1007HSV Sarah Alcoholism Case Study Sample

Human Services Processes

Background of Sarah Alcoholism Case Study

The report revolves around the case study of Sarah, a homemaker for her two children Bella, 10, and Sam, 8, who has got separated from her husband, Joe. Sarah has got into a severe addiction to smoking and alcoholism to such a great extent that it has risked the financial bringing of her. In addition to this, she has also been investigated to be a victim of Bipolar Disorder six years prior and has been under the treatment for a long time. Also, a highly extended addiction to alcoholism and substance misuse has ranged Sarah to become unorganized, imperfect, and fragmented in her professional area, as a resultant to which he had to suffer the loss of work and behavioral dissociation (Murphy, 2016). The effects brought about by these issues led Sarah to a great financial and livelihood crisis that led to propound questionable living and sustenance of her. The increased substance misuse and low financial capabilities due to unemployment forced her to wander here and there and also to seek a financial counselor for suggestions on managing finance for the affordability of alcohol.

Sarah was completely drained into the substance misuse to such an extent that it caused her to become a victim of mental health issues apart from bipolar disorder. It has been a clear insight from the case study that Sarah is in the vital requirement for assistance and livelihood conducts.

Human Rights

Each human has been facilitated with certain basic rights and freedom that are enjoyable at each corner of the globe since advent until the end. Human rights are referred to as the moral norms and fundamental principles that chalks out the behavioral structure, standards, and guidelines for the human livelihood for the protection of human interests in the global arena, irrespective of their origin, ethnicity, nationality, religion, race, gender, color, education and more alike. The human rights propound for the rights of each human to live, to free from slavery and torture, to enjoy the freedom of opinion and expression, the freedom or right to educate and work, etc. with no space for any sort of discrimination (Freeman, 2017).

As propounded by Brown (2016) about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations, each human in its entire livelihood has the right and freedom to consume and enjoy the economic, social, cultural, and political benefits available. For the sake of overall entertainment and inhibition of rights has a direct linkage with human engagement and potentiality in the livelihood factors as supported by the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory. The theory propounded by Maslow as supported by Hopper (2019), explains the essentiality of self-fulfillment of needs required for livelihood. The physiology needs have been set as the most basic need for the survival of humans followed the needs of belongingness and affiliation, self-esteem needs by way of achievements, and finally the self-actualization needs for the optimum level of human development and rightful livelihood.

In regard to the case study, human rights can be seen as a major area of concern and issue in Sarah’s case. The increased alcoholism and lack of financial capacities have led Sarah towards starvation, thus highlighting the low satisfaction of Sarah derived from the basic physiology or survival needs. The low fulfillment level of the survival part of the hierarchy of needs according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs seems to cater to a low chance for other needs’ fulfillment for Sarah. In addition to this, the lack of cooperative measures by the professional sides of Sarah has referred to as a breach of human rights of social ethic protection and protection of rights.

Ethical Issues

Human rights are meant to acts as a roadmap for actions and processes of human governance whereas ethics derive sociological and philosophical integration that guides the way particular situations must be handled and conducted. To elaborate, ethics turn out as a standard of leads and misleads that occur in the part of human livelihood and actions in real life for protection and enjoyment of its rights and freedom at all levels viz. personal, social, and global (Featherstone, 2018).

The breach and misconduct in human rights and ethics have a vast scope to be called as the discriminatory situation on the pillars of human livelihood and sustenance. In the case study provided, Sarah has been observed to be surrounded by certain ethical mistreatments. The negligence of the right to work and associate freely by the corporative members and professionals by terminating Sarah from the position of professional serviceability due to her mental illness factor has been a major example of ethical issues in the case study. Likewise, Sarah has been an equal guilty in the facet of ethical maltreatment for herself. The over alcoholism and substance abuse led Sarah towards financial exploitation and then calling up for a financial counselor to manage alcohol expenses represents Sarah’s unethical treatment for self in the focus of healthcare and sustenance facets.

Discuss the Relevant Theoretical Approaches Require to Inform Assessment and Intervention

The approach of social work is centered on the lines service and assistance as and when required by the society or its people for the sake of acquiring them the facets for well-being and support. The theoretical approaches like systems theory, social learning theory, and strength perspective theory.

