This chapter contains tips and guidelines regarding several areas of the assessment of clients in the criminal justice system. The first part of the chapter discusses basic considerations regarding the client and the assessor that underlie the assessment process. These include:
Determining who should do the assessment
Laying the foundation for assessment
Addressing the client's basic needs
Consideration of the client's literacy
Reviewing the assessor-client relationship.
The second part of the chapter discusses the skills and knowledge needed to effectively conduct the parts of the assessment on cultural, educational, ethnic, racial, and gender issues. The topics discussed include:
The assessor's skills regarding ethnic and cultural diversity
The assessor's approach to gender issues
The assessor's ability to deal with issues of spirituality, religious belief and practice, and creativity.
The final part of the chapter discusses processes and approaches used to obtain assessment data on various aspects of the client's health and mental health status. These include:
General health status
Physical and sexual abuse
Risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases
Mental health status
Safety concerns
Relapse potential.
The overarching aim of the chapter is to help increase the skills of practitioners who assess clients in the criminal justice system. An additional aim of the chapter is to help assessors develop skills in establishing a bond with clients that will facilitate successful treatment.
The assessor should not be part of the correctional system. Having assessment done by someone in the criminal justice system can reduce the likelihood that the client will thoroughly trust the assessor and the assessment process, and increase the potential for a conflict of interest in the assessor. If the assessor is employed by the correctional system, achieving his or her primary responsibility -- protecting society from the incarcerated -- may interfere with acting in the best interests of the client. An assessor must be able to act in the best interests of the client.
Moreover, the assessor should be able to provide followup services to the client following incarceration or other disposition regarding continuing treatment services. The individual performing the assessment should be an advocate for the client. Ideally, long-term followup should be done by someone with whom the client has been able to establish a meaningful bond, or by an agency with which the client has established a relationship. The ability to conduct accurate assessments and use appropriate tools derives from training and the continual updating of knowledge and development of skills in working with members of special groups such as minorities and women.
The individual who is assessing clients who belong to minority ethnic or cultural groups should be trained and experienced in cultural competence and sensitivity issues. A curriculum designed for the training of assessors should address the different patterns of alcohol and other drug (AOD) use in different populations, the historical and cultural aspects of AOD use, and the effects of the different drugs of abuse in different populations.
Ideally, an assessor should provide clients with preassessment information that is designed to educate them about the value of assessments and motivate them to participate in the assessment process. Preassessment education should include information about the effects of AOD abuse on society and on the client's specific group, if appropriate. Generally, information about the effects of AOD abuse is easier for clients to accept if it is not directed to them personally as individuals but is of a general nature. The educational effort should include information on:
The impact of AOD abuse on relationships with significant others
Empowerment issues: How addiction and abuse diminish an individual's self-determination
HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, and tuberculosis.
In the absence of preassessment education, the assessor should attempt to gather information regarding several specific areas of the client's sense of self that can be relevant to treatment success:
The overall belief system or world view of clients: whether they see themselves as victims of circumstances or as agents of their own fate.
Whether they have a relationship with a higher spiritual power.
Their sense of self-esteem. Eliciting a sense of clients' self-perceptions is an early step in the establishment of a sound relationship between the interviewer and the client -- a relationship that will facilitate meaningful assessment and treatment.
In an assessment for AOD abuse, the assessor should determine the immediate concerns of the client. These may range from issues of survival and self-preservation in the correctional system to the safety of dependents at home while their primary caretaker, the client, is in prison. Attempts to address the client's basic needs prior to treatment will help to ensure the client's cooperation in assessment. The primary concerns of the client may be related to:
The trial date and what can be expected in court.
Fears of sexual victimization in jail or prison.
Basic survival issues such as homelessness, hunger, and lack of employment.
Health issues. Women may be very anxious about such conditions as pregnancy, pelvic inflammatory disease, or other gynecological problems. Both men and women are likely to be concerned about contracting HIV infection -- if they are not already
infected -- and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Withdrawal symptoms.
Physical disability.
Addressing such concerns is very important in building the relationship of trust that is essential for conducting an effective and useful assessment.
