Youth Justice Worker: Practicum I

Learning Experience 1: Provide a written overview of a client’s involvement with the criminal justice systems (both formal and informal) from earliest contact to date.

Your account should outline the following:

• All criminal justice agencies
• All social service agencies

Your account should follow the client through the system and should also critically evaluate the following “systems” issues as related to your client:

• Early intervention
• System Barriers
• Cross-agency communication
• Service duplication and service gaps

Learning Experience 2: Site Research and Observation.

This learning experience is designed to help you become familiar with the policies and procedures of your practicum setting and how those policies and procedures impact on the clients it serves.

Part A

• You are to review the structure, mandate, history, philosophy, policies, job descriptions and protocols regarding confidentiality. You are also to review the emergency procedures of the site.

Part B

• In written form describe:
  • procedures you would follow in case of a fire/earthquake
  • how the physical set up and environment of the site relates to the services it provides
  • from the client’s perspective, the process of involvement in the agency from first contact to last contact
  • a situation you have dealt with in which you were required to implement agency policy or procedures

Learning Experience 3: Problem Solving.

The role of a Youth Justice worker is often a challenging one. As much as we plan and prepare, our clients often have their own agendas. This learning experience asks you to focus on an experience during your practicum where you had to deal with a crisis and problem solve creatively.

In written form describe the situation including:

• the context and description of what happened
• what your concerns were during the incident
• what you were feeling before, during and after the incident
• what was most stressful for you during the incident
• how you would handle a similar situation in the future
• what you have learned about your ability to function during a crisis

Learning Experience 4: Personal Wellness.

This learning experience is designed to help you consider the impact of personal wellness practices and values on either your own coping skills or those of a client. You may select one of the options outlined below.

Option A: Select a situation from your practicum experience where you feel that your personal wellness practices influenced your actions.

In written form describe the situation including:

• the context and sequence of events
• how your personal wellness practices influenced your actions
• what your concerns were
• what you found particularly significant about the situation

Option B: Select a client who is struggling with an area of balance in his/her life.

In written form describe the situation including:

• what the issue(s) of balance is(are)
• your understanding of how the imbalance was created
• a plan to aid the client to achieve balance.  (You do not have to implement your plan but you should describe how you would implement it.)

Learning Experience 5: Helping skills with individuals

Purpose

• This learning experience will allow the student to demonstrate an ability to view the world of a youth through the eyes of that youth and to effectively communicate that understanding to both the client and to the student’s supervisor.

Process

1. Tuning-in
   • Based on file information, conversations with the client, and discussions of the client with co-workers, parents and other professionals involved with the client, the student will construct an understanding or image of how the client views his or her current life circumstances and how he or she feels about these circumstances.
2. Final Evaluation
   • Working from prepared notes: (please be prepared to share these with your site and college supervisors upon request)
   • Identify specific examples of where the student has utilized the following skills in working effectively with the client: active listening, primary accurate empathy, advanced accurate empathy (e.g., putting client’s feelings into words), partializing, responding directly to indirect cues, confrontation/demand for work, moving from the general to the specific and checking for underlying ambivalence.
   • While recognizing that all of the above skills may not be utilized in any given working relationship, the student should attempt to identify and illustrate as many as possible.

Leaning Experience 6: Practice philosophy

Even as a beginning Youth Justice Worker, you are working from a set of beliefs, values, assumptions and experiences that determine what you will do in any situation. The purpose of this learning experience is to help you make those factors explicit. The question you need to consider here is not what you do; but why you do what you do. The clearer you can be about your own underlying assumptions the more you will be able to keep your practice open to change and growth.

1. Part one:
   •  Before your practicum begins write two or three paragraphs describing what you see as your beliefs, values and assumptions and how they relate to your practice. Describe what you see as the function of the Youth Justice Worker in relation to the needs of the client.
2. Part two:
   • Select two situations from your practicum experience; one that supported your practice philosophy and one that challenged it.  Describe in writing; the setting and events
   • how the situation either challenged or supported your practice philosophy
   • any changes to your practice philosophy that resulted from the situation