups are often marked A, B, and C hence the name.

Activities are ranked upon these general criteria:

A – Tasks that are perceived as being urgent and important.

B – Tasks that are important but not urgent.

C – Tasks that are neither urgent nor important.

Pareto Analysis: This is the idea that 80% of tasks can be completed in 20% of the disposable time. The remaining 20% of tasks will take up 80% of the time. This principle is used to sort tasks into two parts.

The Eisenhower Method: President D. Eisenhower developed a prioritizing technique, now known as the Eisenhower Method, which divided daily activities into four quadrants based on importance and urgency.

POSEC Method: POSEC is an acronym for Prioritize by Organizing, Streamlining, Economizing and Contributing. The method dictates a template which emphasizes an average individual’s immediate sense of emotional and monetary security. It suggests that by attending to one’s personal responsibilities first, an individual is better positioned to shoulder collective responsibilities.

The Pomodoro Technique: It is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980. The technique uses a timer to break down periods of work into 25-minute intervals called ‘pomodori’ separated by breaks. The method is based on the idea that frequent breaks can improve mental agility.

Q4) Attempt any four of the following in about 150 words each: 5x4

a) Discuss palliative care. Explain the role of a social worker in palliative care.

Ans) Palliative care refers to any therapeutic care or therapy that reduces the severity of disease symptoms rather than seeking to halt, delay, or reverse the disease's progression or provide a cure. Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life for patients and their families dealing with the challenges brought on by life-threatening illnesses by preventing and relieving suffering through the early detection, accurate assessment, and treatment of pain and other problems, including physical, psychosocial, and spiritual ones, according to a statement from the World Health Organization.

The fact that the palliative care team also offers support and advice to the family members and friends of people who have serious, complex illnesses that may be chronic, or terminal is one of the exceptional aspects of these services. The attention and care given to the patient are not the only ones with which they are concerned. In the case of end-of-life care, this support continues in the form of bereavement counselling, rehabilitation, and other services for a while after the patient passes away.

b) Examine the concept of human rights in the context of persons affected with HIV/AIDS?

Ans) Discrimination against those who are HIV/AIDS positive denies them the social, economic, and health rights guaranteed to all citizens by the constitution. The government is aware that the response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic will be insufficient without safeguarding the human rights of those who are at risk and affected by the disease. Human rights and the impact of HIV/AIDS are closely related. The disease spreads and has a greater negative impact when human rights are not respected, and HIV also impedes the realisation of human rights.

This connection can be seen in the disease's disproportionate incidence and dissemination among some populations. These populations may include women, children, and especially those who are poor, depending on the epidemic's characteristics and the social, legal, and economic climate of the time. It is also clear from the fact that developing nations are currently bearing the majority of the epidemic's burden, where the illness poses a threat to undo significant advancements in human development. In many developing nations, AIDS and poverty are becoming mutually reinforcing negative effects.

c) Explain the importance of rehabilitation counselling.

Ans) Through a face-to-face, one-on-one contact with the counsellor, rehabilitation counselling helps people and parents understand their current and, if feasible, future situations and find solutions to their issues. Rehabilitation counsellors help people with impairments achieve their psychological, personal, social, and occupational goals by offering counselling, direction, and case management services. Rehabilitation counsellors assess clients' occupational interests, aptitudes, and abilities in order to establish how a client's impairment may affect their capacity to achieve goals. They also provide the necessary services in order to increase client employment alternatives and quality of life.

Rehabilitation counselling stands out from other types of counselling due to an intriguing historical connection to the medical model of service delivery. When one considers how closely rehabilitation specialists work with the physically impaired, it is simple to comprehend the dominance of the medical model. Knowledge of medical terminology, diagnosis, prognosis, vocational assessment of disability-related constraints, and job placement within a socioeconomic system are all necessary for practising rehabilitation counselling.

d) List the causes of marital disharmony.