Some innovative programs provide bilingual services in English and Spanish or Portuguese. Increasingly, people who speak languages other than English or who are learning English are entering the criminal justice system with AOD problems. In addition to assessment problems that can be created because of a client's poor grasp of English and the assessor's inability to understand a second language, the accuracy of an assessment can be compromised if the client has literacy problems in his or her own native language. It should not be assumed that the client has an adequate level of literacy in any language. The literacy level of the client should be assessed prior to the selection of terminology used in the assessment. A good example of miscommunication created by inadequate language competence is the mistaken understanding of the term "positive" when applied to the results of HIV testing. An individual who is informed that an HIV test has come back "positive" may take this to mean a "good" result, and mistakenly believe that the virus was not found.
The process of assessment is more than just obtaining a client's responses to predetermined questions. The process involves engaging the client in a meaningful dialogue. A two-way dialogue must take place between two motivated participants in order to build a relationship based on mutual trust, acceptance, and respect.
To build such a relationship, the assessor must find a way to bond with the client. The assessor must have an attitude of sincerity, empathy, and understanding, and find ways to communicate these qualities to the client. One way to begin this is to elicit the client's "story." The assessor could ask the client to describe the circumstances leading to his or her criminal justice system involvement. The assessor can write this information on paper, give the document to the client, and ask the client to modify or expand it. The act of "owning" one's "story" can be the client's first step in realizing that he or she can take responsibility for his or her role in the process that led to AOD abuse and criminal justice system
involvement. Thus, the client can begin to take some measure of control. This can be a first step toward self-determination.
The story notes taken by the assessor and given to the client can become the first page of a journal or diary kept by the client. The client can be encouraged to take notes on his or her experiences while in treatment. This journal can be reviewed periodically with the client. If the client is concerned about divulging illegal activities in such a journal, the interviewer may suggest the use of code language to ensure confidentiality. Another useful technique is to suggest that the journal have two parts, with one part describing AOD abuse-related issues and another part describing "good" or positive issues.
The assessor's knowledge of AOD abuse patterns in specific cultures is an important consideration in assessment among culturally diverse populations; the assessor needs to be familiar with cultures other than his or her own. Few clinicians are adequately trained to handle issues related to ethnic and class bias, gender and sexual bias, sexual harassment, and cultural and linguistic sensitivity, competency, and diversity. The assessor also needs to have an appreciation of acculturation and its significance. The accuracy of the assessment and the appropriateness of the tools for individual clients derive from the clinicians' skills, knowledge, and training in the use of the tools, and their ability to apply these skills and knowledge to clients from special groups such as ethnic and cultural groups and women. Onsite training for all assessors is ideal.
The agency staff and other individuals who conduct assessments should be aware of cultural differences and the acculturation process. Acculturation is the process of cultural change in which the members of one culture assume the characteristics of another after continuous contact with that culture. Differences among people from different geographic areas, social settings, and social classes must also be taken into account. Individuals from rural areas, large cities, and even different areas in the same city may have very different perceptions of themselves and others -- even if they are of the same race or gender. Counselors should ask clients directly about how they view or describe themselves and about their preferred usage of terms such as black, African-American, person of color, Hispanic, Latino, Chicana, Pacific Islander, gay, homosexual, or lesbian. The assessor should also be aware of cultural differences among ethnic subgroups, such as Mexican-Americans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans. These groups have very different cultural identities, attitudes, values, and customs.
It is important to be aware of the degree to which an individual has internalized the cultural stereotypes of his or her ethnic group and gender. Sometimes, for example, a person from a very low socioeconomic area may identify with and have the characteristics of someone from a very different socioeconomic area. Another person from an affluent neighborhood may identify with and seem to be representative of people from a deprived socioeconomic background. It can be helpful to elicit from clients a story of their first memory of the recognition that they were African- or Mexican-American, female, etc. This exercise can help the assessor determine how individuals perceive themselves in relation to that first awareness. One way to do this is to ask them what they consider to be the strengths and weaknesses of their racial or cultural group. It may be revealed that an individual may not be aware of institutionalized oppression or may believe that he or she is unaffected by racism or sexism. These stories can give clues to underlying attitudes. It should not be assumed that because an individual is the member of an ethnic or cultural group that she or he automatically has a sense of having been discriminated against.
Many incarcerated men feel a sense of loss of effectiveness -- as men, as fathers, as husbands or lovers, and as providers for themselves and their families. Their ability to function in these roles, which is the source of their identity and feelings of masculinity on many levels, has been interrupted and taken away in prison. Men often express feelings of powerlessness, particularly in anger, which is one of the few acceptable emotions for them to express.
