Mrs. Raley is legitimately afraid that Roneisha will do her serious injury and has already described two attacks in which she was injured by the girl. Woods and Hollis (2000) have noted that in case sin which a parent, natural or foster, is unable to control the behavior of a dependent child, removal of the child from the home may be needed.
Further, the director of the mental health clinic where Roneisha is receiving services (and where she obtained the two psychotropic drugs that she is taking, apparently without the clinician's understanding of her pregnancy) has asked that a resource be located to provide the girl with the more intensive mental health services that she needs as soon as possible. In essence, use of various instruments to assess this girl's situation may be needed; the Beck Depression inventory, the diagnostic Manual of the APA, and other tests could be of value in determining her presenting problems and prioritizing interventions (Baron & Byrne, 2000).
The most important intervention for Roneisha at the present time is removal from the foster care placement in which she currently resides and transfer to a group home where she can receive more intensive, one-on-one and group counseling. A thorough medical assessment of her condition, including any dietary deficiencies, and treatment within the context of the group home may be useful in eliminating some of her risk-taking behaviors. Strict control over her movements, along with anger management programming and instruction in self-control, will be facilitated by such a placement.
While residential or group home placement is not necessarily as desirable as placement in a foster care setting, this young girl is clearly in need of the kinds of services that cannot be offered in the mental health clinic or her current home with Mrs. Raley. Woods and Hollis (2000) noted that social work policy tends to focus on alternatives to group home placement, but this ...