Systems Theory

The systems theory of social work is concerned at the interdependency of all the social parts of the system in way of understanding the relevance of how an event or incident in the social system can directly impact the other areas in the system and also checks for the way of interaction within (Greene, 2017). The system targeted in the theory usually includes individuals, groups, family people, friends, etc. of the human.

Systems theory has an elemental scope in the case study of Sarah where her social system could be considered as her family and professional workers in the area of service. According to the applicability of the theory on the given case, it has enabled to seek out that the mental health of Sarah has been the dependent factor for her employment or serviceability in the corporate area, where the degradation of the former led to the dissociation of professional life from her. It can also be assumed or stated that a similar pattern has been in the involvement of the family management concerns as well.

Social Learning Theory

Social learning theory propounded by Bandura (1977) as cited by Akers (2016) depicts the behaviorist learning theories by the use of observational and cognitive processes. In the case study, it can be seen that the dysfunctional or unsupportive behavior of social workers led to Sarah’s learning of demotivation and dysfunctional behavior towards the self wherein loss of mental stability also paused her positive learning by social observation of avoidance of substance abuse.

Strength Perspectives Theory

The strength perspective theory suggests that individuals in the social system have the strength enough to accomplish their objective of livelihood and social system by effective utilization of elements available in the social phase (Van Hook, 2019).

In this case, the strength perspective theory can be applied in the arena of non-acceptance of substance abuse among the societal boundaries. The strength here is the denial of substance abuse, the objective is to harvest such substance abuse practices, where the theory uses the client’s resistivity towards the adoption of alcoholism.

Possible Interventions and Organizations/agencies that Could Serve as Points of Referral/assistance

Assisting the human population in the betterment of livelihood and survival is of the utmost importance and ethical in terms of social welfare. In the case study, Sarah requires to be assisted by such a social population or agencies that could assist in nurturing social life and service. Organizations such as the Department of Social Services can act as a hand of assistance for getting people like Sarah out of the threatening situation of her by utilization and practical implication of their mental health and welfare reform programs and events (Baldwin, 2016).

On the other hand, the professional workers could also have put forward the scope for Sarah’s helping hand in a formal approach to get Sarah out of the mediocre and redevelop the insights of well-being and normalcy in the social and livelihood facets of Sarah.

To cover the other details such as Sarah’s starvation and unorganized way of living could have been handled immediately by the non-profit organizations that aim to provide welfare measures for such people going through non-supportive lifestyle measures.

In addition to this, the major concern of the whole case study, the substance abuse practices adopted by Sarah can also be resolved and normalized by the use of organizations and agencies such as the Alcohol and Drug Foundation or other narcotics control institutes in the area (Piarcentino et al., 2017).

However, it must not be ignored that at the supreme level of any organization or agency in the position to perform assistance services, the social system that surrounds the victim i.e. Sarah at the place such as family, mental healthcare people, social workers, etc. could design themselves as the supportive and assisting elements in the resolution of such acts to lead Sarah and other such people towards wellness and fostered livelihood.

Reference for Sarah Alcoholism Case Study

Akers, R. L., & Jennings, W. G. (2016). Social learning theory. Wiley Handbooks in Criminology and Criminal Justice, 230-240.

Baldwin, M. (2016). Social work, critical reflection, and the learning organization. Routledge.

Brown, G. (2016). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the 21st Century. Open Book Publishers.

Fallatah, R. H. M., & Syed, J. (2018). A critical review of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Employee Motivation in Saudi Arabia, 19-59. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67741-5_2

Featherstone, B., Gupta, A., & Mills, S. (2018). The role of the social worker in adoption–Ethics and human rights: An inquiry. Birmingham: British Association of Social Workers.

Freeman, M. (2017). Human rights. John Wiley & Sons. New Jersey.

Greene, R. (2017). Human behavior theory and social work practice. Routledge.

Murphy, J. G., & Dennhardt, A. A. (2016). The behavioral economics of young adult substance abuse. Preventive medicine, 92, 24-30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2016.04.022

Piacentino, D., Kotzalidis, G. D., Longo, L., Pavan, A., Stivali, L., Stivali, G., ... & Girardi, P. (2017). Body image and eating disorders are common among professional and amateur athletes using performance and image enhancing drugs: a cross-sectional study. Journal of psychoactive drugs, 49(5), 373-384. https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2017.1359708

Van Hook, M. P. (2019). Social work practice with families: A resiliency-based approach. Oxford University Press, USA.

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