What if you could go up close and personal into a live crisis situation to see how it is handled by the crisis worker? Well, the next best thing is to interview someone who works with crisis as part of their job. Not only could you learn how to respond to a single crisis (if you were there in person), but you could learn various things that the worker experienced over a period of time.
Human service and criminal justice professionals deal with a myriad of crises on a daily basis. Learning strategies to recognize and deal with these issues is key to ensuring effective service to others and preventing burnout and compassion fatigue of yourself and co-workers. By talking through these types of concerns with a criminal justice professional, you should be able to gain new insight, improve your understanding, and deal appropriately with these issues in your professional career.
Upon successful completion of this assignment, you will be able to:
Describe what a human service or criminal justice professional reports as they describe their experience with crisis intervention on a regular basis.
Resources
Textbook: Crisis Intervention Strategies (Chapter 16 Human Service Workers in Crisis: Burnout, Vicarious Traumatization, and Compassion Fatigue)
Instructions
If you haven’t already, conduct your interview with the human service or criminal justice professional of your choice. Make sure to take good notes so you can refer back to them to write your paper. Remember that the most important questions in your interview should be about crisis intervention dynamics faced by the criminal justice professional and what was learned by the professional that could benefit you. Then carefully review your notes and do the following.
Review the rubric to make sure you understand the criteria for earning your grade.
Write a 1,800 to 2,100-word paper based on your interview. Although you can reference the questions you asked during the interview, please write your paper in essay format. Do not simply reproduce the interview in question/answer format. Include the following in your essay:
Begin your paper with an introductory paragraph.
In the body of the paper, start with the identity of the person you interviewed for this assignment. State their name, where they work, how many years of experience they have, or any other biographical information you want to share with your instructor. Include an explanation as to why you selected this person.
Next, share the responses your interviewee gave for the final questions that were taken from Part II of this interview assignment in the 3.5 Discussion. As a reminder, you were asked to formulate at least one question around each of the following topics:
understanding the grief process,
helpful things to say and do during a crisis,
tool of forgiveness,
stages of crisis intervention, and
the effects of a crisis
In the next section, compare your interviewee’s answers with the information found in the course resources. Course resources include the course textbook, the Bible, Dave Dravecky’s Growing Through Grief article in the Encourager newsletter, Helping a Neighbor in Crisis resource, and other resources (websites) in the course. In other words, did what you hear during the interview agree or disagree with the information and research presented in this course? Highlight the similarities and differences.
Next, reflect on what you learned during the course and interview. Describe how your views about crisis intervention in the human service or criminal justice profession have changed since you started this course.
Lastly, summarize the paper in a concluding paragraph.
Make sure that your assignment is in proper APA format.