Ans) The causes of marital disharmony are as follows:

1. The young wife enters a social family where the mother-in-law is overbearing, and the husband will be unable to meet her wants. The economic hardship of the one-parent household also contributes to the discord in marriages.

2. Couples will have high expectations of one another, and if those expectations are not met, discord will result.

3. Psychiatric problems include schizophrenia, alcoholism, depression, paranoid disorders, sexual dysfunction, and mental retardation.

4. Sexual partner's personality and behaviour tendencies.

5. If a physical flaw were concealed prior to marriage, this could cause marital strife.

6. The majority of people move to cities in search of work since they are faster-paced and need the breadwinners to spend the majority of their waking hours at work, which reduces their quality family time.

7. Prolonged distances between them might cause infidelity and a lack of affection.

8. The woman does both the duties of a homemaker and a working woman. Women were stressed out by this and wanted their partners to assist with domestic duties as well.

   
   

5. Write short notes on any five of the following in about 100 words each: 4x5

a) Care giving

Ans) Caregiving is the act of providing assistance to the old, ill, or incapacitated. The majority of people will most certainly become caregivers at some point, not if, but when. In Marjorie Silverman's book, Counselling with Caregivers, she claims A person who regularly gives unpaid care or support to someone who has a cognitive or physical loss of autonomy, or a mental health issue is referred to as a caregiver. Giving unpaid assistance or support to family members, relatives, or acquaintances who require medical, psychological, or developmental care can be referred to as caregiving. Family members, acquaintances, neighbours, and other relatives serve as the majority of carers.

b) Sexuality

Ans) Sex education, sometimes referred to as " Sexuality," is the term for instruction in human sexual anatomy, sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse, sexual behaviour, and other facets of sexuality, including body image, sexual orientation, dating, and relationships. There is mounting evidence that adolescent sexual activity outside of marriage is increasing in India.

There are concerns that this may increase the spread of HIV/AIDS among teenagers, increase the incidence of unintended pregnancies and abortions, and cause conflicts between modern social ideals. Teenagers have limited access to both health care and education. Because extramarital sexual behaviour is frowned upon by cultural standards, "these implications may take on threatening dimensions for the society and the nation."

c) Non-Directive Counselling

Ans) The technique of attentively listening to a person and enabling him to disclose his emotional difficulties, understand them, and decide on courses of action is known as non-directive or client-centered therapy. It is client-centered because it puts the client's needs first rather than those of the counsellor as judge and guide. Although non-directive counsellors avoid giving advice and assurance, they still carry out the aforementioned counselling tasks.

There is communication, but it mostly goes up to management through the counsellor. Even more efficiently than with directive counselling, emotional release occurs, and clearer thinking usually follows. The ability to refocus the client is the special benefit of non-directive counselling. Instead of focusing solely on solving the current issue, as is typically the case with directed counselling, it places more emphasis on transforming the individual.

d) Referral System

Ans) The process for referring a patient or client for additional assistance should be known to the hospital counsellor. A simple and clear referral form should be created and made available at the hospital in order to implement a clear referral system. The counsellor may suggest that a client seek out laboratory tests, psychiatric assistance, legal counsel, community support from an appropriate NGO, or home-based care for follow-up care. On every occasion, care should be made to protect the client's privacy. A patient might be referred to the counsellor within the hospital from any department.

e) Probation

Ans) The Latin word "probare," which meaning to test or to prove, is the source of the English word "probation." A promising area for social defence development is probation. Under the guidance of trained and skilled probation officials, non-institutional methods of probation aim to reform the offenders. Offenders must continue to be watched over by probation officers throughout their probationary period.

The court may order the release of offenders on probation as a form of treatment for those who have been found guilty of crimes against the law. During this time, the probationer lives in the community, regulates his own life, and is under the supervision of a probation officer while also being subject to the conditions set by the court or other governing body. Both deterrence and reformation are achieved by the suspension of sentence under probation.