Assignment: Advocacy Plan Introduction

For this assignment, imagine you have been contacted by an agency in your community to provide consultation on how they might improve their services to clients. The agency is concerned that clients with serious counseling issues are “falling between the cracks” when they are referred to others in the community for intensive treatment. Furthermore, the brief aftercare they provide is not accessible enough to sufficiently support clients as they re-integrate into the community.

Using SafeAssign

This course requires you to use the SafeAssign tool. The SafeAssign source matching tool is available to you via a link in the courseroom. SafeAssign supports the development of your skills in preparing written coursework. Use your originality report to help ensure that you have used outside sources ethically and effectively.

• Note: Submitting a draft of your work to SafeAssign allows you make revisions before submitting it as your final work for grading. Submitting an assignment to SafeAssign does not submit the work to the course room for evaluation. This must be done separately; look for directions at the end of the assignment instructions.

Instructions

Use the Consultation, Supervision, and Advocacy Plan Template to complete this assignment. Using your studies in Units 7, 8, and 9, as well as ideas you have gathered from your peers in the discussions, address the following in your assignment:

1. Identify a population with mental health counseling needs as well as other needs, for example:
   • People experiencing chronic or severe mental illnesses who also experience homelessness.
   • Children with medical needs who also experience high anxiety.
   • Elderly individuals who are socially isolated and depressed.
   • Chemically dependent persons with recurring mental health crises.
2. Evaluate how the group you identified has been served in the history of clinical mental health counseling.
3. Describe the agency that is requesting consultation, specifying where their services are located within the continuum of care available in the community. Briefly outline the services they provide, such as outpatient services, inpatient services, partial hospitalization, or aftercare, and describe the other professionals or entities to whom they can refer clients for coordinated care.
4. Identify and describe the consultation theory, model, and strategies you would propose use to assist the agency in improving coordinated services for their clients.
5. Propose a counseling supervision model for the agency that describes roles and strategies for maintaining ethical and consistent client care.
6. Recommend additional steps professionals at the agency could take to advocate at the state or national level to reduce barriers that impede access, equity, and success for their client population.

Review the scoring guide linked in the Resources area to make sure you understand how this assignment will be graded.

Additional Requirements

Your paper should meet the following requirements:

• Written communication: Compose your paper to concisely and clearly address each topic, with correct grammar, punctuation, and mechanics.
• Length of paper: 3–5 typed, double-spaced pages, not including the title page and reference page.
• References: Be sure to correctly cite and reference at least three sources.
• APA formatting: Follow current APA guidelines for style and formatting, as well as for citing your resources in the body of your paper and on the References page.
• Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point.

SafeAssign Submission Requirements

You are required to submit a draft of this paper to SafeAssign to generate a report prior to submitting the assignment for grading. When your paper is downloaded and viewable in SafeAssign, save the originality report. Check your work for any necessary edits. Once the paper is finalized and all edits have been made, submit your final paper in the assignment area. A final SafeAssign report will automatically generate once the assignment has been submitted. Refer to the SafeAssign page on Campus (linked in the Resources) for guidance.

• Submit your assignment using the following file naming format: Your Name_AssignmentNumber_Assignment Title (example: Ima_Learner_u03a1_ClientDescription).