Posted: March 5th, 2016

A “summary” section, a “pre-interview preparation” section, a “behaviour during interview” section and a “follow-up/second interview” section – all of which would contain tailored advice and supporting evidence.

Case 2: Lucy Arnett
Lucy is 42 and is a senior manager in CoverItAll Insurance in Rainycity. She has been working for the company for 16 years and has worked her way up from junior insurance adviser through to senior management and now has responsibility for managing a total of 8 staff. About a year ago, her husband of 20 years (Clive) told her that their marriage was over and moved out of the family home. According to friends and family, Lucy was absolutely devastated by this news and went “off the rails a bit” according to her mother. She started drinking heavily and had several short-term relationships and one-night stands.
Six months ago, a new junior clerk (Jason, aged 19) joined Lucy’s team. Lucy and Jason got on really well and went out for drinks on several occasions. On one of these nights, they both got a bit drunk and ended up kissing. The next morning at work, Jason told Lucy that he just wanted to forget about it as he was planning to get engaged and did not want to jeopardise his relationship. Lucy got very upset about this but agreed to leave things as they were. However, since then, Lucy has been making excuses to telephone Jason outside of work hours, asking him to stay late at work to help with projects and has been turning up in locations where Jason regularly visits. She has also been sending intimate letters and gifts to Jason’s home address and has been observed sitting in her car outside Jason’s house for several hours. This went on for about five weeks before Jason raised this with the Human Resources Department at CoverItAll and Lucy received a formal oral warning from her manager. Following the warning, Lucy’s behaviour became more aggressive and she started making obscene and threatening telephone calls to the house, screaming at Jason in the street and threatening to commit suicide unless he apologised for ruining her life. Jason felt that he had no alternative but to contact the police and Lucy was detained for questioning on suspicion of stalking.

1) Case study: All of the general points above can be translated into the case study too. However here you do need to make recommendations and justify them so you may want to lay it out differently. You CAN use a standard essay format if you want. You CAN use a professional report format if you want (e.g. with headings such as Executive Summary, Background, Recommendations, Support for Recommendations) but make sure you refer to the case details and the published literature for evidence. You could also have a series of separate documents/sections.
a. For example, if you were doing the investigation one, you might want to have one of the following formats:
i. A “summary” section, a “pre-interview preparation” section, a “behaviour during interview” section and a “follow-up/second interview” section – all of which would contain tailored advice and supporting evidence.
ii. A list of 3-4 recommendations (e.g. ensure that an appropriately qualified interpreter is present) and then evidence to back up that your recommendation is sensible
b. For the court one, you might have a summary of the issues, then a series of recommendations which your “side” should consider. Alternatively you might want to look at strengths which apply to your side and how the team could maximise them as well as identifying the things which the “other side” would highlight and how you could minimise their impact.
c. If you were tackling the court one and wanted to provide advice to the jury, remember the goal there is to help them make the most effective decision possible. This would perhaps include deciding what pieces of evidence/information are likely to influence them the most and highlighting how they could make a more objective decision. Or it could involve identifying what is most likely to prove confusing for them and how you could help to minimise confusion.
d. Finally, if you were doing the treatment and assessment one, you might have sections for “tools selected” “procedure for assessment” “issues identified” “treatment recommendations” “proposed evaluation of treatment” – again, all tailored to the topic and all involving evidence.

You will probably want to flesh it out a bit (e.g. you might want to talk about the psychological robustness/vulnerability of Carl, give Lucas’s victim more of a profile or consider what the other incriminating evidence is against Usman). However, you MUST make any fleshing out relate to your argument, the evidence you present and the recommendations you make. In short, you must make this piece of work as internally consistent as you can. Remember that your role is not to determine “whodunit” but to consider how the individual might behave during interview, come across in court or respond to treatment. So please don’t get too tied up in challenging the evidence itself – but consider how those making the decisions might perceive the evidence. If you want to flesh it out, then you can have a separate section called something like “case history,” “profile” “detailed case description” and you can write this without having to include it in your word count.

Also, you MUST pick your perspective (i.e. you must decide whether you are going to focus your case study on the investigation, court or treatment and stick to that perspective). And don’t forget that, for both assignments you need to include references in APA format.