Case Vignette: Kristen Lancaster
Background
At an early age, Kristen learned to distinguish the two types of people in McCall, Idaho: tourists and residents. As a small town in central Idaho, most of the two thousand residents earned their livings working for places catering to tourists on vacation. People visit McCall to engage in an array of outdoor recreational activities such as skiing, fishing, and hunting. Don Lancaster, Kristens father, worked as a wildlife parks and recreation officer. Cheryl, her mother, managed a motel located across the road from one of the large ski resorts. As one of the few families that have lived in McCall for more than three generations, they knew almost everyone in the com- munity. As an officer, Don was friends with everyone in the police and fire departments. He also had gone to school with the mayor. Cheryl sings in the church choir. Every Wednesday for the past twenty-two years, she has had supper with the other choir members at church and then rehearsed with them. Until Kristen finished high school, she too went with her mother on Wednesday evenings. If there was anything going on in town, Kristen heard it discussed by her mom and the other people in the choir.
Kristen attended the only public school in the area. The school had only 250 students. Fewer than one third of the students went to college after high school. Most students expected to learn a trade, get a job at one of the ski resorts, go to work in the lumber mill at the other end of the county, or en- list in the military. Kristen wanted to be the first person in her family to go to college. She also wanted to move back home after school and work in town or in the county. She attended Idaho State University and majored in social work. As a student, she was selected for the Title IV-E Idaho Child Welfare Scholars Program tuition assistance that helped cover her tuition and expenses. After earning her BSW and MSW, she worked with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (DHW) in the satellite office in McCall. She was the only social worker in the community.
The Context
As the only social worker in McCall, Kristen had to balance the unique con- text of working in her small town with being part of a large state agency. The DHW offices are organized into seven regions. Because the town is relatively close to Boise, the state capital, she was part of Region 4, which is the largest DHW office in the state. All of her colleagues and supervisors worked in Boise. Kristen spent most of her time screening and investigating the child protective and adult protective calls in the town. She also provided case management and supportive counseling to children and families seeking assistance and participated in a staff supervision meeting in Boise every Thursday afternoon.
The Situation
A constant challenge in her position was trying to develop and coordinate access to needed services while respecting the rural culture of her clients.
Residents of McCall referred to driving to Boise as traveling over the hill. It was something they usually tried to avoid. Although separated by only one hundred miles, there was not much of the big city that folks from town appreciated. Even so, Kristen often had to make referrals for clients that involved multiple trips to Boise.
Recently, Kristen recognized that she made a significant number of referrals for young adults to attend parenting classes. The classes were important because she assessed that many of the young parents on her caseload needed to learn the necessary skills to care for their children. She also recognized, however, that she created tremendous strain for parents when she referred them for classes. The eight-week class was offered in Boise. To attend, parents had to arrange their work schedules so that they could block out the six hours needed to travel to Boise, at- tend the two-hour class, and return home. The weekly trip was expensive and difficult. Assuming they had transportation, it could take almost a whole tank of gas to make the round trip. In addition, the only road that connects McCall from Boise is a narrow, mountainous, two-lane highway that could be dangerous in inclement weather. Kristen decided to submit a proposal to her supervisor to allow her to facilitate the parenting classes for her clients in McCall.
A few weeks after submitting her proposal, Susan, her direct supervisor, asked Kristen to stick around after the Thursday staff meeting to talk about the parenting classes. In their meeting, Susan told Kristen she was impressed with the proposal. She also thought that she could convince the regional director to approve offering the parenting classes in McCall. Before taking it to the director, Susan asked Kristen to address two concerns she had about the proposal. Susan explained that she was concerned with the extent to which Kristen could protect the confidentiality of the clients in such a small community. She also was concerned about Kristen maintaining appropriate boundaries with clients she served in multiple capacities. Kristen performed all of the child investigations for the clients. She also served as their case manager. Now she would be practicing as a direct provider. Kristen thought about her concerns. She appreciated Susans perspective. She also knew Susan grew up in Los Angeles and has only been living in Idaho for four years. She lived in the biggest city in the state and did not really understand how different it is from living in McCall. She wondered how to respond.
Read the case vignette below and respond to the following questions (200 word minimum):
1) What role does privilege play in the case scenario? In what ways might a social worker’s membership in either a privileged group or an oppressed group affect social work practice with a member of a different group?
2) Why and how did the social worker advocate? What would you have done differently?
4) After reading the article on rural social work and watching the cultural humility video Link to article: , Link to video: what challenges presented in the article and video do you also see in the case vignette? How would you apply cultural humility as related to this scenario?