The assessor must try to recognize specifically what the loss of freedom means, in terms of the self-perceptions of the men being assessed. Questions that may be asked to explore this area include:
What does it mean to you to be a father, a husband, and a man?
What are your earliest memories of a sense of effectiveness, recognition, and creativity -- of first having a sense of yourself as male?
When do you remember being or feeling empowered?
Who are your heroes, and why?
Questions can be asked about anger and its effects. The purpose of such questions is to get the male client to use thought processes for reflection instead of physical aggression. Some examples follow.
If you weren't angry, what emotions might you feel?
What does this make you feel like?
At what other times do you get angry?
It may be hard for men to express feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness. Imprisonment is often an emasculating experience. Thus, it is important to recognize the role that AODs have in giving men a sense of control over themselves and their destiny. Men may make such statements as, "I can talk to girls after I've had a beer." A man may feel -- or actually be -- more sexually potent after using cocaine or heroin. For some men, prison eliminates or suspends sex in two ways. First, prison generally deprives heterosexual men of the ability to engage in heterosexual sex. Second, prison often deprives men of access to AODs that, for some men, are triggers for sexual feelings. Thus, being in prison robs some men of their sense of control or empowerment.
Some men experience problems related to grief, loss, fear of death, and guilt regarding HIV infection and AIDS. They may have lost many friends. They may feel alone and vulnerable, and may need special assessment and/or counseling related to these issues.
Many women in the criminal justice system also experience themselves as incompetent on multiple levels: as mothers, as career and working women, and as wives. They may be overwhelmed by the number of ways in which their sense of competency is taken away by the prison experience. The requirements of the court that a woman participate in a recovery program, coupled with interruption in career and caretaking requirements, may set up a cycle of failure. The farther away a woman is from what she sees as her traditional roles, the more important her issues of control and self-determination will be.
The assessment of parenting skills and responsi-bility for child care and care of other dependents should be included in the assessment of all women clients. The assessor should consider the role of the woman within the family as it relates to the culture with which she identifies. A special concern for women may be the need to direct attention to the immediate issues and daily struggles in their lives. The assessment must address their basic needs. The following issues should be considered when assessing women:
Whether the woman is in withdrawal from AODs
Child care
History of violence or rape
Underemployment, limited income, and poor and hazardous working patterns (such as prostitution or selling drugs)
Poor health care, inadequate birth control, lack of prenatal care, and lack of other medical information
Limited opportunities for education and intellectual growth
Inadequate support for aging and single parents
Guilt associated with a woman's self-concept as a "bad mother."
Specific issues for older women may include alcoholism, isolation, and fear of violence. They may have different reasons for incarceration than other inmates.
Lesbians often feel deeply oppressed because of their gender and sexual orientation. They are discriminated against, sometimes resulting in the loss of their children and their jobs. They are sometimes physically mistreated and threatened.
It is important to help empower women, to enable them to negotiate with authorities from a position of strength rather than powerlessness. For both men and women, issues of self-esteem are important.
Age is a factor in both habilitation and rehabilitation, with habilitation being more difficult for persons who began using AODs at a very early age. Those in midlife often tend to be better candidates for treatment because they have had more addiction-related negative experiences and losses than younger people. They may be ready to change their lives. Developmentally, midlife is often a good time for people to change. However, it may be more difficult for those in midlife than for younger clients to change their habits.
Different cultures and different people place different emphases on spiritual and religious values. Although treatment can be enhanced by an individual's spiritual or religious practice or by the expression of creativity, no one can assess a person's spiritual or creative development. However, it is possible to determine a client's external value system, and incorporate that into the assessment. Asking certain questions can accomplish this task. These questions should be asked in a sensitive manner, not in a way that would create a judgment about belief or lack of belief. For example, consider the following questions.
Do you sometimes have spiritual feelings? Are they helpful to you?
Do you believe in a Higher Power?
Has that always been true?
What person or persons do you respect greatly?
What do you respect about them?
Who has "always been there" for you?
What has that support meant to you throughout your life?
