The formative task should  cover the following points: (700 words)

• Brief summary of the practice to be evaluated
• Brief summary of the topical issue that practice addresses
• Evaluation of the practice based on evidence from the specified article
• Brief mention of any alternative solutions/practices to address the topical issue
• Recommendation of whether the chosen practice should be implemented
• Consideration of any social or cultural factors that might affect this recommendation

Create an action plan for the formative task

Assessment 2 – Reflective Summary

Whether personally or professionally, reflective practice is an important skill to nurture and exercise. For this assessment, you will be asked to reflect on the action plan that you created for the formative task and evaluate the effectiveness of its implementation for improving your work for Assessment 1.

You will present your reflective summary in a written format (1,000 words).

Your assessment will be based on a reflection framework put forward by Quinton and Smallbone (2010) that they have adapted from Gibbs (1988) reflective cycle. It should be structured using the following sub-headings:

Introduction

• What is the aim of this reflective summary?
• What do you hope to achieve as a result of completing this summary?

Description

• What happened when you created your action plan?
• What happened when you tried to implement your action plan?
• What happened when you finally submitted Assessment 1?

Feelings

• What did you feel about the activities described under the previous sub-heading?
• What did you think about the activities described under the previous sub-heading?

Evaluation

• What aspects of the experience were positive?
• What aspects of the experience were negative?

Analysis

• What sense can you make of your overall experience?
• How does this experience (of creating and implementing an action plan) fit within your ongoing personal development?

Conclusion

• What else could you have done to better create/implement your action plan?
• How would you summarise your overall reflection?

Action plan

• In a similar situation, what would you do now?
• How might you use action plans based on feedback in the future?

Assessment 2 – Reflective Summary

These criteria relate to the Module Learning Outcome 6. The Reflective Summary will be evaluated on:

1. Your ability to outline the importance of reflecting on assessment feedback for future work;
2. Your clear and concise description of the reflective processes that you engaged in from creating your action plan, to implementing your action plan, to finally submitting Assessment 1 (Practice Evaluation Report);
3. Your insights into your thoughts and feelings regarding the whole reflective process;
4. Your in-depth evaluation of the reflective experience and how it fits within your current personal development;
5. Your critical appraisal of your initial action plan and creating new action plans based on feedback in the future.

In addition, your work will be assessed against three generic criteria: structure, expression, and referencing.

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Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for Treating Depression in Children and Adolescents

Introduction

Depression in adolescents and children affects their development, raising the probability of long-term adverse outcomes including poor health, challenges with creating and sustaining decent relationships, poor education performance, and an increase in suicide or self-harm risks. Depression is attributed to most of the diseases that occur within the given age group. Young adults and children form the optimum period for the occurrence of new depression cases, which usually turn into a recurrent depression that emerges in most adults. Thus, it is necessary to provide efficient treatment to young people to enhance the recovery process and reduce the threat of the ongoing depression as well as the related effects. Interpersonal of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is recommended by international guidelines as an immediate psychological treatment for both moderate and severe cases of depression. Hetrick et al. (2015) asset that most studies claim that CBT is the most effective approach to depression in young people.

Summary of the Practice

This paper seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioural Treatment in handling depression among adolescents and children by assessing the evidence from various studies that have been carried out on the topic. Such evaluation is necessary to establish the effectiveness of the CBT approach in depression treatment when compared to other psychological treatment models. Since most studies claim that CBT is the most effective treatment for depression, it is necessary to identify the evidence that supports this claim. One of the reasons why CBT is highly recommended is that it focuses on teaching adolescents and children on specific skills to help them overcome the effects of depression (Srinivasan, Walker, and Wakefield, 2019). Compared to other depression therapy approaches, CBT focuses on the emotions of children and adolescents as well as their behaviours and thoughts, how such are interconnected, and their impact on one another (NICE, 2005).

The topical issue in relation to child psychology addressed by CBT is depression. Depression in children or adolescents is a serious issue that increases the risk of future physiological and psychological damage, problems in social adjustment, and suicide cases (Stallard et al., 2011). The most noticeable symptoms of depression have been identified to include low self-esteem, anxiety symptoms, drug and alcohol use, the behaviour of externalising, and reduced school attainment (Spirito et al., 2011). It is, therefore, significant to address the topic of depression to help children and adolescents to overcome such issues. Addressing depression enables children to adopt correct and appropriate treatment approaches to address the effects of the symptoms that come with it. Addressing the issue also allows parents to be in a position to quickly identify cases of depression among their children by simply observing the behaviours of such.

Practice Evaluation

Evidence from Studies on Strengths and Weaknesses of the Effectiveness of CBT in Children and Adolescent Depression Treatment

CBT was initially developed for adults, specifically for those with depression or anxiety. Past evidence on the approach demonstrates that CBT has always been proven effective for the treatment of adults characterised with depression, and that it considerably possessed similar effects compared to medication and was thus able to minimise relapse after the end of the treatment period (House, 2010).

There exist less studies that have been performed to examine the effectiveness of treatment for youths and children characterised with depression, and the outcomes are not clearly outlined. For instance, according to House (2010), a multi-study executed in 2007 in the US by the TADS Team compared the effectiveness of combined medication and CBT as well as medication, waitlist, and CBT for 12 weeks. At the end of the study, children and adolescents who obtained CBT as a treatment alone did not show significant improvement like the ones on the waitlist, and their changes were less probable to improve compared to those who were subjected to CBT combined with medication (House, 2010). Children and adolescents who were subjected to medication combined with CBT showed the highest rate of improvement. After 36 weeks, youths who received CBT alone showed lower rates of depression compared to those who used only medicine. Therefore, the medication approach only showed rapid changes within the first weeks but after the 36^th week, no difference between the two treatment approaches was observed.

House (2010) also identified another study that was executed in the United Kingdom, in which a certain number of children and adolescents who referred to Adolescent Mental and NHS Child services were scheduled to be given treatment (usually psychiatric care) or psychiatric care combined with CBT. No evidence was identified claiming that inclusion of CBT in treatment was associated with changes in the health conditions of the young patients, and nothing proved that CBT was effective in cost.

As per the findings presented by Hetrick (2015), a particular study on the effectiveness of CBT on both adolescents and children who had medication-treatment resistant depression showed that CBT partakers who had been given social skills and problem-solving training in regard to CBT components significantly responded compared to those who were not subjected to the approach. This study suggests that behavioural approaches might lead to improved treatment results in young adults. Consistency of outcomes across multiple studies on CBT effectiveness in the treatment of depression in children seems to indicate more probably that it is the severity of depression that influences the CBT outcomes. From given studies, it is clear that the full CBT protocol may be significantly hard for young adults to participate, with some findings claiming that BT is as effective as CBT.