STR - Support Time Recovery - Activity 1.7 - Reflective account

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STR / Support Time Recovery Training course

VRQ Level 2 Certificate in Mental Health

Answer to Question 1

Description

We had a report of a service user using the computers at one of the places I volunteer to view and download images of a sexually violent nature. I had to go through the computers and find the proof that he had been doing what he had been accused of. We took the person into a separate room and gave a verbal warning to the person never to do it again. The person was informed if he breached the rules of conduct in that way again then he would be banned from attending. Finally I removed all the offensive pictures and cleaned the history of the computers so that nobody could accidentally wonder onto the sites.

Feelings

I found it difficult to stay calm with the person, he was denying that he had done the things I could easily prove that he had done. I also found the nature of the images upsetting and dealing with somebody into that sort of thing was very hard. Acting in a professional manner to this person was hard and I really hope I do not have to have much to do with him in the future.

Evaluation

Good:

The person does seem to have stopped doing it now, so hopefully he has leant from the experience.

Rules of conduct for using the computers will now be put on the wall to deter future problems.

It was a situation I had never had to deal with before and I think it was good experience, no matter how upsetting it was.

Bad:

Its sad that this situation arose in the first place, people should be able to be trusted to behave themselves while using the computers.

Some other service users were upset by the incident and they deserve not to be put through situations like that.

Some of the staff may probably never treat the person in quite the same way again and that risks his needs not being met.

Analysis

This situation should never have happened, but it is one that is hard to prevent. Most places that have public internet access have systems in place to stop people accessing offensive information, but the problem with them is that they block a lot of things that people in a place like that may need to search for i.e. somebody may try to search for "rape support groups", but the computer does not understand the difference between that and a search for "rape", so you can normally either allow both or block both. The same goes for self harm, that's a legitimate thing for people to search for at a mental health related place, but some things on those pages would be picked up by filter software as offensive.

Conclusion

I personally would have liked to have seen the person at least get a temporary ban for doing what he did, but I do understand that he has a right to attend.

In the future I will be running complete checks on the computers at least once a week to make sure that nobody ever does the same thing again.

Action Plan

If it does happen again that I would also make sure I kept a copy of the proof (the log files NOT the images) to help deal with the matter if it happened again.

I may install additional security software to make sure people are not just doing it and then carefully clearing up their tracks. If I do this then I will have to make sure that nobody else is able to access to the information and that it is only used for security reasons, and not to invade the privacy rights of anybody else.

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Please note: The contents of the Level 2 Certificate in Mental Health Students workbook are copyrighted, so I have not included any of the questions, purely my answers which are only copyrighted to me! If you have access to the workbook it will make a lot more sense to you. Please do NOT copy my answers and use them as your own, I have just put them here to give you ideas for any parts you may be stuck on.