Another area to be explored is the expression of creativity and creative endeavors: music, art, dance, cooking, gardening, and the like. Asking a client, "Is there a kind of music that you use to soothe yourself when you are angry or upset?" may provide useful information. This line of assessment must be pursued sensitively, so that the client is not left with the feeling of failing to meet some untold expectations of the assessor if he lacks feelings or creativity. The assessor may be able to help clients develop a treatment plan based on their values.
It can be helpful to elicit information about inspirational activities. The information obtained in response to these questions will determine what type of treatment plan may not be effective. For example, treatment based on the concepts of Alcoholics Anonymous might be inappropriate for a client who has a strong conviction that there is no God or Higher Power.
Do not assume that an individual practices a certain religion simply because she or he belongs to a particular cultural, ethnic, or racial group.
Many offenders in the correctional system, particularly repeat offenders, have never had access to adequate health care. The implications of this in terms of the prognosis for the individual, as well as the costs to society, cannot be overstated. Health issues also have an impact on recovery from AOD abuse. Moreover, misdiagnosis or nondiagnosis of significant medical problems is common in incarcerated populations.
Conversely, incarceration can represent an opportunity to treat basic health problems that would otherwise go unattended. In many areas of the country, collaborative efforts are underway among medical schools and associated training programs, primary care providers, and community health centers that are conducting studies and providing quality care to these "hidden" ill populations. This section addresses health areas that need special assessment or attention among AOD abusers in the criminal justice system.
Individuals who conduct health assessments should not only have medical competence but also be trained to work with incarcerated persons and those from ethnic and cultural groups different from their own. Certain health issues are seen more often in correctional institutions than elsewhere. Health assessments in these institutions should consider:
Nutrition, weight, and eating disorders (being overweight, obese, or underweight)
Dental hygiene
HIV/AIDS
Other sexually transmitted diseases
Endocrine disorders, including diabetes
Sleep disorders
Cardiovascular disorders (hypertension and heart disease)
Pulmonary and upper respiratory diseases, specifically tuberculosis
Hematologic disorders
Renal disease (which may or may not be associated with hypertension)
Neurologic disorders (seizures)
Mental status (depression, withdrawal symptoms, and psychoses)
Gynecologic disorders, pregnancy, and cervical abnormalities
Urologic diseases
Developmental disabilities (including deafness, learning disabilities, and mental retardation)
Gastrointestinal disorders.
There may be a need to address issues that are of immediate concern, such as life-threatening emergencies. If so, the immediate needs of the patient must be prioritized in terms of such factors as physical withdrawal, suicidal intent, etc.
A history of physical or sexual abuse should be taken. This is of particular importance for, but not limited to, women. An assessment for abuse must be individualized and "client driven." In taking such a history, the assessor should attempt to gain a sense of the current living situation to which an abused person may be returning after court adjudication or incarceration. Among other things, the length of stay in confinement must be taken into account. For example, an assessor may wisely avoid probing too deeply into profoundly traumatic issues with a client who will be incarcerated for only a short period of time because of the impossibility of providing adequate followup counseling and care during a brief stay. An opening of wounds without the measures required to heal them may result only in exacerbating and compounding the client's experience of victimization.
The assessor should ask the client if he or she has experienced physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Abuse must be addressed if it is directly related to the reason for the client's incarceration. For example, a woman who is in jail for having stabbed her abusive boyfriend requires assessment and treatment for physical and emotional abuse. Assessment about abuse must be individualized to fit the client's specific situation and will require the clinical judgement of the assessor. To ensure the effective assessment and management of an abused individual, a treatment plan must be prepared that will address issues of abuse during and after incarceration. It must be included as part of the discharge plan.
The purpose of assessment for physical and sexual abuse is to refine the interventions needed to deal with AOD abuse, since the AOD abuse may be directly linked to an abusive living situation or an experience of abuse during childhood. It is recommended that the assessor be from outside the facility to ensure confidentiality and objectivity.
General questions about a person's attitudes about fighting and violence may provide important clues to her or his own history of victimization. Examples include:
Have you ever been involved in an incident where someone has been injured?
Do you belong to a street gang? The interviewer should look for identifying marks, such as tattoos. If the individual reports belonging to a gang, then additional questions can be asked: What does one have to do to be initiated? Did the initiation rites involve physical or sexual abuse?
Have you have been injured in the past? If so, how? In general, questions about fear of injury can also be helpful with both women and men.
What is your earliest sexual memory?
Are you aware of nonconsenting sexual acts that have happened to anyone in your family?
The goal of these questions is to enable the client to talk about past abuse without reliving the experience of victimization.
If a comprehensive assessment for physical and sexual abuse is undertaken, it should include education about the client's rights in pressing charges against an abuser. In addition, the assessor should be mindful of threats that may have been delivered by a perpetrator, who may have been another family member. Attention should be given to the possible effects of such threats in terms of the client's immediate safety, including thoughts of suicide sparked by fear of testifying against the perpetrator.
The accompanying chart, which can be copied and kept at the assessor's desk or in his or her notebook, provides questions that can be asked to gather information for assessment of risk. See Exhibit 5-1.
In order to be effective, an assessment of mental health issues should be carried out by mental health professionals. Ideally, they should have specific training or experience that qualifies them to work with offender populations.
A close relationship exists between mental health issues and AOD abuse. A mental health evaluation is an important component of a comprehensive assessment. Intervention and followup assessment needs to be done by a trained and competent mental health clinician with experience in the field. The mental health assessment should look for the following:
Signs and symptoms of depression
Sleeping disorders (insomnia or hypersomnia)
Recurrent dreams and nightmares
Symptoms of psychotic disorders (such as hallucinations)
Symptoms of dissociative disorders, such as "losing time"
Self-mutilation and thoughts of self-injury
Suicidal ideation.
Some of these issues may need to be treated over an extended period of time. Initial assessment and/or treatment may be done whenever the client is in a jail or correctional facility. Mental health assessment should always be conducted as part of the discharge plan.
One of the compelling reasons for the importance of safety concerns at every step in the criminal justice system is the direct bearing that these issues have on relapse. Although the physical aspects of the safety of the incarcerated population are ultimately the responsibility of the correctional institution, it is the responsibility of the assessor to evaluate the individual safety of the client. As part of that assessment of clients in prison, the assessor needs to be concerned about the client's sense of safety in terms of physical and sexual abuse and gang behavior.
Indirect questioning may be helpful in eliciting information from a client concerning violent incidents in which he or she may have been involved and in obtaining an idea of whether the client may be currently threatened inside the facility. An example of such indirect questioning is: "What fears did you have about jail before you went there?" The answer to this question may indicate current areas of apprehension or fear, or actual events that have taken place during the individual's incarceration.
As an offender's period of incarceration approaches the end, the assessment must take into account the living circumstances to which he or she will be returning. It is particularly important to determine the extent of drug availability in the environment that the client is in or will return to upon release. For treatment to be successful, it is vital to evaluate the daily circumstances of the individual's life.
If a client is returning to an environment where he or she will be continually confronted with the easy availability of drugs, encouragement to create an alternative safe, drug-free space may be appropriate. Even if it is not immediately possible to escape such an environment, such as when the client is living with an AOD user, it may be possible to create a space within the living environment that will be kept free of drugs. In such cases, clients must be encouraged to find ways to protect themselves. They can learn that they can remove themselves, even if only temporarily, from a situation in which drugs are being used.
At the assessment interview, applications for social services, food stamps, social security disability, and social security income should be reviewed. The eligibility of the client for these services should be determined.
The potential for relapse in AOD users is largely dependent upon three key factors:
Duration of treatment. The longer the treatment, the better the chances of success.
Duration of time before relapse. As the length of time that the client stays abstinent increases, the chances continue to increase that he or she will remain abstinent.
Duration of AOD use following relapse. If treatment is sought immediately following a relapse to alcohol or other drugs, the chances of success are increased.
The key to preventing relapse later is keeping the client in treatment now. In assessing the potential for relapse, the assessor should be mindful of the length of time that the client has successfully stayed AOD-free, keeping in mind that enforced abstinence during the prison term may not be indicative of his or her ability to maintain abstinence after release.
It may be useful to assess with the client those factors that are likely to act as triggers for relapse after release. Some examples of relapse triggers include, but are not limited to:
Ready availability of AODs in the home environment or neighborhood
Anger or other emotional stress (such as death of a loved one)
Any situation that repeats the past traumas that led to the AOD use
Sexual partners who are AOD users
Reactions (such as depression) to anniversaries or holidays
Fears of failure or actual failure in critical life experiences (such as the failure to obtain employment or regain custody of children)
Newfound freedom to have choices
Having money for the first time in a long while.
It is not uncommon for a client to hold onto elements from his or her former days of AOD abuse. Often clients report that maintaining these ties gives them a sense of security, "just in case." The assessor should identify what "residual objects" or reservations they are keeping around, such as drug works or paraphernalia, stash, or contacts. The assessor should also find out if the client has had sexual contact with anyone with whom he or she shared AOD use. Other clues in assessing the potential for relapse may be provided by dreams reported by the client regarding AOD abuse. Such dreams can indicate unconscious desires to get high. It is useful to advise the client that when the desire to use returns, changing patterns may help. For example, getting up at a different hour, increasing exercise, or improving eating habits may help to assuage these desires.
Clients must have realistic and practical expectations. The assessor can assist the client in planning activities based on these expectations such as job seeking, attending employment skills classes, or receiving social services or rehabilitation. For example, it may be unrealistic for a client to plan to attend three classes or therapy sessions a week while still in drug rehabilitation. Unrealistic or overly ambitious expectations can prompt a client to repeat the cycle of failure that led to the AOD abuse in the first place. In this regard, issues of child care and transportation are critical components of AOD abuse treatment success.
It is also important to assess the client's personal relationships that have been associated with relapse in the past. The goal is to empower the client to recognize, choose, and create options for changing old, counterproductive patterns in order to avoid repeating the experiences that led to relapse.
In assessing the potential for relapse, it can be useful to ask the client, "What will happen if you succeed?" "What will happen if you fail?" "Who would like it and who would not?" The answers to these questions could be an indication of what needs to be addressed in treatment before success can be achieved. For instance, the client may express the fear that a partner may leave if he or she quits using. This could indicate a trigger for relapse. The client must be helped to recognize such potential relapse triggers and old patterns, and encouraged to explore alternatives. For example, since living with an AOD-abusing partner is a trigger, the assessor can help the client to identify temporary living arrangements.
Assessing a client's sense of self-worth is critical to determining the potential for relapse. This is key to indicating how successful treatment will be. A simple rating scale can be used in determining this area. The client can be asked the following questions:
What are your strong points?
Tell me something good about yourself.
What are you proud of?
What have you done well?
Alternatively, the client can be asked to rate himself or herself on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 low and 5 high. The assessor can then discuss the ratings with the client. For example, if the client has rated himself or herself as a 3, the assessor can ask, "What would it take to be a 5?" or "Why aren't you a 2?"
The assessor's evaluation regarding whether this individual has positive or negative feelings of self-worth has to be incorporated into the treatment plan, taking into account issues of ethnic and cultural background and gender. One way to assess self-worth in relation to these areas is to ask the following:
What is your potential for success and for being self-sufficient? (The client may mention ethnicity or gender as a limiting factor.)
What are you particularly proud of about being [a man, a woman, an African-American woman, etc.]?
What has been difficult about it?
An answer of "I don't know" to the first two questions above may result from the inability to find any value in oneself as a result of being a member of a particular ethnic or cultural group or gender. In this example, a treatment plan could contain plans for rectifying low self-esteem. It may also be helpful to assess previous levels of independence and previous experiences of success.
Since failure -- such as the failure to obtain a particular job or regain custody of children -- can be a significant relapse trigger, the client should be helped to recast such a loss as an opportunity for learning. A client can learn that a specific failure does not signify his or her failure as a human being. Rather, experiences of failure can be opportunities for personal growth and learning more about recovery.
The creativity of the client must also be assessed in an effort to determine what the client would like to be doing in his or her life. The assessor can encourage clients to fantasize about what they would like to be doing if they were not in jail, if they were not using AODs, and if money were not an issue. These fantasies can provide important clues to help with goal setting.
The ultimate goal of assessment is for the client to be able to do an accurate self-assessment -- to know his or her own weaknesses and limitations in order to anticipate possible triggers for relapse. Relapse is best prevented when the client can see himself or herself as a person who is able to choose options.
This chapter has presented general tips and guidelines for use when conducting assessments. They are important tools that can help to ensure that the client perceives that he or she is being treated as an individual and that the assessor recognizes his or her essential worth and individual strengths -- rather than merely flaws or personality or character defects. Conducting assessments with attention to the factors discussed in this chapter will increase the possibility that an effective and productive relationship between the client and the assessor can be established.
Site Map
Help
Account
Cart
Home
